When I started on the journey of self-work I had no idea what would happen over the next 30 years. Working and improving myself was new when it came to things like my thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Up until my ah-ha moment in June 1992, I thought I knew myself well enough. In my moment of realization, I come to understand that I was not comfortable with myself or being by myself. As a gay man, I had yet to accept myself with all that made me me.
When I started to peel the proverbial onion what I learned about myself was that my thoughts were negatively impacting my life while my feelings were inaccessible.
The thoughts became my self-talk and I accepted all of them as truthful and factual. After all, there was enough noise to reinforce that being gay was wrong. My thoughts were bottled up in me because I did not have access to my feelings.
My feelings never came to the surface and were stuffed down very deeply. I remember being asked by a friend, how does that make you feel? I answered her with every word except a feeling. It was at that moment that I knew something had to change so that my feelings could be expressed and released.
I acted in ways up to June 1992 that were self-sabotaging and destructive. Up until June 4, 1992, I was smoking about two packs of cigarettes a day. I was drinking on every flight I took for my job and I was traveling several days a week each month. I was also drinking on the weekends, I know now I was on my way to ruin with smoking and drinking to excess.
The biggest part of my ah-ha moment was when I was introduced to meditation. For the first time, someone sat down with me and shared with me the value of mindset exercises and practices. From that time forward, I have been regular about the attention I give to my mindset.
I was fortunate to work with a renowned individual on how we meet the thoughts that come to mind. The intensive work that I have done over the past 17 years on how to meet the thoughts that come to my mind has paid off with a sense of peace more often that the terror that was there previously.
Thoughts are stories that come to mind, I get to choose which stories I want to tell. And I get to tell them the way I want to share them with the words that support and empower me as a person. My reality is kinder and gentler than the stories that are made up in my mind without my intervention.
One of the insidious ways in which I was impacted by my parent’s divorce was to hide and deny my feelings. My MOM understandably was emotional as the marriage came to an end and my dad was stoic. Seeing them during that time, scared me into not overly expressing my feelings, so I lost my way to feeling emotions in a normal way.
Only through regularly attending AL-Anon meetings and working with a supportive sponsor did I start to explore expressing feelings in public. In my forties, I was coming out in ways with my emotions that I had never experienced as an adult. Anger took the front seat to hide my fear until I learned how to get in my own driver’s seat.
Before I started the work to meet my thoughts differently and open up with my feelings, my actions were undermining me and my life. Many of the things that I did was a result of being unconscious of my thoughts and not present for my feelings. Eventually, things would have to adjust and auto-correct to avoid a massive collision.
One of the things that I credit with staying mostly in self-care is how I process self-talk and how I use language intentionally when speaking about myself and my life experiences.
Regulating and monitoring self-talk involves being mindful of the thoughts that come into my head and allowing them to have their life cycle. Thoughts are organic and come to life, live, and die during a predetermined amount of time. Thoughts that are clogged up are destructive to the stories we tell ourselves and our ability to express feelings in healthy ways.
How I use language when speaking about myself and my life experiences is very intentional and habitual. When I am sharing a story about something in my life with someone, it is common for me to stop, pause, and reframe the next words that are about to come out of my mouth. It happens so often that people acknowledge it and ask me how I do it.
I have come to realize that only through the work that I do on my mind can I have a healthy relationship with the thoughts that show up. And when my thoughts are given the freedom to be what they are, abstract and not factual I can feel the emotions that come with them.
I credit the self-work that I have done up until now with the thought that I have about the recent cancer diagnosis.
There has never been a better time in my life for me to have received a cancer diagnosis.
I am supporting my mind, body, and spirit in processing the diagnosis with the habits that I have developed over the last 30 years. I accept the support from those in my life, knowing it is being offered lovingly. I could not have had this level of openness without doing the work on my thoughts and feelings.
How do you meet the thoughts that come to your mind?
What feelings might you stuff deep down avoiding them?
How do your actions invite others to bring out the best in you?
With much gratitude…
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