It turns out I have very weak dissatisfaction muscles. I’m not very practiced at or willing to feel into dissatisfaction. I don’t think of it as a scary feeling – but I have been avoiding it. For years.
What do you to avoid your feelings? For the sake of ease, I’m going to assume that if you are reading this you have, at times – if not all the time, used food to avoid feeling something. If not, fill in your version as we go along. It could be alcohol, TV, shopping, etc…
Last night I had the baby (who is teething) down (for what I hoped would be) the night and I just didn’t feel good. I felt off. Kind of yucky but not sick, just an unfamiliar not-so-good kind of different with an edge of tired. I knew that in the past I would have overeaten in that very first moment – or more likely, a few hours earlier! Since I didn’t do that I got to hang with the feeling. It didn’t go away. I went to bed and read with it, I turned out the light with it, and I fell asleep with it on me like a boring blanket.
Upon waking I had a realization. I had a dissatisfying night, eureka! My feeling matched the situation, it made sense! We had eaten the same meal I prepared the night before, and it was not as good as the first night. I spent my free Saturday night running errands all over town in the dark and rain to accomplish random tasks I wasn’t excited about – and uptempo Christmas music was playing almost everywhere I went. I came home to a teething baby and her worn out dad.
It was not the kind of night you put on your vision board!
So what?
It was one dissatisfying evening in my life. What was the problem in feeling that? Why not feel the dissatisfaction? (Dissatisfied: Not content or happy with something.) Who would want to feel happy or content with a night like that?!
There are two important points here:
- If I don’t let myself feel the dissatisfaction – how will I ever know to make change, or where to make it so that I can be more satisfied with my life?
- I can do dissatisfied. I can survive it. I can feel it and learn from it and live with it. Not all the time – but I can do it. It wont kill me, and yes, it actually will make me stronger if I let it.
So, these are the muscles I need to strengthen. I’ll be hitting sh*t gym on the regular I am sure, pumping it out and getting stronger, but also gaining perspective.
The more I allow the dissatisfaction to be real – allow it to exist – the more I will know about what needs to shift for me to enjoy my life more.
What do your feelings of late have to teach you?
In exploration,
Caryn