Before I was conscious of my emotions or knew what they were, when I wanted something, or had a goal to accomplish, I saw it as my duty to get from point A to point B in (what I though was) the quickest way possible: my way.
I bulldozed everyone and everything in my path to get to the thing, even if that meant pushing water uphill, or pulling people along with me who were only half-hearted. My focus was on accomplishing the thing, to the exclusion of everyone and everything else.
I had enough drive and need inside me that I pushed us all along to get what I wanted.
It worked, for a while. But I got tired, fatigued. I developed some unhealthy habits and contracts in pursuit of accomplishing things, which left me little room for negotiating a way out.
In fact, because of my need to do things so immediately and in one way only, I missed out on a lot. For one, doing things with other people, but also learning from others, and enjoying the process rather than the finished object.
Now I can see that the bulldozer part of me was my anger acting as an inflexible boundary in an attempt to protect my ideas. Once I’d decided what was important, I didn’t reconsider or look around, I just put my head down and bulled through. Since my boundary was so rigid, it didn’t allow suggestions or deviations from the plan; I had to do exactly what I’d planned or I might risk failure. I didn’t allow my sadness in to help me release old ideas or things that weren’t working; and I didn’t allow the soft fear of my intuition to guide me to a more intuitive way of doing things.
Once I began listening to my emotions and allowing them to have more of a say in my day-to-day actions, my path from A to B became more meandering, less direct, and also less energy-intensive. It became less important to get there, and more important to listen to my emotions. I’d take a step and pause to listen rather than steamroll ever forward.
The path of the butterfly also looks meandering and unpredictable, but in fact it's evolved to be erratic as a way to confuse predators. Their wings are also far larger than they need to be, so that they can maneuver quickly to escape. It seems to me that the path of the butterfly is a highly intuitive survival mechanism in the same way that humans’ ability to experience many different emotions is. They have evolved these seemingly illogical (to humans) traits which actually serve them very well.
These look like good candidates for a butterfly visit.
I've come to see that my ability to feel and discern multiple emotions may seem illogical to some, but in fact serves essential social and survival purposes for me. Just to name two, my fear alerts me to changes in my environment, and my sadness helps me let go when I need to, and flow in the moment. Paying attention to and welcoming these emotions has largely changed my perspective on life from bulldozer to butterfly.
Befriending my fear was a long, slow process of tuning my ear to listen when my soft fear spoke to apprise me of changes in my environment or in my emotions. Previously, I had contracts that told me to ignore or repress my fear, that if I listened to my fear I was showing weakness, and that fear was weakness. Becoming aware of these contracts and using the practice of Burning Contracts to clear old contracts that were outdated, unrealistic, or inappropriate gave me a clear action to take so that I could work more consciously with my fear. (The question for fear is what action must be taken?)
Before I befriended sadness, I held on tightly to my idea of how to accomplish what I wanted. Collaboration was out, because that would demand that I be open to change my idea, I that might have to give up some control, or that the finished product might not look exactly like what I'd envisioned.
Once releasing what was no longer useful or necessary became more natural to me, having control over every step of the process from idea to outcome didn't seem as imperative. I was able to let go when something wasn't working, or when a better idea came along. Flowing with sadness means release and rejuvenation, and often with the release of old ideas came a rejuvenation of new ideas about how to get to point B.
Now that my fear and sadness are welcome, my path is more winding, my goals change, but my sense of accomplishment and contentment are often with me. I welcome the butterfly effect of my emotions.
Now that you've read my story, I'm curious: Are you a bulldozer or a butterfly? Or are you something completely different? How do you tend to work with your emotions as you go through life?