When life gives you lemons and you don’t like lemonade!
Life is Beautiful and then it’s messy, then it’s beautiful then it’s a shit show and then back to beauty we go.
We cannot bypass this, as sure as the sun will rise, we all have days, weeks, even beyond; when life gives you lemons and making lemonade - well let’s face it, sometimes you just can't be arsed!
It’s ironic that as humans we worry about so many things, but the things that truly impact us, flip our worlds upside down and bring us to our knees can hit us at 1 pm on Wednesday afternoon over a sandwich.
Whatever your title – Fireman, Yogi, Butcher, Mindfulness Teacher – we are all humans and humaning is hard!
Mixed with parenting, being a good friend, a supportive spouse, having a successful work life (best get that balancing right) and then the other hats and caps from the wheel of life, such as responsibility for not harming the planet, awareness of the rising cost of living, trying to eat locally, all whilst washing your hands more than you ever thought possible! Goodness me, yes humaning is hard.
So when life gives me lemons, to add to the above, my answer is often no. No thank you, sometimes even f*ck no!
I would like to mindfully suck the sourness out of each lemon in turn and allow my face to fold in on itself before I try and shine this mess and pretend all is well!
I know that this may sound dramatic, but I read somewhere that when an octopus gets stressed, it eats itself! and I found that deeply comforting! Bizarre? No not for me.
We are emotional beings, and as a mindfulness teacher, I am hugely passionate about understanding these emotions, what or who triggered them and if they are supportive. This is harder to do, if we just make the most out of every situation, for example -
Making lemonade out of lemons is also like having a dance party when the sprinkler system goes off in the hotel –
Why has the sprinkler system gone off? Oh, that's right…. Fire! So perhaps this is not really the time to bypass the warnings and dance like you were in the FAME dance video.
Understanding the signals that come from our emotional bodies, is a breakthrough way of knowing yourself.
When we know ourselves and understand ourselves, we can then trust ourselves.
When we trust ourselves we can love ourselves fully.
It sounds cheesy, but love is what sets us all free.
Free from pain
Free from suffering
Free from judgements
Free from lemonade!
Often when we peel back the layers we come to love.
The need for love and to be loved.
So often this means when our emotional sprinkler systems are going off, it’s the time to look for the fire and see if it’s a false alarm before we take on this ‘nevermind’ mindset.
It's been said that mindfulness should be called heartfulness because within the practice we truly embody the knowing of the heart.
We don’t shy away from hard things nor do we camp out in a pity pitched tent, we observe, we accept and we transform.
If you would like to understand your emotional self more? Perhaps become empowered around your core needs and why certain things make you tick and twitch then I would love to hear from you