HEALELUJAH: Healing & Restoring Your Happiness
We all wish to be happy, healthy and purposeful beings. Sometimes there's feelings and events in our life that hold us back from living the life we desire most. Let's explore the art of healing your wounds and restoring your happiness.
Healing is a part of all of our lives whether our struggles are big or small - a struggle is still a struggle. Healing your thoughts, anxiety, trauma, abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, etc.), illness, disease, break-up, grief, struggling relationship, or any circumstance of your life can feel like the last thing from a hallelujah. I can fully understand how worshipping this time of pain can sound SUPER PATRONIZING–but bear with me.
I’m referring to healing your wounds, past or circumstances as a healelujah because to heal yourself does take time, dedication, love, kindness, embracing of the ups, accepting of the downs, moments of worship and rejoicing.
Above all, I want you to hear this first before I get into empowering discussion of your journey…
Healing Step #1: Set Your Foundation (Self-Love & Acceptance)
Honour Your Feelings & Experiences
Honey, I feel your hurt. I have had my fair share of wounds myself–all the way from illness, an eating disorder and through an abusive relationship…
So, believe me when I say, I get it.
I get the pain.
The frustration.
The self-blame.
Feelings of lack and unworthiness.
The vicious cycles of “what if”.
The burden of hating another and projecting all of our pain onto them.
The mask we put on for everyone else around us.
The wanting to curl up and never be vulnerable again.
Waiting to be saved.
Wishing that someone or something could resolve you of this pain and struggle.
There is no right or wrong way to feeling the way that you feel. There is obviously merit to your feelings; otherwise you wouldn’t be feeling them.
I encourage you to take some time to work through all of your sad, rational, irrational, and crazy-like thoughts. Think them, express them (in a healthy way that isn’t harming anyone like tapping/EFT, journaling, burning a letter, etc.), move through them and THEN find your path to empowerment.
By honouring your feelings EXACTLY AS THEY ARE you have taken the first step to moving through your pain, trauma, anxiety, etc.
Honouring and validating your thoughts exactly as they are will help you through the next process of your healing journey.
Remember, honouring and validating your feelings is just the beginning of the process. Often we can get caught up in the feelings and just expect that to be the only part to the process. Being in pain and suffering are two totally different things. You can have your moments of pain and sorrow and then choose to get on to furthering your healing journey. OR, you can suffer. To suffer would be to only stay in your defeated state of constantly reliving your pain. To suffer could be to not take the next steps to heal yourself beyond honouring your feelings. But, to really transform, change habits and rewire our thoughts we have to have discipline.
At some point you will have to take the steps to move forward while honouring your feelings. You likely aren’t going to feel like it. It may take you having to force yourself to start the journey forward–but, you’re stronger than you could even imagine. Activate that energy after you feel you’ve had enough time to be sad, mad, etc. You may not feel like it, but you’ll know when you need to gently push yourself to the next step.
The Healelujahs: Empowering Practices
1. Discipline
The word discipline gets a bad rap because it sounds rigid and even a little harsh. But when I say discipline, I mean SELF-LOVE. Discipline or love yourself enough to make choices that serve you rather than sabotage you. Add a log to your healing fire, rather than piss on it.
Discipline or love yourself enough to not just wallow in your pain, but to use it as fuel to see how your circumstances can make you a better person.
Discipline or love yourself enough to start doing things out of your comfort zone so you can grow beyond your wounds.
Discipline or love yourself enough to try to new ways to heal yourself. Give them time and dedication.
Discipline or love yourself enough to know that it takes no one else but you (and sometimes the help of a mentor, coach or counselor) to help you through and get to the thriving life you deserve. No one else has to rescue you you, say the right thing, apologize, etc. You might need to love yourself enough to know when you need to ask someone for help navigating your way through your experiences and into the life you want to live.
Discipline or love yourself enough to know that expecting someone else to say something or do something to fix this totally and completely takes your power away. It also means that you could possibly never heal.
Discipline or love yourself enough to embrace the knowings that everything has a way of making us better. It’s our job to shift our thinking from being a victim and into the creators of our own abundant life. We are not forever damaged or burdened.
Discipline or love yourself to know that if you start changing the way that you look at things, all that you look at will change.
2. A Shift in Perspective
You’ve likely heard doctors and people PRAISING someone else’s recovery from cancer by saying, “they never would have made it without the strength and positivity that they had.”
The same thing goes for healing your own “stuff”. The way that you choose to think about your circumstances and approach your journey to mending your past or present can be the difference between healing and remaining stuck.
For example, you could be so upset that you’re turning 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, etc. OR you could be TOTALLY JAZZED that you are ALIVE and get to live this miraculous thing they call life!
After all, a miracle is simply just a change in perspective.
Once you’ve honoured your feelings/past as they are, you can then start to work towards shifting your perspective of the situation.
A super empowering way to shift your perspective is to look at how this or these bad things in your life have happened FOR you rather than TO you. I like to use journaling or tapping for this process.
There is always a lesson we can learn or positive quality to gain from out struggles. What can you get out of all this hurt and struggle?
Rather than waiting and thinking to be happy means to not have this past experience, illness or wound not be a part of your life, we must embrace that this all can actually make us a better person. This can be a tough concept when you’ve experienced something extreme, like say abuse.
But, we know that perspective can be EVERYTHING!
So, you can choose to look at it like something that will keep you knocked down for the rest of your life, OR you can choose to look at it like the moment your life that made you realize:
- You are stronger than you could have ever imagined.
- I have a story worth sharing so others can learn from it too.
- I have the power to influence the world for the greater good.
- I have this learning experience that has taught me all that I am worth and what never to accept again.
- I know what I want in my life, and I am the creator of what I can have.
You can either SURVIVE this or THRIVE from it. The choice is yours.
You will have moments of feeling like you’re just surviving. But, the more your focus on healing yourself and moving inward, you will eventually thrive more and more. In time, your joy, health and happiness will just be a way of BEING without even realizing it. You will have learned that life can me messy and can knock you down, but now you will know that you can feel this struggle, go with it, and transform this struggle into a gift.
You will have learned the process of going with the flow of life. Accepting all that is good and bad, learning new lessons for your own personal growth, and finding gratitude and joy all around you.
Besides, without great pain and sadness, we wouldn’t know great happiness.
3. Let Go of Blame
It is so easy for us to get caught up in a cycle of blame and feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve all done it! Without even realizing it, we unconsciously blame people or our circumstances to relieve ourselves of our pain. We think that we’re helping ourselves and have found a healthy unconscious coping mechanism, but actually, we’re doing the exact opposite.
You do have the power to change your life, but blame and wallowing just won’t get you there. Moving past blame doesn’t mean that you’re condoning someone else’s actions. It means that you’re no longer burdening yourself by their actions or in-actions. You’re no longer holding them accountable for the way you want to live your life from now on.
There’s a huge difference between “I’m hurt” and “I’m hurt and I will never move on/can only move on if this person does _________”.
The first statement is fact and has room to work with. The second one implies that “this is it” or your growth/healing is dependent on another person’s actions. This way of thinking will totally strip you of your power and leave you in cycle of blame and pain.
It’s a totally natural thing for us to feel like we would be magically healed if a certain person would apologize, recognize their part in our hurt, acknowledge our pain or just say or do what we want them to do. But, fact of the matter is you could be waiting FOREVER AND A DAY for this person to say or do what you’re looking for. Don’t waste your time waiting for the impossible. By holding these kinds of expectation we’re putting our fate and healing journey in the hands of someone else. As much as this MIGHT contribute to your feeling better, it’s totally beyond your control.
Someone once told me “control the controlables” – it’s simple, wise, and applies to almost everything in life. This is what you need to remember on your healing journey: take ownership that you are the only person you need in order to heal yourself. The actions of others are only secondary. “Control the controlables”.
Start acknowledging that you don’t need others to change, tell you what you want to hear, etc. in order for you to heal. You need YOU to heal (and maybe the guidance of a therapist or life coach).
4. Unburdening
Forgiveness can be a touchy word when it comes to our own healing. I like the idea behind it, but the wording just isn’t right for some of us in the beginning stage of healing our stuff.
Forgiving someone can often feel like you’re condoning someone’s actions, but it’s actually not about that at all. It’s about not holding onto the past because that will dictate the way you’re presently living your life. “As you think, so shall you be”–we need to be mindful of our thoughts because they are what becomes our reality. If we can’t unburden ourselves from what someone did or didn’t do, we again become stuck in a pattern of pain, guilt and blame. This is about healing YOUR wounds so YOU can move on, not condoning someone’s actions.
Maybe for you, you just want to change the word forgiveness to unburden because that’s what this really means. This could be a great beginning step rather than just jumping straight on the forgiveness-train.
On a side note, be mindful of the saying “I will forgive, but I will never forget”. This still has a grudge-like and resentful feeling to it. We need to remember each and every one of us is literally just trying to have their best human experience based on what they know every moment. Others moments might be morally wrong, skewed, misguided, pain-ridden…but fact is, we are all doing the best we can with what we know. Some people know better, and some people don’t. It’s not an excuse for actions, it doesn’t condone them, it just helps you understand everything from the big picture perspective, so again, you can heal.
All and all, forgiveness is a CHOICE, not a necessity. So, honour where you are at with the word–you don’t have to force forgiveness. Be honest with yourself and maybe, in time, after you’ve began to “unburden” yourself, then maybe you can shift to forgiveness.
5. Trust the Journey:
I wish I could say that if you do x, y, and z you’ll be cured! Unfortunately, that’s not how it goes on the road to healing. Often, people will discredit ways to heal themselves because it doesn’t totally heal the wound immediately.
“I tried working with a therapist or life coach, but it just wasn’t for me.”
“I tried tapping, but it just didn’t work.”
“I can’t meditate. All I do is think and worry.”
“I took supplements, cleaned up my diet for a month, and still nothing!”
We all have things that will work better for US because we are an individual with our own unique qualities. But, was it your expectation that was the problem? Did you actually expect to be rid your pain or be a rock star after one treatment, session or experience?
We live in a world of instant gratification–but if there’s one area in life that will teach you that the best things in life can’t be rushed, it’s your healing. You can’t rush your healing.
Everything will always unfold as it’s meant to–when it’s meant to. There is no timeline or end destination.
Be wildly open to life and your healing experience as it comes. Let yourself release what wants to leave, welcome what wants to come, and trust that your needs are always being met. Live in a place of openness and trust. Surrender your expectations.
Healing is a journey and it has NO TIMELINE. It isn’t linear, and you will have many moments of ups and downs. That is life. You will find yourself going back to honouring your feelings and coming back to empowerment time and time again. But, where you fall down and your head hits, that’s the point that your feet will pick you back up again. You may have fallen down into sadness, anger, longing, frustration, etc. but you’re a hell of a lot farther along than when you started out!
Instead of focusing on your “mistakes” or feeling like you’ve gone back three steps by wallowing, blaming, shutting-down, rejecting help from others, etc., celebrate your comeback time! That’s the time it took to come back to truth and empowerment. Also, know that there’s no shame in these emotions that we view as negative. It’s a part of the journey–scratch that–it’s a part of life!
Embrace all that is, even those feelings you dread, so they can flow freely and guide you back to light. If you choose to resist your thoughts/feelings, they will only persist. Once again, it all comes back to self-love and honouring your feelings as they come and as they are.
7. Your Healing Tool Kit
Without setting a strong foundation of self-love, acceptance, honouring your feelings and all the things discussed earlier, all of the tools in the world just won’t cut it. It’s the foundation of love, acceptance and trusting the journey that will allow your healing tools and strategies to guide you to shedding what doesn’t serve you and stepping into the life you wish to live.