I’ve been an emotional processor all my life. It’s been my natural way of operating to measure my experience through my emotional state. If I feel something, I spend time with the emotion: understanding it, unpacking its energy and working with it, to create a level of change.
But what I didn’t realize was, my natural way of managing my emotional world was helping to keep me stuck. And I mean stuck. My life was simply not moving forward.
My circular process was endless. I was broke — financially and emotionally — and I couldn’t see the forest through the trees. I didn’t know what was real anymore.
I looked at my money stuff, my work stuff, and my family stuff and found all kinds of things to work on, except the one thing that got me out of this mess, and on track with my passion and purpose.
There came a point when I knew that something had to change… I had to change. How I was doing change needed to change. To get unstuck and make some real change in my life, I needed to look at my process, differently.
Sound familiar?
Those of us who are intuitive, energetically-aware “empaths,” can easily get stuck in our own process.
That rich emotional awareness you may have as one who processes at deep levels can be a valuable tool. It can teach you a lot about who you are. It can also completely derail you.
Your inner world is real. It’s a comfort to focus there… and a trap when life isn’t moving forward. Over-processing can become a distraction to you simply getting to what’s at the heart of the matter, and changing that.
When you tap into so much energetic information, you can fall down the rabbit hole and chase after everything that stirs a compelling reason within you to look at your life. Following the web of emotions and energies can easily turn into a level of resistance for you, keeping you from actually addressing what needs your attention and getting on with it.
What’s needed, is a bridge that crosses what shows up as inner awareness into action. And that can be as easy as 3 little questions.
Three questions that changed it all for me.
I started to ask myself 3 questions. Any time I’d have some new insight or awareness about myself or my situation, I’d not let myself off the hook until I answered them and decided what I’d then do.
Here they are, my magic bullets:
- Now that I’ve recognized this about myself, what do I really know about where I am in life/what I am doing or not doing/how I need to change?
- How does this change me?
- What am I going to do differently now?
These 3 questions are about grounding you, helping you move out of awareness into action… which is usually the missing piece when your life isn’t going anywhere.
Try them on.
The next time you have an “aha” moment about yourself — maybe in meditation or over coffee with a friend — ask yourself these 3 questions.
Don’t dive inward for this!
These three questions are not for you to spend hours upon hours journaling and meditating on. Ask them of yourself, and listen for the immediate answer.
When you figure something out about yourself, stop and anchor that awareness in. Recap it in your head. Stop and recognize what you just connected to about yourself. Make it real, instead of some ephemeral concept.
Then, notice how having that awareness changes you. Don’t fall into a shame spiral, but let it lift you. You just saw something about yourself! What did you just unlock by seeing that?
Now, what are you going to do about it? Make a commitment to do that. Even if it’s a baby step, it’s a step.
Break the pattern you are in.
If you are going around and around the same issue, you’re stuck. If weeks, months and even years may go by and you are still working on some variation of the issue, then add these 3 questions into the mix.
They work. They’ll get you out of process mode and into action.
There’s more to getting unstuck.
There are many reasons why we get stuck. Sometimes it’s about non-action, and sometimes it’s that we simply can’t see where we are stuck and the patterns we play out. And sometimes we get ourselves into a state of struggle and get stuck in that.
As I said, I’ve spent some time in this place. I’ve also found ways to move forward and balance inner growth with getting out there and getting things done.
I wrote an e-book about some of the transformational life lessons I’ve learned. It’s called 6 Transformational Life Lessons. Less Struggle. More Awareness. Because You’ve Got Stuff to Do, and I am giving it away for free.
You can grab your copy here.
Originally published at medium.com