Feeling Blue or In the Pink?

Feeling Blue or In the Pink?

Sometimes we forget stuff. LIke the world is a mirror reflecting our ideas and constructs and beliefs back at us. We forget that we are filtering all of our experience through our experience.

One of my favorite examples is using glasses with colored lenses. On gray and cloudy days, all I have to do is put on my glasses with the pale yellow lenses and *poof* I feel better. Gray light has those blue tones to it. That’s why we say, “I feel blue.” The pale yellow lenses filter out the blue light, and we feel a lift. Very useful during stretches of gray sky.

Rose colored lenses, that is, pink, also gives us a lift. It’s why we feel “in the pink.” And notice what happens to your feelings if you are wearing bright red lenses. Wanna guess? Oh, yeah, we get mad when we are seeing red.

I think it’s wacky that our whole mood can shift based on such simple stuff, that it’s not based on some profoundly deep something or other. It’s that line about “no one can *make* you feel anything.” When my colleague who tends a bit to the persnickety gets scold-y, I often buy in and feel scolded. It takes a little while for me to remember that I am the boss of me, and turn it around again.

I try to remember that if scolding worked, I would only need to be scolded once. It doesn’t. If shaming worked, if nagging worked, if yelling worked, the world would be a different place. The correction happens inside me, by my impetus, not outside snottiness.

When I feel disapproved of, it is me disapproving of me. You might have encouraged me, but you can’t make me go there without my buy in.

You can cause my body to have sensations, but surprise is the only emotion you can elicit from me without me choosing on some level to go there.

If I’m not feeling accepted, I’m not including me somewhere. If I’m not feeling acknowledged, it’s my interpretation, or behavior. The outside world can be singing my praises, but if I don’t let it in, it is irrelevant to me.

I am responsible for my feelings, for my attitude, and, to a great extent, for my circumstances. I am the lead in my own movie. The heroine in my own story. Each of us is. We have to be. I can only live my life, and you can only live yours.

So if I feel less-than, if I feel unappreciated, if I feel disapproved of, or unworthy, or undeserving, or like a failure, or like a mess, or always wrong (have I hit yours yet?) then it is up to me to change that. I can change it with Creative Questions and practice.

Why am I enough? How do I feel when I feel appreciated? Why do I deserve good things? Why am I a success? Why am I clear? How do I know I am right?

When I decide to take responsibility for my life, amazing things become possible. When I choose to take responsibility for my life, my feelings, my actions, I treat me better, and it is easier to treat you better, too.

How have I changed from letting the outside world dictate my experience to choosing to life my own life?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 03062013