Missing people… Missing the past… Missing moments… Missing the times you were most engaged in your life… Missing the good old days… Missing something that makes life feel good. Missing something that makes life feel empty. Missing… missing… missing…
So many people feel like something’s missing that it’s heartbreaking.
It’s so heartbreaking to me because I felt that something “missing” for most of my life. And because that hole in me was something so abstract and I had just no idea how to fill it… I tried to escape myself in every way I could.
Emptiness just sucks.
If you’ve been sitting with a sense of perpetual “something’s missing”, today’s feng shui is about starting to fill that uncomfortably empty space in amazing ways. It’s the stuff that I wish I knew when I was a kid and the stuff I’m most grateful for now!
In my own deft space of emptiness- a feeling of “something missing” that haunted me since I was a young child- I became deeply engaged in filling that big hole I felt.
Have you been trying to do the same?
Intense love affairs that maybe never measure up to what you need, incredible achievements that are always not really enough, or… checking out in drugs or parties or toxic relationships and friendships that blur life enough that you can’t sense anything, nevermind what’s missing.
The weird part of “something missing” is the lengths to which I’ve gone to fill that emptiness.
Have you?
I tried to diet myself to a “perfection” that I thought would bring me the attention that would fulfill me. Instead, when I passed over the “healthy” part of getting fit and found no fulfillment, I slipped into a multi-dimensional hell of eating disorders that took me over. Later, I tried to party my way into a glamourous life where I’d get the attention that would finally fill the hole. No matter how high the glamour, how big the stakes, that emptiness felt bigger and I was so defeated. I then thought I could “work” myself into fulfillment, and that left me burned out, even more isolated and alone.
So what do you do, exactly, to fill the void?
To start… I can tell you that for every client who had a sense of emptiness they also had a house (or life- or both) full of clutter. Stuff was a way to fill the void and sort of numb out. Stuff is like eating a box of candy or drinking a bottle of wine. Stuff so overloads senses in ways that are heavy that they fill the void. Deeply chaotic relationships and friendships do something similar. The heaviness at least is a sense of something, even if it’s negative.
Clearing the clutter is a big part of it, for sure.
But… when you’re empty in some way, you’ll clear that clutter and expose that void.
That’s when the anxiety rises, the decisions are left unmade, the clutter-clearing is abandoned and things stay the same.
I’ve done this for a very long time.
Have you?
It wasn’t until I had a double-dose of emptiness- of finally leaving a major relationship that was setting my life on fire coupled with leaving a very big bad habit behind- that I checked myself into therapy like it was my full-time job.
If you told me I needed to “love myself ” I would have rolled my eyes. I did love myself. I love myself so much. I always have.
Consciously, I loved myself.
But subconsciously- as I learned when I finally went to see someone who helps to root out negative subconscious beliefs- I had no idea how to love myself. In fact, when people are “muscle tested” using kinesiology techniques to “test” for subconscious beliefs, most people do not have the belief ” I love myself” stored in their subconscious mind.
Why would this matter?
Well, that subconscious mind runs a million times faster than your conscious thoughts. It’s the storehouse of positive actions like your heart beating, your lungs breathing. It’s also the storehouse of ideas we’ve picked up since we were conscious about how to live and how to survive, and not all of those beliefs serve us, yet they are what’s running us much of the time.
If you want to get a sense of what’s in your subconscious you can do two things right now:
Look at the patterns in your life that repeat themselves, despite your conscious efforts.
Look at the things in your environment that never seem to change and always fall into a mess or don’t get fixed or get neglected.
These are good clues as to what’s happening “beneath the conscious” mind. It gets splashed out everywhere in our relationships, in our jobs, or thoughts, moods, habits, resolve…home… wardrobe… body… money… everywhere…
All of this is to say: if you aren’t living with a belief that you actually love yourself, it’s gonna be hard to fill that void of “something missing”. You might “roll your eyes” like I would when people would suggest I love myself more.
You might – as I have and as a friend shared with me recently- have viewed loving yourself as a series of “perfect” behaviors that, when you qualify and do the work, when you’re checking off your list of perfect actions, you’re finally in love with yourself. But… that means that you have to earn your own love, right? And that’s sort of twisted and unfulfilling.
I can’t tell you exactly what to do. No one could tell me exactly what to do.
But… I can tell you that if you can find ways to unconditionally love yourself (not based on achievement, totally unconditionally) you’ll likely feel that void filling up, finally and completely.
For me it was simple… and complex. Celebrating myself every day, even if “nothing” was accomplished. Giving myself little gifts. Letting myself spend extraordinary amounts of time in my own Buddhist spiritual practice because it felt right. Doing more of what felt right, not what anyone thought I should do. Letting myself finally dump the clutter. Getting a team together of people and groups to support me where I needed help (because getting help is what people who love themselves actually do! who knew?!) and… yes…
All those self-care things became so much easier. Work becomes easier. Life becomes easier. The void of emptiness isn’t looming like a magnetic pull toward self-destruction.
If you feel something’s missing, maybe you can find your own ways to deeply love yourself like it’s your own full-time job?
It’s the most rewarding, exciting, awesome job… and it never stops paying you in joy, wellbeing and love everywhere you look.
To take it to the next level, energize everything in your home and life with even more love! The Love Camp is coming in May to kick off a season of LOVE, and the hour-long FREE video series packed with love-magnetic feng shui starts soon! You can sign on HERE to get started with the videos as soon as they arrive!
xoxo Dana
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