An Emotional Maze
An Emotional Maze
I recently came across a simple resilience exercise from Mindfulness Advisor, Cory Muscara that I found quite profound. Here are the steps:
Set up 3 chairs.
The 1st chair represents the Present you with your particular challenge. The 2nd chair represents Compassion and the 3rd chair represents Judgment.
Now practice sitting in the 2nd and 3rd chairs, noticing what it’s like to relate to the 1st chair through the two different lenses.
Last week was trying. I had an unexpected death in the family, a business opportunity fizzled, and I was feeling quite suffocated with all the summertime distractions. So I decided to experiment with the above exercise and found that it helped me gain a clearer perspective on my many woes. It didn’t solve my problems, but instead offered me a way out of a deep emotional maze.
Practicing my “three brains” approach, I tuned into my head 🧠 and kept hearing “we cannot control the outcomes, only our response to them.” My heart 💓 although heavy, was thumping harder and harder like a beating drum calling me to muster bands of courage. And lastly, my gut 🤰 was telling me to take a more empathetic approach and just surrender.
It’s a profound reminder that healing often comes when you just release.
Every Tuesday morning at 10 AM EST I will post a powerful prompt and follow it wherever it leads. The aim is to resource all "three brains" — head 🧠, heart 💓, and gut 🤰 — in hopes of connecting the dots to those sticky parts in our nature that matter so we can live our best life.
As a syndicated columnist for Authority Magazine and Thrive Global, I have interviewed nearly 175 cancer survivors from all walks of life. In my #1 best-selling book, I Survived Cancer and Here Is How I Did It, I share the true stories of 35 of those survivors and what they learned physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually from this very difficult experience which has forever shaped their worldview. The intention is to tell a survivor story — that cancer is not an ultimate death sentence. Help support this movement by purchasing and sharing this Book, eBook, or Audiobook.