All life on planet earth is energy.
Every form of life; animal, plant, water, food, the fly on the wall, the snake in the grass, the fuel in your car, you and I and the other 7 billion+ people living on planet earth are interrelated through energy.
I love that magical moment in the morning, when the Sun that was formed some 4.6 billion years ago, peers up over the horizon and radiates its warm golden glow over all of us at different times, on different continents on the same day. It lights up our world. We depend on it to rise and fall every day, week, month, year and generation after generation. The Sun powers planet earth that we collectively live on. Its energy fuels all life.
How do we humans spend the energy we receive from the sun each day to live our lives? We, all seven billion of us, to a lesser or greater degree, trade, share, use and abuse this natural currency to experience life from birth to death.
We trade our emotional energy every day as a result of the events we experience. Emotions that make so feel and behave in different ways towards ourselves and those around us: affection, anger, angst, anguish, annoyance, anxiety, apathy, arousal, awe, boredom, contempt, contentment, courage, curiosity, depression, desire, despair, disappointment, disgust, distrust, dread, ecstasy, embarrassment, envy, euphoria, excitement, fear, frustration, gratitude, grief, guilt, happiness, hatred, hope, horror, hostility, hurt, hysteria, indifference, interest, jealousy, joy, kindness, loathing, loneliness, love, lust, outrage, panic, passion, pity, pleasure, pride, rage, regret, remorse, sadness, satisfaction, shame, shock, shyness, sorrow, suffering, surprise, terror, trust, wonder, worry, zeal and zest.
We can be as powerful as the sun in our personal and public universe; by the way we radiate and express our emotional energy in the space around us as we wake-up and go about our day. Emotional energy can make so feel good and/or bad with varying degrees of intensity depending on what is going on in our lives at various times of our lives. They ebb and flow like a river changing our moods, habits and behaviors. We are sensory beings. The emotions we feel drown us and nurture us at times. They make us feel very alive. They cast dark shadows across periods of our lives. They freeze us at times. They bring hope and wonder. They spark our creativity and imagination. They create wars and prejudice. They create pain and laughter. They hurt us and cure us. They drive and deter our ambitions and desires. They create inertia and apathy. They make us happy and sad.
We are always an ‘on’ energy ’til the day we die. So, do we merely react to lives events all of our life or do we manage or control them once we have had enough of a rehearsal of life.
Depending on where and when you were born, the parents, family, friends, the formal education, culture, moral and economic background, country events you experienced in the first quarter of your life, dictates how you will react to life on your own terms in the second quarter of your life. Will you conform to what you have come to know and live according to their beliefs, behaviors and habits or will you risk a journey of self-discovery that will expand your responses to the world around you? Where will the journey take you? Is this stage of life a rehearsal to knowing how you personally experience the world or will this be the course you will take for the rest of your life? And when you get to three-quarter ways in your life will you assume a cynical attitude as a result of your lives experiences of disappointments or will you still be passionate about the possibilities for change in yourself and the world around you. Will you always have hope? Life is no longer a rehearsal, it never was and you did accumulate some experience to know what you like and don’t like, what works for you and does not, what you are passionate about and makes you feel alive. You have invested time in all you have experienced and time is ticking by. Whatever stage you are at ask yourself the following questions:
Do I make conscious decisions about my journey?
Did I ever think of life as a journey?
Do I have full awareness of how I am reacting to life?
Do I just react to life on a daily basis with no real plan, vision or goal and let it take me where it will?
Am I aware of how I spend my emotional energy on a daily basis?
Which emotional energy do I feel most days?
How does it make me feel?
How does it affect my body?
Why is that?
How intense is that feeling?
Where is it coming from?
When did I first feel it and how has it intensified over time?
How do I manage it?
Does it manage me?
What can I do about it?
An Exercise from The Possible Self ‘Me Program’
1. Observe your emotional energy for twenty-four hours as tough it was a movie and write your observations.
2. Then dialogue with the observed you and the watched you and see what they have to say to each other.
It’s interesting to know how you ebb and flow each day and get to know yourself better. Then you can make shifts and changes just like a director does on a movie set. You get to know what makes you tick! You become aware and more conscious about life in general. Your life matters! It affects all of us. We are a global human energy that can turn up and down the mood dial at will that can affect our dog, cat, plant, fellow human and maybe even the weather!
Knowing how you are living and feeling your life is the first step in personal awareness and responsibility. How you feel tells you what is going on for you in your life and you are its director. Emotional energy is a powerful force. Like all weather patterns it cannot always be predicted. Storms, hurricanes, rain, blue skies and sunshine are in constant motion, always shifting. Our emotional lives are much the same. The grace is in how we live it and manage it as it ticks by.
By the way I started this blog one year ago, give or take a day. I stopped drinking coffee and haven’t had a sip since then. Now, anything is possible. Hmmmmmmm!
Áinne Burke
“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe
“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West
“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein
“To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.”
― Bessie Anderson Stanley, More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS
“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”
― Dalai Lama XIV
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
― John Keats, Letters of John Keats
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
“Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride
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