The world now is full of unpredictability and uncertainty. The unknown is a normal part of your life, but the new unknown has taken a different dimension.
Perhaps you were or are successful now, but you don’t know what’s next. Maybe you’ve had your fair share of wins, but still feel like you’re not quite feeling secure in your future. Or perhaps you’re still on your way to developing your life and career, wondering if you can still persevere and be successful with the new world challenges.
Wherever you are on this journey, you know you are one among many skilled people on your quest to prevail. You still want to have your place in the world of success.
So how do you walk that fine line of working and creating your life while facing the challenges that come with a new unknown world?
I’m not here to give you a recipe for success during challenging times. Instead, I hope to offer you a way of connecting and living with your emotional freedom. When you live with emotional freedom, you can feel more fulfilled and create possibilities for success, even in difficult times.
Emotional freedom is what keeps you in the realm of genuine connections — to yourself, your work, and others. It enables you to express your unique voice, talents, skills, and stories. In the end, living a full life is about feeling emotionally filled and sustained by authentic connection to the things that you do and those that matter to you. And, challenging times call on for emotional freedom more than ever.
But, yes!, it’s not easy to be in that emotional freedom space while taking on a world filled with unknowns and new challenges.
What does emotional freedom mean?
Basically, it’s your ability to be fully present and flow with whatever your experience is, moment-to-moment. It means not getting stuck in your emotional experiences.
You may feel fear, worry, or self-doubts, but you can still work, act, write, or develop your passion. You continue to show up in your life even if you make a mistake. Despite feeling so mean difficult feelings, you can still be present and connect with your talent and skills.
Here are some steps to help you stay grounded in your emotional freedom space:
Know how to ride the ebbs and flows of your feelings and believes
Your feelings and beliefs are a big part of your journey, the source of what you want to accomplish or create – they are the energy that move you forward. They are fluid, they come and go, when you live with emotional freedom. You don’t get stuck in them. They can help you face challenges with perseverance, discipline, and frustration toleration. They keep you on the journey.
Your feelings and believes are a big part of your journey, the source of what you want tp accomplish or create – they are the energy that move you forward. They are fluid, they come and go, when you live with emotional freedom. You don’t get stuck in them. They can help you face challenges with perseverance, discipline, and frustration toleration. They keeps you on the journey.
Finding your comfort with the ebbs and flows of your emotions and thoughts and respect their natural rhythm. Trusting that they come and go, you can let them naturally expand and contract. In times of ebbs you get to be and rest. And then, when the time comes, your feelings and beliefs will naturally come to life and burst into your work or creative ideas.
While you walk, crawl, dance, or fly with your emotions and thoughts, it’s the discipline, sustained effort, and ability to tolerate doubts, fears, and frustration that moves you forward. This is living with emotional freedom.
Develop your ability to honor your feelings and beliefs during challenging times
Noting can challenge more your emotions and thoughts like a world full of unknowns. You’re a human being after all. You are naturally drawn to live and express your feelings and ideas. But, when your feelings or thoughts can also become too much to hold, you are at the front line of facing fears, doubts, rejection, and desperation.
To live with emotional freedom is to know how to ride and use your difficult feelings and believes. While, you still be in touch with feelings and believes that generate love, excitement, and joy.
But, if you struggle with anxiety, depression, addiction, relationship issues, or an inability to be productive, to perform, or to create, it may be a sign of underlying emotional trauma. You can’t live with emotional freedom. You need professional help.
If you have underlaying trauma that controls your feelings and believes, how do you develop emotional freedom?
One of the most effective psychotherapy approaches to develop emotional freedom is EMDR therapy. EMDR is a grounded in research treatment designed to address any underlying emotional trauma that may stay in the way of your ability to live with emotional freedom.
EMDR releases the trauma that is stored in the body and that is connected to certain patterns of feelings and believes you have and that impacts how you function in the world. It works with your natural propensity for healing. Despite any emotional difficult experiences you may have had, you also have an innate ability to heal – which can be undermined by traumatic experiences. EMDR clears traumatic memories and it reconnects you with your with you natural propensity for healing.
Emotional freedom is not a permanent state! It comes and goes. When you heal traumatic experiences with EMDR, you develop the ability to trust that it comes and goes. Your expectations are fluid and adaptive. You know that you don’t need to be in a state of emotional freedom all the time. You just need enough time in this space, enjoying real emotional freedom, to connect to your passion, talents, skills, and your confidence to accomplish and create.
You know that your feelings and beliefs are unavoidable. You trust them, they don’t control you. You can work with your mind to take you where you belong and where you need to put in your energy.
While you can’t control the world, you can continue to stay on your path, open doors, and put yourself in the realm of possibilities, even during challenging times.
If you’d like to know if EMDR is the right treatment for you, please contact me for your 15-20 min free phone consultation.
I am Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Doctor in Clinical Psychology. I help creatives and performers with their life struggles, depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, creativity, relationships and love, PTSD, and addictions – to become their own best version. You can read more about Therapy for Creatives here.
