Over and over again in books and in social media posts, I keep reading about how we need to give ourselves permission to feel our emotions, rest, and let things go. This idea has turned into a theme for this year for me and sounded kind of silly, but has helped me immensely.
Permission to feel your emotions
Being an empathetic person it is easy for me to feel other people’s emotions. I sometimes will get myself into a corner where I feel others emotions more than I feel my own. I have learned to watch a sad movie to make myself cry, or to take the time to cry and feel sad. It is okay to feel any variety of the emotions. Once we can feel them and label what they are we can release them and continue on. I am not a very angry person, so I know when I am angry or bothered that I need to reflect and figure out what is bothering me. I work to find and name what it is that is bothering me so that I can feel it and let it be done because reality is that most things that bother me are not going to really matter in the long term. If it is something that will matter in 5 years, I ask myself what is one thing that I can do today to take a step towards where I want to be. I get there one step at a time. — Jesus took time to feel emotions both alone and when with his friends.
Permission to rest
Our culture praises busy people. It is not enough to be or do one thing. We have to keep up our homes, keep our families well, work, be in touch with friends, keep up with the latest trends and have fun somewhere in between. What we really need is to start enjoying our time to rest. Sometimes making time to rest means saying no to something or many things. Whether you plan out rest times during your week, or plan a day of rest, start small. Allow time to just be. When we take this time to be, rest, and regroup it is often easier to be in touch with our feelings and emotions. When we stay busy it is easier to ignore them or think we are not as bad as some people’s stories so we must be okay. We have to take care of ourselves in order to have the energy to help others. — Jesus took time to rest, so shall we.
Permission to let things go
You are one person. Sorry to break it to you, but you are not a super hero. We all only have so many minutes in a day. Some things are going to be let go whether you do it intentionally or unintentionally. It is impossible to be perfect on this side of heaven. If you are intentional about what you have to let go of, there will be less that is accidentally missed. Focusing on what matters will help you to know where to start. I have been in a very busy work time, and needed to let go of my goal to write a blog post every week. My new goal is to write two more after this one by the end of the year to have a total of 80 blog posts! Next year my goal is going to be to work towards 100 posts and work towards a book concept by journaling one page each day. – I know that it is not going to be spot on, but I am going to give it my best shot, and adjust my goal as I need to. — Jesus forgives and forgets our sins. He loves us.
Why this works
I thought it was odd to use the phrase of giving myself permission to do or not do or feel some way. But now that I have been practicing it, it makes a lot of sense. It is easy to talk with friends and give them the permission that they need to feel, rest, or let things go. What we forget to do is to be a friend to ourselves. One of the first things my health coach told me when I did sessions with her was that I needed to start with being a friend to myself and show myself some empathy. It has taken me 2 years to work on it, and I feel like I have been doing very well with this, but I still need to work on it as I still have my bad days. The good and the bad are what help make this life the journey that it is. I still rely on my friends and family to help me talk through life, but I also have to remember to talk with God about it and have grace towards myself as God also shows me grace.
My prayer is that you take a moment to see where you can give yourself permission to be emotional, rest, or let go of your high expectations. Find more ways to enjoy what you have left in this life, and focus on what really matters – seeing Jesus face in heaven someday.
– Em
A Time for... Everything 
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