Finding Comfort In The Dark

Finding comfort in the dark; what that means is these dark seasons of life are the seasons of our life where we slip back into old behaviors and old patterns. It’s the seasons where you feel like you’re making progress and you backslide a little bit. I want to talk about it so it’s normalized. I personally have been in a dark season for a couple of months now, I’ve shared a little on the podcast and on Instagram. During my meditation and full moon ceremony for myself, it just clicked for me. These dark seasons that happen don’t happen because you’re not doing enough but because it’s normal. So I wanted to bring this conversation to you today!

I want to start with this idea of your personal development journey. So you’re doing all the things to better your life and become the best version of yourself; yes, that’s all beautiful, amazing and great. But what happens when you have seasons where you backslide? Some people can take those seasons and fall deep into and go into this self-fulfilling prophecy of, “I knew I wasn’t good enough. Man, I can’t believe I’m going backwards.” Oftentimes that debilitating shame can stop you from getting back on the wagon and back into it. I want to normalize this if you’re someone going through something like that. Everyone does and everyone will because it’s completely normal and necessary. Non-stop growth is cancer. Why would we want our lives to be like cancer? Non-stop growth, uncontrolled, constantly increasing and it’s hard to contain and eradicate; imagine a life like that. That’s not what we want for our lives and our journeys but so many of us view our personal development journey in that light. We want to see it constantly get better and during the times it is not getting better, we make it mean something about ourselves. 

It reminds me of a time I was in Sweden with my husband. They have a bunch of green trees and I was admiring them. My husband’s mom pointed out a tree that she didn’t like and said, “Ugh, they’re planting those energy trees here.” Me, not knowing what an energy tree was, kindly asked, “What’s an energy tree?” - It’s a specific tree that they plant because it grows super fast and they cut them down and use them as energy. What happens is that they need to cut down areas with natural trees to make space for these energy trees only to have them get chopped down anyway. Non-stop growth and cancer remind me of this because although these trees grow really fast and can be utilized as energy and overall a short-term gain, long-term they don’t have roots or a chance/ability to put roots down. Perhaps it’s a type of tree that doesn’t have strong roots; if there was a natural disaster, these trees wouldn’t survive and most likely fall. View your own Self as a tree. Do you wish to be a tree that quickly grows and quickly falls or do you wish to be a tree that takes time to nurture, root and ground not only deep but expansive. That’s how I see these slow seasons that don't feel like anything happens and there isn’t progress happening externally; we have the opportunity to make progress internally. When we don’t see the tree growing up, behind the scenes the roots may be getting bigger, deeper and more expansive. Slow and steady growth with periods of darkness is normal and these are the moments, the seasons we have the opportunity to integrate all of the personal growth and development you’ve been working towards. It’s not in the moments where everything is easy, light, fun and positive that you’re challenged. It’s in the dark moments. Can you continue to love yourself, show up for yourself, believe in and hold space for yourself, right?

The next time you’re in this season or if you’re currently in this season, I want you to notice what your brain does. Does it go into these thoughts of, “I’m not good enough. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I need to get better at x, y, z! I need to do more.” - This is where my brain has been the past couple of months. I’ve been perpetuating this story that I don’t know how to create content. I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what my message is, I don’t know if I’m good at this anymore. It’s so hard for me to talk on stories. - I was saying all of this stuff and it’s not the truth. This season has really stretched me because I had to continue to show up for myself. I’ve had waves of things coming and going for me easily and when they weren’t and I’m currently in a time where it’s really hard. So, this season has given me this awareness of seeing it as a problem, reframed to how is this a challenge, to now reframing it to how is this an opportunity for me to even deepen my relationship with myself. To deepen my belief in myself, to expand my emotional intelligence.

The brain sees these dark seasons as a problem to fix. In reality, the real problem is that we’re rejecting what is. Rejecting the present. We’re not accepting the reality. I think it was Byron Katie who said all suffering in the mind is created when we are rejecting what is true. That’s really stuck with me. Instead of loving what is and finding comfort in the dark times, we’re rejecting it. When we reject our current reality, present moments and what’s happening right now, what happens is that we prevent ourselves from being able to learn from it. Being able to reflect on what was the thinking that’s creating this result. What is the thinking that’s creating the negative emotions inside of me? What is not in alignment, where have I not been in alignment that is now creating this result? Our current reality is a product of our thoughts. Sometimes it’s hard to understand that but as a mindset coach we always practice what we preach. We always need to practice what we preach. When we reject it, we are unable to then consciously reflect so that we can make simple adjustments to step back into an expansive place. I want to add that sometimes it just happens, it’s things that are outside of your control. For me specifically, I think I did too much traveling this year. The trip I took in January was amazing but the trip that I took in May where I was in Georgia for 2 weeks was a really bad time in my life. The Airbnb I was in with other ladies was too small and there was a ton of drama and it really put me in a negative space. I had an opportunity to leave and I decided to stay in the Airbnb with everyone because I felt bad abandoning them. It was a lack of boundaries on my end and I was sinking back into the martyr/people-pleasing realm versus operating from my highest self and advocating for what’s right for me. Because of this, when I got back from that trip I was in a funky place. In August, I had my trainer’s training and though it was amazing, leading up to it I was not excited about going. I allowed a lot of my circumstances to dictate my reality instead of really focusing on my thoughts. So this happens, if I had been rejecting this dark season of my life then I wouldn’t be able to objectively look at myself and gather these learnings and accept/love what is.

Sometimes we need these dark seasons so we can integrate all the work we’ve been doing and really show up for ourselves. In order for there to be an expansion, there must be a contraction. I remember when I was working with my therapist years ago and I was in a really good spot with my business, content and creation I would express to her that I was nervous it was going to go away. I made it mean something about myself when I had my low points. My therapist guided me to understand that with every contraction comes an expansion and vice versa. It’s the ebbs and flows of life, like the ocean! It doesn’t mean anything about you and it really helped me welcome and enjoy the dark seasons where I wasn’t creating much and that everything I was doing and saying wasn’t of value. That’s been an everlasting journey of my worthiness tied to my external output. I think this will be something I’ll be working through forever and you may also be the same so I’d like to normalize this for you and find comfort in them and comfort ourselves! Especially during these moments where you don’t know what you need. This is definitely where I’ve been. I pondered on if I needed to hire a therapist again, a coach, do I need to close all my programs and just not do anything? I’ve been so head-y which created a lot of avoidance and buffering.

So, how do you sit with yourself during those dark seasons? Really it’s about shifting your mindset of knowing that you don’t know what you need but trusting that you know what you need. It’s a simple shift of trusting yourself. Then, give yourself the space of no expectations and no judgments to figure it out along without having the pressure of a timeline. That can look like sitting with your feelings, journaling, meditating, reading or even setting a 10 minute timer to just be. Trust yourself and just do it. When you do it enough times, your body starts to trust that you are going to hold space for her and then you’ll start to hear your true self. Then the guidance will come through. When I was doing my morning ritual, I started to breathe instantly and started to feel so much anxiety and my body told me that this wasn’t what I needed. So I moved into a meditation and some reiki and some EFT tapping because I was in a very heightened state and I didn’t need more activating breath work, I needed more compassion, slow and just being with myself space and to tell myself that I was enough. So you start to be able to know what you need and figure out what kind of comfort you need in these dark moments when you just give yourself the time and space to feel, with no expectations and most importantly you need to release the need to get it right. You’re going to get it wrong, that’s the whole point so you could trust yourself. Normalize the dark seasons, if you’re in one right now just know that I see you and hear you and feel you. The more that we accept that this is where we’re at and we’re meeting ourselves there, the faster it will pass and the more wisdom you’ll receive from it.