I recently read an article about Bruce Springsteen. He said that when he looks back at the old songs it feels like eight lifetimes ago.
Our life is always changing. And everything is temporary.
Who you are now isn’t who you were years ago. Even if you have the same career and life. Every day we learn new things, have new experiences and meet new people. These things change us.
Our feelings are also temporary.
The feelings in our life flow from happy to sad. This is good because we get to enjoy and be grateful for the good ones and learn from the others.
Knowing that our feelings are temporary is good.
When we are happy we need to take time to embrace the feelings. Be grateful for the happy feelings because they will change.
When we are feeling crappy, we need to remember that is temporary too.
Embrace those sad feelings. It will dissipate. It will go away faster if you acknowledge what you are feeling. If you get frustrated and try to push the sadness away without acknowledging it, it will fight harder to be heard.
A good example of this is a child throwing a tantrum. If you try to punish and make it stop, the tantrum will escalate. He just wants to be heard and acknowledged. Our feelings work like this too.
Once you acknowledge the feeling you can calmly figure out the reason.
Being curious is a good way to look at your feelings. Take a moment to ask yourself why you feel a certain way.
Is there something you need to learn? Or is it just a bad mood day? Be ok with your feelings. Nobody is happy 100% of the time.
I think the trick is to go with the flow. Just ride the feeling waves. Know that they are temporary and they too shall pass.
Another important step is to be present in life. When we are triggered, our thoughts follow that path. If we can stop when we get triggered, we can get back to being present and deal with the situation at hand.
When we bring past stuff to a situation it will escalate it. If we stop and recognize that the thought is from our past, we can breathe and try to see what is really true. Become present, look at the situation at hand without all of your past history.
When we accept that our feelings are temporary, dealing with the good, the bad and the ugly is easier to handle.