I have not written anything for my website now in over 9 months. I have been caught up in the shadows of my own personal dark forest. Health issues and various external life events, both subtly and gradually, brought back my internal negative thinking habits of fear, shadows, doubt. I lost my pathway forward when I took it for granted and did not do my emotional work.
Those of us who struggle with negative habits of thinking as we seek our life joy, and we are legions in number, have to choose that joy every day. Lacking discipline and awareness, we can easily lose our way forward when daily life intercedes. If we do not affirm our positive pathways of thought daily, we find ourselves hovering or hiding in the darkness of our personal shadows and uninhabitable forests as the midnight wind blows the trees and bushes around us.
For me, that wind is my fear. For others, it may be depression, anxiety, despair, regret. My fear is strong within me when I fuel it with my old habits of thinking. The feelings, the dark emotions, are always waiting for each of us in the shadows when we give in to the old habits of thought, those we learned and believed in the homes of our parents, through the betrayal of our friends, in trauma of unexpected or undeserved life events.
As I have finally done during the last few months, we all can eventually find our way again into the light when and if we keep trying. As we do, if we do, we are then called to counter those negative thought demons with our better selves and more fulfilling habits of thinking. If we listen to that call, when we do our work, we will heal.
We may have learned to think positively over a lifetime of our self- work. We probably know our thoughts of both discipline and despair more intimately than the physical imperfections of our bodies. But to keep walking forward on our life pathway and not become lost, we must do the work of keeping the negative and self-defeating thoughts lurking in the shadows. We must do that work daily in our own way, listening only to our own voice. When we do so, we can walk in the light with discipline and determination.
There was a distinct thought that I remember connecting with my internal self and moving me forward this time. I am sharing it with you now both because of its profound effect on me and the hope that you who may be reading this now will benefit by doing so.
“On being stuck: The defining moment came in the moment I finally understood that each dawn brings new choices, and most of my choices were being made based entirely on old or outdated perceptions. I found if I was simply willing to change my perceptions of people, places, past and present events, I was able to make new choices more readily, and that has changed everything.”