Only Kindness

Not being in the mood limits you massively, it stops you doing so many things which could give you joy, if you’d let them. This feeling, like all feelings, just came from another thought.

In the days when I used to believe my thoughts as if they were fact, I thought I had to be in the mood before I could do lots of things. A few examples were :

writing

exercising

dancing

meditating

housework

I didn’t realise that I could choose to carry on with my life, whatever was happening with my thoughts. I didn’t understand that it was of no matter what stories my thoughts were telling me…because thoughts are not reality. It’s immensely freeing that I now know I can simply let my thoughts come and go like clouds in the sky and not attach to any of them that I don’t want to.

If you wait to be ready or in the mood for everything, you won’t move very far forward with your life and feel stuck. You know that feeling, right?

I know it looks real that that you have to do things in a certain order, that you have to process information before moving onto the next task, but all these thoughts are simply little tricks that keep you procrastinating. Putting things off is one of the ways your subconscious mind saves you from setting yourself up for failure or making a fool of yourself in some way. Your little voice is simply trying to protect you but you can choose whether you want to listen to its helpful concerns.

Fortunately, many people understand that they don’t need to be in the mood for us. Do you think that your doctor, your dentist, your surgeon, your solicitor or even your hairdresser was in the mood today? As your thoughts, and with them, your feelings, change all the time, there is a pretty good chance that these people who serve and care for you don’t feel like it quite often….and yet they still show up, they still do their jobs.

There are lots of times I would prefer a duvet day, a visit from a friend, a yoga session or almost anything rather than whatever I don’t feel in the mood for, but each time, I place a smile on my face and show up….

And just like in the aerobics classes I told you about, I always forget about my low mood and enjoy what I’m doing.

You always, always have the choice whether to listen to your little voice or to ignore it and give yourself the opportunity to experience what you could, otherwise, have missed. Your thoughts alter throughout your days, with your natural state being peaceful and happy. If you attach to unhelpful thoughts and indulge yourself in thinking you need to be in the mood for things, you will stay locked in your sad, bored, weary, jealous, angry and unmotivated stories and won’t experience all that life has to offer you.

I’m not saying that every day is going to be amazing or that sad things won’t sometimes happen, but rather, that whatever happens, you will all be okay, the sky will not come tumbling down and, if you don’t tightly hold onto your grumbles, you will soon naturally return to your place of wisdom, peace and happiness.

Never think that I am belittling whatever worries you may be thinking are too awful, serious or large to let go of, I’m merely trying to gently explain that focusing on them will only make them more awful, serious and large.

You will find that, once you stop exhausting yourself with your stories of not being in the mood, you will have more time and energy to accept and cope with whatever you encounter. You will find that your calm and grounded place is always available to you, even at those times when you feel like it isn’t.

There is a freedom waiting for you,

On the breezes of the sky.

And you ask “What if I fall?”

Oh, my darling, what if you fly?

Erin Hanson

I absolutely love this poem…it puts failing into perspective for me.

But what if we do fail?? What if we make a gigantic fool of ourselves?!

Please ask yourself, realistically, what’s the worst that can happen??

Maybe your ego will be a bit bruised for a little while but it can’t affect you…it can’t hurt you, if you don’t let it.

It is your challenges that help you grow, your mistakes that help you learn, your falls that are your best teachers.

Social media memes often tell us to live each day as if it’s your last. I personally don’t want to think about my last days and all the associated consequences….I want to love the life I live….I want to grasp it with both hands and enjoy every single bit of it. So, I choose to live each day as if it’s a day I love and look forward to…as if it’s my birthday!

Let us celebrate together!

Whether you’re in a relationship now, or have been in the past, you will know that sex is something that can cause rifts, at the best of times, and you may not be in the best of times right now. Intimacy can suffer greatly when you allow your little voice to run your life. It can become a battle, power struggle, weapon or guilt trip.

But it doesn’t need to.

We tend to think of sex as something bigger and more important than the rest of our lives, probably because it’s very different from everything else we do…yet it’s a completely natural and beautifully bonding experience…if we don’t overthink it.

Our wanting things to go our way and believing every other way to be wrong, is intensified when it comes to the intimate areas of our lives.

I would never want you to do anything, in this, or any other part of your relationship, or indeed life, that you’re not comfortable with, rather that you are open to there being gentler, kinder ways of approaching everything.

In the last module, we talked about not needing to be in the mood to do things. When they first come to me, almost all my clients believe they have to be in the right frame of mind for love-making…but sex is no different to anything else. Unless you are at the very beginning of your relationship when it is exciting and new, if you wait till you feel the time is right…it may never happen.

For many, not having to be in the mood for sex is a new and very strange concept, it may be to you too, but my clients have found that they don’t need to be, and their love lives are now far better.

Make an appointment

This will work differently if your partner doesn’t want to join in with the program and you will have to decide, like you did with time-out, how to make it work for you. You can set the time and rules for each session together, or you can decide by yourself; it may be you will need to communicate this to your partner, depending what it is.

Agree on a time when you’re both free to spend time together in bed to be intimate. I deliberately used the word intimate rather than have sex because, often, taking the pressure off yourselves and not insisting there is intercourse, will be helpful.

Maybe you just want to start with cuddles…or include kissing…or allow touching in only certain places. When you introduce the idea of not being able to go all the way, you may both discover your enjoyment of things you haven’t tried before….or haven’t done for some time…and then may want to go further. Feeling obliged to go further doesn’t feel very sexy, does it?

You will find that rather than having to be in the mood before you start being close to each other, it is the being close to each other that puts you in the mood.

Power struggles, weapons, guilt trips and other unhealthy uses of intimacy

Many of my clients believe that withholding intimacy is a clever way to manipulate their partner into towing the line. It then becomes an unhealthy contest for who can hold out longest. How could this ever be good for a relationship?! Where is the kindness? To themselves or each other?

Many others just go through the motions, under sufferance, hating every moment and trying to avoid it happening again, with ever more anxiety. Surely making love isn’t something to be endured?

It is very unromantic to feel like you are being manipulated or pushed into doing something that could be so mutually enjoyable.

I had a client who had managed to convince herself, aided by the well-meant advice of friends she had confided in, that she was being practically abused by her husband’s continual requests for intimacy. I helped her see that he saw her rejections as a sign she no longer loved him and was becoming more insistant because he desperately didn’t want to lose her. They had become locked in a battle of wills that very nearly destroyed their relationship; they were talking about divorce. When she saw him as loving and vulnerable rather than predatory and insensitive, she was able to connect to him, soul to soul. They now have a very happy marriage…and a wonderfully happy sex-life.

Your partner will almost certainly know if you’re disliking what’s happening; how do you think this makes them feel? Do you want them to feel that way?

You may have read Nineteen Eighty-Four in which residents of George Orwell’s dystopian future must have sex on Friday nights, and at no other time. Having to do something that should be natural and enjoyable, at a specific time, imposed upon both partners, ensured that people grew to dislike any form of intimacy, thereby eradicating its power…in this case, because the Party wants to eradicate the possibility of political rebellion.

This came from a place of fear, anger, manipulation and control…and is also fictional.

I am sure that you can see that this lesson comes only from a place of love and a wanting for every part of your relationships and communication to be healthy.

Loving feelings produce more loving feelings

When you spend time being open and loving with your partner, your brain releases chemicals into your body which makes you feel more loving toward each other. It’s a positive cycle.

Making love manufactures love.

This is a very useful exercise that can be used now or when you are in a relationship. Whether you’re in the mood or not, let go of all the stories that are stopping you enjoying your relationship and remember how natural and wonderful being intimate with your partner used to be.

Nothing changed…except you listened to your little voice.

So either make an appointment or use another method you know…but do something.

“The greatest illusion, said the mole,

is that life should be perfect”

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse – Charlie Mackesy

And what a perfect illusion! How convinced we all are that there is something wrong if things don’t go just as we want them to.

I have a t-shirt with the words Perfectly Imperfect printed on it. It speaks to me of the way this beautiful life we have been gifted, sometimes stops us in our tracks by presenting unexpected, confusing and painful situations…and yet we can always choose how to navigate through them.

How to react perfectly

This is one of the recurrent themes in this program because it can be very easily forgotten in the midst of imperfection and unokayness. The picture you have painted yourself of how you think your life should be, will keep showing up for you…time and time and time again…until your thoughts are retrained not to demand a fairytale unreality.

I want to remind you here that this is not about –

your life being perfect…

putting up with an uncomfortable life…

settling for second best…

giving up on the idea of striving for your dreams…

and certainly not about –

your worthiness or deserving the very…very best.

It is about being okay with occasionally not being okay.

Once you are able to allow yourself to be okay…to be comfortable…when you’re not feeling okay, you can accept life as it is…not as you have convinced yourself it’s meant to be.

When you learn to be quieter with life…with yourself…gentler…more loving and patient, you will no longer judge unpleasant things that happen, to be earth-shattering, to be deal-breakers. You simply allow them, observe them, accept them for what they are…and make them no worse.

Greeting each moment with this simplicity will not only give you an unbelievably better experience

of life…but also stop almost all issues becoming problems.

This mindset shift, along with all the others I share with you on the Happily Ever After Program will sink into your subconscious in its own time. There is no need to feel challenged or rushed….for that, in itself, is not allowing the unokayness.

Notice when you feel uncomfortable or even fearful about anything…and open yourself to accepting that feeling…to surrendering to it…without giving it the focus and energy that will build it into something bigger and more unpleasant.

Notice how each time you successfully do this, it gets easier and easier.