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Breaking the Internet

How To Embrace The Suck


You prepare for change. You gear up, make a plan, write it down and commit to it. The first day comes. You are excited; this is a new you! You know what you want, and you are going after it! You are a warrior. You are a queen. Day three comes and the excitement is still there--you can practically feel and taste the finish line. Day 12? You are cranky and irritable, and you cannot remember why you wanted to make the change in the first place.


Change is uncomfortable. Sometimes change can be painful, even when we do something that we really want to do. For example, smoking hinders your breathing, wrinkles your skin, empties your wallet, and can make you a social pariah. But quitting smoking? You lose your way to relax and your excuse for a break, leaving you with the huge void that smoking used to fill. You give up so much more than cigarettes when you quit smoking. Every change involves loss, and these losses can leave us confused and bereft. The journey of change is often a difficult one. Simply put, change can suck. So what can we do? As the military aptly puts it, we can “embrace the suck.”


Often, when we need to make a change, we bring in our support group. They are with us at the starting line, cheering us on with words of support and symbolic pompoms. Usually, they show up at the finish line too with congratulatory remarks and perhaps balloons. But the middle? That is where things get real. That is where it comes down to us. Other people can help us, but they cannot carry us the whole way. We need support, but we also need to find the solid core within ourselves that has the power to carry out our plans for change.


As an Energy Coach, I explain to my clients that there is a field of energy that we can connect to that will expand our personal power and help provide us with the strength and the wisdom that we need to overcome challenges. Think of a television. The television on your wall might look nice, but without a channel provider of some sort, it does not do much. You might get a few local stations but nothing more. Yet when you connect to a provider, a whole world of channels opens up to you. Connecting to our own personal power works the same way. As an Energy Coach, I teach people how to plug into that power. Without this connection, success is often elusive, but with it, it is within our grasp.


Usually, when we try to make a change, we think about “resisting” something. We might have a thought like, “I am not going to smoke today. I am not going to be weak today.” While that is working toward your goal, energetically speaking, thoughts like this make it harder for you to accomplish it. Why? Because our energy flows in the direction of our thoughts. When we focus on something, be it wanting or resisting a thing, we focus on it. Universal energy only sees the focus of our intentions. If you are focused on not doing something, your intention is focused on whatever it is you are trying to avoid. Energetically speaking, there is no such thing as the word “no.” So, without the word “no” your intentions look more like this: “I am going to smoke today, and I am weak.” The rule of energy is always the same: like things attract. The universe sees that you are focused on smoking, and gives you more thoughts about it. Our thoughts only increase if we do not change them, so we become more and more focused on smoking. You become an “energy magnet” for thoughts and feelings that relate to smoking and being weak.


Embracing the suck is such a powerful idea because it provides an almost visceral understanding of the process of change. Rather than focusing on resisting what we do not want, we need to allow ourselves a moment to just be. Once we can just allow life to be, we take our hands off the energy and allow it to flow. Of course, the lack of resistance does not mean we are now poised to get what we want. Life is always going to move forward because energy is always flowing. Embracing the suck is just the starting point. We allow ourselves to feel the suck in order to free up our mind so we can find more powerful thoughts. Instead of focusing on resisting, we are now free to find thoughts that align with what we actually want. We might say, “I choose what I think about, and instead of thinking about pain and drama, I can focus on something I like. I like the idea of being able to take a deep, satisfying breath. I like that I can save the money I spent on cigarettes and use it to go on vacation!” When we focus on what we want, energetically we “plug into” it. Because the law of attraction brings like things together, we get more thoughts that match what we want, helping the “suck” become, well, less “sucky.”

The best part of embracing the suck? When we are triumphant, we get an example we can of our power that use in the future. Every time we get through a difficult experience, we practice the energy of success. Life is never going to stop bringing challenges, so we can only get better and better at dealing with them.


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The HOW TO with Kim Mazzella is a weekly column featuring Kim's expert life coaching tips for the modern woman navigating entrepreneurship, motherhood, work-life balance, and more!



ABOUT KIM MAZZELLA:

Kim Mazzella, founder of the Life Guidance Center, is a Healer, Teacher, Spiritual Coach and Writer. Her work is based in the belief that our natural state is health and wholeness. Her job is to help those she works with remove the blocks that they have placed in the way of the free flow of energy and healing. She integrates the knowledge from her study of A Course in Miracles and universal laws with her study of massage and understanding of the body’s energy system to create a holistic approach to healing and change.


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