​What or Who Reminds You of How Good it Feels to Feel Good?

Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay  

It feels good to feel good. This sounds like an obvious statement, but I had actually forgotten how good it feels.

An old friend of mine sent me a link to a song this week, it reminded him of some time we had spent together with our swim team way back in 1985. We then got to reminiscing about old times, as is our tendency when we have touched base now and again over the years.

I enjoyed the conversation, being reminded of simpler, less encumbered times always feels good. I suspect this happens a lot in the era of social media. What I notice though, is this often ends up in an emotional entanglement, especially between men and women; it certainly used to for me, because I would attribute my feeling good entirely to that person.

What has changed for me is my perspective. As I got older there seemed to be more that made life complicated and weighed me down. If things got particularly bad, I would attribute those feelings to a person or circumstance and often move on.

Then I got to a point after a lot of life changes when I looked in the mirror and realised the only way I was going to feel good about myself and my life is if I changed what was going on in the inside. Really, every article I have ever written is a reflection of this journey of personal growth and change.

Catching up with my friend gave me a bit of a litmus test on how far I’ve come. Going back to those days of childhood innocence, of what fun, love and heartache at twelve and thirteen feels like, is light in contrast to my life today.

More importantly, it gives me something tangible, a real feeling point within me, of what I’m aiming for as I actively seek to become less encumbered in my self-limiting thoughts and beliefs by reaching for new ones.

As we caught up on our lives today, we both share in common having started a family rather late, we laughed at ourselves having taken on such a foolish task in our forties. Of course I love my children, but there is no denying that parenting is a strenuous task, one that pushes me beyond the brink of my comfort zone most days.

Life at home, with two adults trying our best to provide a good life for our highly spirited children, is challenging. I’ve come to appreciate that my partner and my kids are reflecting back to me all those self limiting beliefs and narratives I have going on in a very intense way; it’s like a boot camp for personal development.

I’m also aware, that in the past, in the time before I looked too deeply into the mirror, my gaze would have fallen on my circumstances and the people in it, and I would have felt my dissatisfaction towards them instead of the real culprit.

In fact, thinking about my time in the swim team again took me right back to that juncture in my life when I started to look outside myself in a really tangible way for other people to make me feel good.

Having grown up in a family with two parents who were solidly together, and often against me, I thought I was half of a whole, and somewhere out there was my other half. Certainly the messages surrounding me in society supported that, especially all those happily ever after Disney-type tales.

It took me a long time to realise that I am actually whole within. As I said, there were a lot of self doubts, fears and other self limiting beliefs that certainly made me feel less than whole, but as I have started to address those I have a real sense of just how whole, and what a powerful creator of my own reality, I am.

It is quite a lovely thing to have people in my life who are an emblem of a life less encumbered and remind me of the feeling I’m working towards.

Another example from that early juncture in my life is my grandparents, who died when I was fourteen. While a part of me would have dearly loved to have known them better as an adult, I know instead I am left with a sincere impression of something very precious; I still feel my grandad’s interest in my swimming and see his beaming face, and I still cherish within me my gran’s gentle eyes, and her care and kindness.

I like to think of my friend, grandparents and others, as my soul family; people and circumstances that represent a part of my essential self, the one I wish to reclaim.

Even in my adult life, my partner and I reminisce the days we used to go out on our boat before the children came along. Although it was laborious getting the boat ready and then unloading and cleaning when we got home, there was an amazingly middle part that made it worthwhile; lazing on the deck, watching the sun dance on the water.

There are many examples in my life of times that felt good when I start looking for them, times shared with special people in my life in the past and present. They are not there to beckon me back towards them and to repeat those circumstances, but to remind me of how good it feels to feel good.

​What or who in your life reminds you of how good it feels to feel good?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You? and Get in Touch With What You Want for Your Future – Recognise Your Brain Is Dwelling in the Past. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.