healing

FORGIVENESS IS FOR YOU, NOT THEM

/ OrganizedWithJoy / 1 Comment

For today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to share on the topic of forgiveness. I am fairly certain I have talked about forgiveness in a previous Thoughtful Thursday post, but today I wanted to focus on the idea of forgiveness for your own sake more so than the sake of the person you are forgiving.

Unfortunately forgiveness is a part of everyday life as a human. Like I shared last week, because we are human, we are imperfect. We will make mistakes, we will say hurtful things, we will do things that hurt others – sometimes unintentional and sometimes intentional. Because of this, forgiveness is necessary in a healthy relationship. If we just abandoned relationships when we were hurt, we would not have very many long lasting relationships.

When we are wronged, it can be easy to sit in our hurt and to hold a grudge against that person. It is okay and natural to feel hurt. We must allow ourselves to feel the hurt, but we must choose to move forward and not wallow in the pain. Have you ever heard the saying, “unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” When we don’t forgive someone, we keep ruminating on the wrong done to us which only hurts US, not THEM! Forgiveness IS primarily for our own mental health! When we forgive someone, it frees us from those ruminating thoughts about the incident. 

Something else I often think of when someone has wronged me is how I have done my own fair share of hurting others. Like I mentioned, this is human nature. We are not perfect and have moments of weakness where our anger or pride gets the best of us, or moments of stupidity where we hurt others without intention. I think about how I would like those people who I have hurt to extend grace to me, so I want to extend that same grace to others.

Offering and receiving forgiveness can truly foster deeper connections with those we love. When we go through the tough work of honesty and openness with one another about our hurts and can work through it with emotional maturity, it can really help those relationships grow deeper and flourish. Believe me, I have been on both sides of this equation being married for 29 years and also having some long term friendships. When we can be vulnerable with one another to share our hurts, it definitely causes the relationship to grow stronger. When we sulk, hold grudges, maybe talk to others about our woes instead of going directly to the person who hurt us, it only creates a wall in the relationship which can keep growing brick by brick over time. If this pattern continues where you don’t address hurts in a relationship, it will eventually become toxic. We are meant to be open and vulnerable with one another so we can work through our hurts.

Speaking of toxic, I will say that sometimes there are people or relationships that are toxic and it is very difficult to reconcile with this type of person. If this is the case, then still forgive them for your own mental health. You can forgive someone who has hurt you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to continue on in the relationship. Some people have a pattern of hurting others, and it is okay to decide you have had enough. Only you know when you have had enough. Some relationships are worth continuing to fight for, while others it is obvious that things won’t change. When you forgive them anyway, believe me this is a peace that is deep! When you forgive them, you have done your part, even if the other person isn’t willing or emotionally mature enough to work through things with you!

Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.

HONOR YOUR LIMITS

/ OrganizedWithJoy / Leave a comment

Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday topic I wanted to talk about honoring your limits. I think this is something that is very difficult to do these days. It’s so easy to over-schedule or just spend more time than intended on scrolling or binge watching media.

For those of you who don’t know, I do have a YouTube channel and I always share these thoughts over on my channel in a video. I coincidentally had it on my schedule to share on this topic prior to filming the “day in the life” video I shared this week, but it turned out to be such an appropriate topic on this day. I had a lot that I needed to get done on this day, so I actually didn’t film a lot of active things. I just had a lot of chatty footage. I had planned on cleaning out my laundry room on this day so I would have more cleaning motivation other than the few clips cleaning my dining and living rooms, but I honored my limits and scratched the laundry room off my to-do list for the day!

We all have our limits. Each of us has a different bandwidth to manage responsibilities in life. Some of us need more down time and margin in life, and others can go, go, go! I think it can be difficult sometimes for those of us who have less bandwidth in this age of social media and seeing what other people are doing with their lives and their time. But honestly, so often what we see on social media is curated and may not be the full picture. We must honor our limits so we don’t risk getting burnt out.

I do think there are times we need to and can push ourselves a little more than usual, as long as we can schedule in rest afterwards. There are times where we have to push because of extenuating circumstances, like going on vacation, celebrating birthdays or other holidays, moving, or other situations that are not our usual day to day. The day I filmed this DITL was especially busy for me because the next day I was going to take the day off to go with my girlfriends to a mineral springs spa near Austin, so I wouldn’t be able to get any work done that day. Honestly, this whole week was busy as I was also trying to catch up after being down a couple of days for my routine colonoscopy a couple weeks ago.

This was taken at the Mineral Springs Spa my girlfriends and I went to! Ottine Mineral Springs.

We all have physical limits, and must pay attention to our bodies’ cues to slow down. But we also have relational and emotional limits as well. If you are someone who is an introvert, you will need more time alone to recharge, and that is okay! But you need to honor those limits and realize when you need to recharge. For some people, they can manage several friendships and relationships in general, while others feel more comfortable with just a few close friends. Once again, that is okay! 

Something similar to managing relationships is honoring your emotional bandwidth. Just like some of us have a bigger capacity to manage relationships, some of us have a bigger capacity to manage emotional input. If you find yourself constantly drained by certain people, content, or any input in general, you need to evaluate that to determine if it is something that is pushing your emotional limits. It’s okay to step back or even away from a relationship for a time if that person is taking too much of your emotional energy. It’s okay to unfollow and quit watching content that drains you emotionally. It is not always easy to determine if someone or something is too much for you emotionally, but we must be aware of our emotional bandwidth.

We all have daily responsibilities as adults, so we must evaluate those responsibilities. Are there things that are not as important or urgent that you can eliminate from your list on a given day that you don’t feel you have the bandwidth to carry out? Or can you delegate some of your responsibilities to someone else? Can your spouse, children, or a friend help you with something that needs to get done? I have found it helpful for me to structure my day with the non-negotiables at the front part of the day, then if I still have energy and time I will tackle some of those other things on the list.

It’s not always easy to honor our limits, but in the long run it is good to be aware of our limits and do what we can to honor them. Since I was honoring my own limits and didn’t film that laundry room clean, the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this post is pretty chatty! So if you like that type of content like you’re on a Facetime call with me, go check out that video {{linked above}}! And at the end of that video I share some footage from my day at the mineral springs spa!

PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

/ OrganizedWithJoy / Leave a comment

For those of you who don’t know, this year I have been taking a lot of trips. I wanted to focus on travel this year in part because there were events happening that required me to travel, so I just decided it would be my year of travel, and it felt appropriate because I’m turning 50 next month! With all this travel I have been thinking about baggage. Literal baggage, but the analogies of emotional baggage. So that is what I wanted to talk about for today’s Thoughtful Thursday.

Okay, perhaps I’m digging a little too deep to connect this analogy, but stick with me. This last trip I took I had to wait at the airport for quite a while before my flight left because my sister had to drop me off earlier than I expected when I ordered the tickets. And truly it was fine because I had a lot to catch up on from being away. But as I sat at the airport with my baggage under foot I was thinking about how difficult it was to do anything. If I wanted to go get coffee, I had to take it with me. If I needed to use the restroom, it came with me. I started thinking about how it was parallel to our emotional baggage in how it slows us down.

Physical baggage is tangible and measurable. Our bags are heavy or light depending on how much and what we pack. Emotional baggage is similar but it is all of our unresolved feelings, past traumas, regrets, and grudges we carry. Just as a heavy piece of luggage can cause back pain and fatigue, emotional baggage can lead to emotional pain and mental fatigue or if prolonged, lead to anxiety or depression. I didn’t do a great job packing my bags because I knew I would have plenty of time in the airport to do that. As I sat there unpacking and repacking everything more neatly I thought how often do I do this with my emotional baggage. I unpack everything – maybe with a friend or a therapist, or even just journaling. But do I ever decide there are things I need to let go of and no longer hold onto. Are there things that if I let go of them, my load would be lighter as I walked through life.

Are you an over-packer when you go on trips? I used to be an over-packer and wanted to account for everything and anything that could happen. But as the year went on and I went on more trips I started to learn what I really needed and my anxiety about not having what I MIGHT need started to calm down. I realized that it wasn’t worth carrying around ALL that extra stuff just in case. I got to the point where I preferred to take the risk of not having what I needed in order to have a lighter load. Are we holding onto things in life that are making our load too heavy? Both physical and emotional baggage can be an unnecessary burden we carry. When you are an over-packer you have unused items that become a physical burden, and when we hold onto emotional baggage we burden ourselves with these things that no longer serve a purpose. We can hold onto old grudges, past failures, or fears of rejection, which makes it difficult to experience life to the fullest in the present. Whether it’s physical or emotional baggage, letting go often involves unpacking everything, sorting through, deciding what is essential, and then letting go of the excess.

There is danger in ignoring the weight of our baggage both physical and emotional. When we carry a heavy bag for too long it can cause physical harm, and potentially long term damage if we don’t listen to our bodies. Similarly, when we carry emotional baggage for too long, the result can manifest in harmful ways such as anger, anxiety, or depression. This can affect our relationships, job performance, erode our self esteem, which can have long term effects on our lives. We must acknowledge and deal with the baggage because left unchecked it can end up controlling our lives, dictating how successful we are and our overall happiness in life.

The process of letting go, for both physical baggage or emotional baggage can transform any journey. Traveling light allows us to move freely, explore more easily, and feel less weighed down by possessions. In the same way, letting go of emotional baggage creates space for new experiences and personal growth. We can live more fully in the present and experience deeper connections with our loved ones. We can pursue goals more easily not being held back by our past. 

Here is the YouTube video I shared in conjunction with this blog post.