Our feelings are evidence of our mental well being. Find positive and loving feelings,for they will guide you through life far better than resentment and grudges. Syd Banks – The Missing Link
This week my eldest daughter began her first full time post as a primary school teacher. She was excited and thrilled to be teaching in a village school and only has 12 pupils in her class.
Before school officially started she designed her classroom and picked out an age appropriate theme for the children to learn from which is fun, exciting and fresh and full of Minions doing their hysterically funny thing. Her love, enthusiasm and excitement was palpable as she prepared for her first day and I was beaming inside and out with pride.
But it didn’t all go the way she expected it too.
Children are children,humans and humans and we are all ultimately wild cards in the game of life. We never know when a tantrum is going to appear, a mood is going to fall or a lesson is about to drop on deaf ears, until we do.
I love my daughter with all of my heart and some of the things she shared with me this week really tugged at my heart strings. My first wild and loud instinct was to try and help her in the classroom,you know that momma bear instinct that compels you to protect your young with a ferocity unlike any wild beast present on the planet? I am so glad that mid way through our conversation as we both settled into a different space my mind cleared and a gentler more loving feeling washed over me. I could put wild momma bear to sleep for a while longer.
You see I have learned over the years that if I try and protect my children or anyone for that matter from experiencing life that I am doing them a disservice and ultimately reducing their potential to evolve and grow. Instead I teach people how to not be scared of their experience.
You see the feeling is our teacher not the intellect and there is no disputing this.
I keep seeing this time and time again with myself, my family, my students and my clients.
When I came across the principles I learned through the feeling and everything I thought I knew about life disappeared into a gaping black hole.My mind went completely silent for weeks and I had trouble trying to explain what had happened, words seem trivial and unimportant. I lost the ability to talk about many things related to this understanding,as if my brain was reorganising itself. I had experienced a sense of falling down the rabbit hole which came with an incredible feeling of wellbeing unlike anything I had experienced before.
Coming across something so simple yet profound compelled me to want to share it with others so that they too could feel better like I did but I couldn’t. I found it hard to intellectually articulate what I had just experienced.So I lived with my eyes, ears and my heart wide open and my mouth shut until one day it happened. I shared my experience with another soul. In that moment I knew I wanted to share this understanding for the rest of my life. To witness another human quietening down as they listen produces such a beautiful feeling. Even in the midst of chaos when people can’t hear they can still feel the feeling, a feeling of love and non judgement moment to moment in conversation or silence.
The feeling is the first indication that something is happening and the feeling is a vehicle for change. The feeling allowed me to experience my own wisdom by quietening my intellect.
As I ended my call with my daughter the only things I felt I wanted to say to her were that she was an amazing young woman and that she had everything she needed inside of her to make the most out of her new opportunity. To know and understand that life throws lessons at us to help us evolve and grow and that being able to love unconditionally is one of our greatest opportunities. To know without doubt that love is not weakness it is indeed a strong unifying force and something a lot of the children in her new class perhaps had not felt much of in their young lives.
I know she has this. She has a good heart,a talented mind and understands how she and every other human on this planet creates their moment to moment experience of life. That is all she needs to love, evolve and grow into the best human being she can possibly be.
That is all any of us need.
Until next time,
Take care, be naughty and let life live through you,
All my love,
Jacquie Forde RGN RM
Coach Consultant Trainer Speaker
Originally published at www.jacquieforde.com