Month: March 2017

Self-Care

Digital Media = Connect + Uplift

March 26, 2017 by 0 Comments

Digital media, like empathy, is a gift. And like empathy, depending on how you channel this gift will determine if it uplifts you or crushes you. You, dear empath, have a say in this. You can make wise choices for the good of yourself and the good of others.

Digital media is wide-reaching. If you don’t make any digital media choices, and let everything in, it will crush your spirit….again….and again….and again. Empaths get emotional overload more easily than others, so I encourage you to filter your experience.

Digital media connects us as never before, and the joy is that you get to pick the connections! You pick what goes on your Facebook page, and what other FB pages you want to follow. You pick what you will tweet and what twitter accounts you will follow. You get to control your Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest accounts. You decide who you will email and for what purpose. You choose what to browse. You decide what emails to open and which ones to delete. Do you see where I am going with this?

Make wise choices. Take care of your emotional health with the click of an add or delete. Don’t let digital media happen to you, harness it for the greater good of your spirit and the spirit of others.

Some examples from my life – I liked the National Parks Facebook page so that I can see beautiful pictures of nature show up daily on my personal FB page. I have handpicked sites to regularly show up on my digital media sources to further educate and enlighten me in my specific areas of interest. I can follow my favorite musicians and their tours. My sister and I have never been closer because of texting – sharing our lives is easier. And then there’s FaceTime and Google Hangout. I am bringing uplifting connections to me on a regular basis, and now I am able to share these images and words with others because of digital media. I am taking care of my emotional health and encouraging you to do the same.

We can be grateful that beliefs that we feel passionate about and can learn more about are so easily accessible. Digital connections can fill you up without overwhelming you. Connections are what being an empath is all about. Click on.

Self-Care

Grow the Light

March 19, 2017 by 0 Comments

Empaths seek openness, peace, and connection. Cruel people encourage inequality, violence, and rift. Empathy  and cruelty are polar opposites. Both are forces in the world, yet I am deeply saddened that cruelty is gaining strength of late.

We have never been so connected globally as we are now. By connected, I mean wired. News media,  social media, and entertainment media are accessible in a click. Information abounds. Yet these connections are giving rise to a lot of horror. And this horror can visually come right into our homes. Images that we are presented with get burned into our brains forever. Some people can handle seeing it without upset. But for empaths, the inhumanity that we see feels soul crushing.

News media could be a force for making global connections and for increasing understanding of the peoples of the world. Instead, news stories focus on violence and hatred these days. The rift between the haves and have-nots is quickly widening, and some talking heads are pushing it along. We commonly are presented with stories of murder and torture. We commonly are presented with stories of people who lie, cheat, and steal, and depending on who they are, it may or may not be okay to do so. I have stopped watching news on TV and instead read news from a few sources.

Social media is a force for making connections on a more personal level with people from all over the world who share your interests. This is a good thing, right? Can be. Yet many people are using this outlet to spread fear and hatred. I love the connection of Facebook, but I have blocked those who post on the horrific. Their energy doesn’t get to intrude onto my page at will.

Entertainment media has gone heavily in the direction of cruelty too. Try not watching any murder shows during primetime, and there is not much left. TV and films glamorize murder with carefully posed corpses and beautiful investigators. Murder is not glamorous. Ever. I’ve stopped letting these images literally bleed into my living room.

You do not have to feed the cruelty monster. This is one thing, empaths, that you do not have to nurture. Block it from your presence. Protect your light. Uplifting and enlightening media sources do exist. In fact, they abound. Choose them. Give your energy to them. Grow the light.

Self-Discovery

Curiosity, Wonder, and Connection

March 12, 2017 by 0 Comments

Filled with curiosity. That has always been one of my defining characteristics. I can never remember not being curious. Especially about people. About the human condition and about our place in the world. Which makes sense. Empaths will sense emotion intuitively and try to come to an understanding of how that emotion gets played out in the world.

Music has been one of my ways to feel and feed my emotional curiosity. Through listening to music, we can connect with stories of those who we wouldn’t meet in our daily lives but with whom we may share a profound connection. Lyrics accompanied  by instrumental emotion tell the story of us. Sometimes on a small, personal stage.

“I’ve felt you coming girl, as you drew near
I knew you’d find me, cause I longed you here
Are you my desitiny? Is this how you’ll appear?”

Sometimes on a grander one.

“Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
Out of longing great wonders have been willed”                                                                                                   

Song comes from my favorite well of emotion in music, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Song is “Are You the One That I’ve Been Waiting For?”

I find that the Arts – music, books, films, shows, art – open our hearts to others and explain what drives people emotionally under such a wide range of situations. That’s why these realms provide catharsis for us. Again and again.

The Arts make us wonder about people. Nature makes us wonder about how we are connected in the bigger picture. The beauty and awe that nature emotes from us is healing to our souls. Nature is where our senses and emotions collide. Nature photography combines art with nature. A photograph shows us things we may not otherwise have seen and may make us feel things that we would not otherwise have felt. Which leads us to wonder even more…

I will close with a quote about empaths from the Power of Positivity website from the post “6 Things An Empath Does Differently.”

“THEY LOOK AT THE WORLD WITH WONDER AND CURIOSITY.

Empathic people are learners by nature. They maintain their sense of wonder and curiosity from childhood that most of us grow out of when we become adults. They are naturally inquisitive and ask questions without judgment purely to learn and feel the experiences of others.”

Inspiration

For Love of the Underdog

March 5, 2017 by 0 Comments

Highly sensitive people especially love underdog stories. The ones where against all odds the underdog triumphs. And it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s really, really hard. Of course it is. That’s why it’s an underdog story.

An underdog is defined in Google definitions as “a competitor thought to have little chance of winning a fight or a contest,” and as “a person who has little status in society.” Synonyms are “long shot” and “dark horse.”

We love underdog stories because they are full of emotion, and empaths welcome the opportunity to travel with the underdog and their emotions. The tales can captivate us like no others, and we can let all of our empathy loose freely. It is a cathartic process. With a happy ending.

We all have our favorite underdogs. We see them in sports, in music, in history, in science, in myths, in fiction, and sometimes in our own families. Popular culture and the rise of films and social media have made underdog stories accessible to the general public world wide. We know the famous underdogs who have risen from poverty or prejudice or historical conflict. Their stories captivate us. They bear repeating again and again. They give us hope on a grander scale.

What underdog stories speak to you? Why? How do they give you hope? How do they encourage you to follow your own unique path….despite the odds? Watch films about them. Read stories of inspiration about them. Let your emotions experience their turmoil and triumph. You may see an amplified version of what you are experiencing in your life. Draw strength from them. What did they face that you are also facing? What drove them to continue chasing their dreams despite many roadblocks? And why is their story showing up in your life right now?

I’ll leave you with an inspiring quote from a famous underdog. It is taped to my refrigerator. “You are a composite of all the things you believe, and all the places you believe you can go. Your past does not define you.  You can step out of your history and create a new day for yourself.  Even if the entire culture is saying, ‘You can’t.’ Even if every single bad thing that can happen to you does. You can keep going forward.” – Oprah Winfrey….living proof.