Relating to the news without it weighing you down

Resisting grief weighs us down

When I read the news, it can feel like a dead weight in my pockets.

What is that feeling?

I wonder if it is a feeling of resistance. When I feel that weight, it is hard to move forward on anything. I second-guess myself even just cleaning the house, wondering what on Earth I could possibly do that would make any difference? It is a sense of despondency, of wasted effort.

What, then, am I resisting?

Grief, I think. For instance, I feel grief everyday whenever I can “let in” the real impact of climate change. I want to avoid that feeling; I can’t feel grief constantly, or I wouldn’t function. Yet when I block grief, I block flow. Who wants to experience grief, loss, disappointment?

But grief can be a great gift.

When we feel grief, it can empower us to overcome fears. Grief can help us see what is really important. It can help us drop niceties and overcome our fears of self-expression. It can help us turn away from “paralyzing fear” and turn toward what motivates us. Feeling grief allows us to access the whole spectrum of who we are.

We can live whole-heartedly, or we can resist our feelings

It seems to me like there are two options. We can allow the flow of our authentic experience, the disappointments and the joys, or we can resist one and yearn for the other.

When we resist feeling our grief or disappointment, we get out of flow. We question ourselves, we find it hard to move forward.

Similarly, when we yearn for joy, it must mean we are not actually feeling joy at the moment. So yearning for joy is resisting what we are feeling. Once again, our emotions don’t flow. We stay stuck resisting whatever we are trying to avoid.

Maybe the antidote to the fearful news we are surrounded by is whole-heartedness. Approach everything you do with everything you’ve got. But even this is a tricky line to walk. Notice when you are acting out of fear. It is easy to dive into a project “for good” and find yourself overextended. If this is you, maybe you are not approaching it whole-heartedly. Maybe you are doing it because you are afraid.

Grieving allows us to feel what is ours to feel, and let go of the rest. It allows us to both breathe deeply and be effective at the same time.

The world needs the whole you

Don’t be afraid of grieving, be afraid of not living whole-heartedly. When I live in this way, a burden is lifted from my shoulders which allows me to take in the news with being taken over by it.

When you feel grief, you are no longer resisting your inner truth. By letting your grief flow, you also allow the joyful parts of your inner truth to come forward.

The world needs your inner truth, the whole package. Let it flow.