And here’s the last post in my first mini-series of blogs 🙂 The last of my five, but first and most common, regret of the dying, as told by Bronnie Ware….
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
“This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.”
I love this one, not because it’s the most common regret but because it strikes so close to home for me. One thing people in my life have always said about me, from acquaintances to closer friends, peers and classmates to boyfriends and family, is that I’m genuine. You may get some BS from me, but you get it with a smile or a laugh so you know I’m joking with you. You may not like the point I’m making but I’m not trying in any way to manipulate anyone into anything. And I may just not have the filter I should have but I say things that make people laugh even when I’m not trying to be funny or it’s an issue that might be a bit sensitive. But with all that said, I still feel like two people sometimes, like I’m not entirely sure what I should be doing for myself, just what I should be doing for others. Like the person I was born as is in competition with the person I became because life beat me down from day one and I reacted as best I could.
So many people are bombarded with the expectations of others around them, it’s easy to become confused. It’s also easy to lose sight of what we wanted to do when we were young and looked at the world as a place of possibility, where we could each do anything we wanted to do. Our parents have dreams for us, our teachers do too, and they all impart their own opinions (in various ways of course) about what we’re capable of doing. And if they’re like me, survival was the permanent mode, whether it was shut down and just keep breathing or get up swinging until they left us alone, it was still just survival, not learning to live, love, be happy. It wasn’t learning what makes us happy, what we’re good at doing, or believing that we could do that.
Then we settle. We do what we need to do, what’s expected of us, what we feel we must do. Everyone should’s all over themselves and others, so we choose to go with what we think we have to do. We choose it. And that brings another level to the issue. First is that we don’t live our most authentic, genuine lives and second is that we struggle to face and accept that we made those choices so we’d end up exactly where we are right now. Dying just makes people think about it more – brought the issues to be published in this book. Then there’s me, trying to learn from things before that point, to be that person who’s present and content in life, not complacent, but happy. So I look for ways to make that happen now, rather than later.
Enter EFT. This amazing acupressure technique that I take everywhere I go, even with me when nothing else is. This tool that helps me break down the crap from the past as well as the stuff that’s thrown at me every day. It helps me stop and remind myself that I don’t need to do something I don’t want to do, to examine why and when I do those things so I can stop them, to make better decisions that I’ll be happy with. It helps me see the issue more clearly, to resolve the junk I know has been in my way for more years than I care to admit. It allows me to lower my anxiety about life and troubles, to sleep better at night. It helps me feel less tired, lighter, more focused and driven so I’m not sneaking a nap into every afternoon or lazing around then mentally beating myself up for my slacker ways.
I use it when I’m irrationally angry about something someone else did, that I can’t change, and I won’t address because they just don’t get it – we’ve been there, done that, and the fight is never one but trust me, it’s a fight. But instead of carrying that with me, instead of letting them win by holding on to that anger and upset, I use EFT to take the energetic disruption out of the equation. Yes, that just happened, yes I know I was fit to be tied and probably would have liked to land a good punch on that stupid face, but I’m not upset or angry anymore. It’s funny that I imagined a punch I’ve never in my life thrown. It’s still a disrespectful, thoughtless, stupid thing that was done, but now I don’t have that upset adding to my day or to my next interactions with that person. I won’t be expecting the bad and getting it through pure law of attraction now.
But more importantly, I’m being myself. I’m letting that person out who I feel I was born as. That happy, cheerful person, someone who feels good both about life and the person she is. Holding those negative emotions makes me sarcastic, quick to temper, lack boundaries so I talk to everyone who’ll listen, or to constantly be focused on those things. They weigh us down, which is exhausting. Who wants to be around that? So people leave and then we’ve added insult to our own injury because we’re lonely with no one to blame but ourselves. EFT could be preventing all of these things with a 30 second basic recipe children can use easily.
Maybe you don’t feel like you’re not the person you were born to be, or don’t believe in that type of thing anyways. I’d be the first to argue nurture can be just as important as nature, but when I see who my son is, I recognize myself in a lot of ways whether I feel I am that way now or not, and I know it’s because I couldn’t be that person or I’d have been hurt, I wouldn’t have survived. So that’s not on my list of regrets, because I did what I had to in order to be here today, teaching my son. Yet I know there was a part of me missing, a part that prevented an authentic life, and that EFT has helped me take my power back, to be more myself with each passing day as I shed fears, expectations, limiting beliefs, hurt, and anger, sadness and weight.
EFT is the tool that can help you live an authentic life, to truly tap into your own power. That is why I’ve chosen Tap Into Empowerment and UnTapU as business name and website, etc. An empowered self is an authentic self, and the definition of insanity, from Einstein himself, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Other things work, and that’s great. But sometimes they don’t work and something else is needed unless the plan is to keep doing that over and over. I chose to get off the insanity treadmill (though my body might need one for real!) and use EFT for my own empowerment. That’s one ride that’s not going to stop!
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