Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about leaving emotional baggage behind.  We are going to stay in that same space, and look at it from a different perspective by looking at emotions, compartmentalizing, and dragging around suitcases. 

Imagine for a moment that you have a suitcase that you roll with you everywhere.  As you go along your travels you put things in your suitcase like clothing, food, and personal items.  Eventually, you have too much stuff.  Instead of letting go of any of the stuff, you get another suitcase.  You are now pulling two suitcases around with you.  When the second one fills up, you get another suitcase.  Now you are dragging three suitcases with you.  At this point, you’re still able to walk and move forward, but you’re hindered by having so many suitcases that you are constantly carrying around with you.

Now you might see where this is going.  We live in a world where we don’t always feel comfortable experiencing and expressing our emotions.  As a result, we often compartmentalize things.  We take emotions and stuff them into a box.  Do you ever do this?  I know that I do.  For the longest time when I compartmentalized something, I thought I was shoving the box on a shelf somewhere.  I also thought this was okay, because if the box was on a shelf then I’d never feel its weight.  I now realize that I never put the boxes on the shelf.  Instead, I put the boxes in a suitcase and carried them with me wherever I went.  No matter what I did, eventually carrying that extra weight from all of the emotions stuffed in boxes would catch up with me.  Sometimes, the impact was as simple as feeling tired.  Sometimes, the impact was more complicated and would result in me sabotaging myself and/or my relationships with others. 

With all this in mind, there are a few main takeaways.  First, all of this doesn’t mean that compartmentalizing is always a bad thing.  Sometimes it’s necessary to compartmentalize to move forward through things  It’s just important to understand that even if you put something in a box that box doesn’t disappear.  You keep carrying it with you.  Second, sooner or later we have to deal with our emotions.  We either deal with them by working through them or carrying around the boxes.  Last but not least, you never know how much emotional weight people are carrying, so when in doubt be kind.

The challenge: Will you realize what emotional weight you’re carrying with you?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry