3 WAYS TO CHOOSE
WHAT WE CARRY
Imagine you’re headed on a month long wilderness adventure hiking the Appalachian trail. What would you carry with you? Water? Food? Dry clothes? Bear spray?
Packing would be an intentional process. Even if that bag were heavy, you’d be willing to carry it because you knew it served a purpose.
Let’s take this mindset into our emotional life and imagine we each have an invisible backpack filled with our emotions. These backpacks might be cluttered and we might not know what’s inside. Just like we can choose what we pack for the wilderness adventure, we can be mindful of what we pack in our emotional backpacks.
When we think about carrying an emotional backpack intentionally, our first thought as humans might be that we only want to carry happy or easy emotions because they will be the most comfortable. But the truth is, heavy emotions serve purpose – discomfort can be necessary in order to achieve goals, grief, courage, sadness, all have purpose in our lives. Yes, happy is great, but these backpacks are inclusive of the whole self.
Emotional backpacks are meant to be maintained. We need to clean out the clutter and check what is inside on a regular basis. Try these three steps for maintaining your backpack:
1. SEE WHAT YOU ARE CARRYING
Simple enough right? Let’s look inside. We do this in our minds by naming our emotions and writing down our thoughts. Keep it simple. No need to go back to how we felt or what we thought two weeks ago, let’s take a look at what is inside right now. Ask yourself what your three main emotions were in the last 24 hours and why. Maybe write it down. Imagine we’ve dumped out the contents of the backpack and we are taking a look inside.
2. SIMPLIFY WHAT YOU ARE CARRYING
While there are many ways to simplify, let’s focus on these three:
- Accept what is. Let go of judgment and simply notice that whatever you were carrying part of the human experience. Do you have judgment about how you “shouldn’t” be angry, or that things “should” be different in some way? Notice how judgement is filling you with resistance and blocking you. It is through acceptance that we create space to move through the emotion.
- Carry what is in your control. It may feel important and necessary to worry about how your co-worker or friend should be different than how they are, or that something out in the world needs to be different. And maybe all of that is true. But let’s spend time in our own backpack. Let’s carry what we can control.
- Pack with purpose. Name three emotions you want to feel on a regular basis. Then choose one of them and think about what generates that feeling for you.
3. PRACTICE WHAT YOU WANT TO CARRY
Practice in small amounts. If we were preparing for a month-long hike, we might try the backpack on and wear it around to train in bite sized portions. This work is the same way with our brains. We want to practice carrying these emotional backpacks in small bite size amounts. And we want to do it consistently. Here’s two ways how:
- Choose a consistent time. It might be first thing in the morning, while getting ready for the day, or while driving.
- Set a reminder. Maybe you place a sticky note on a nightstand or mirror, or an alarm on your phone.
As you move forward in this process, give yourself permission to be a beginner. This isn’t something that we do once and check off. Choosing to think about what we carry intentionally is a practice, and there will be times where we aren’t thinking about what we are carrying at all. That’s not a mistake, that’s called being human.
Imagine you are hiking on a trail and it’s hard, and you’re thinking you’ll never make it, and then you see an opening through the trees, and the view is beautiful, and you take in the clarity. Then, it’s a few more hard, foggy steps before you see clearly again. It’s a little at a time, and it’s mixed in with lots of times that we don’t have that clear view. All is okay! We’re here for the process, not the finish line.
