I’ve mentioned how like so many of us the pandemic left me with severe burnout.
Career burnout.
As with many other variables that surround us now the truth is the pandemic accelerated something already in motion.
Unless something changed my trajectory I would have hit a wall at some point.
As part of my recovery – and irrespective of the governor’s pandemic coping recommendations – I incorporated walking into my recovery plan.
2 – 6 miles/day.
This wasn’t a burden as I’ve been an avid walker for decades.
Walked 26 miles less than a year after being paralyzed by a brain hemorrhage to raise money for March of Dimes.
As the weeks turned to months and the miles piled up I noticed something peculiar. I felt certain felings at the same locations along the route. What made it peculiar is that the feelings were associated with places I’d lived throughout the years; places that in some cases couldn’t be more different than where I am now.
Not just in terms of climate.
Tuning into the feelings allowed me to see that each evoked a memory of what I loved about the place associated with the feeling.
Wouldn’t It Be Cool?
I’ve written previously that along the path of my life I’ve uttered those words only to find that I manifested what came next in that phrase. This is especially true when it comes to where I live. What I came to see over months of introspection while walking is that where I live is actually a mix of several locations tied together by that phrase.
Wouldn’t it be cool…?
To illustrate I’ll describe the essence of what I liked at a handful of the locations.
Grandmother’s House.
No wolf included.
My paternal grandparents lived in an affluent neighborhood near Lake St. Clair. I loved spending the night at their house not just to see the lake and all the mansions in the area but because it was quiet.
We lived on a busy road.
Many a night as I lay in bed and allowed the silence to wrap around me like a warm blanket I thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to live in a place that was this quiet at night so you could sleep in peace?”
It’s a scenario I’ve had off and on depending where I was living.
Dorms aren’t the quietest places, nor is living across from a US Mail processing center.
Warm breezes.
With palm trees that bend at 45 degree angles during a hurricane – oh my!
There is an area not far along the path I walk that always evokes the feeling of when I lived in Florida.
Regardless of the temperature or whether it’s pouring rain – even snow.
The feeling disspiates a short distance later, limiting it to a very specific area.
The area has nothing in common from what I can tell with where I lived in Florida.
Shelter From the Storm
Living with a British family.
My parents split when I was 13 and for a time my mom brother and I were homeless. Though we eventually got a place to rent we spent time living in my maternal grandmother’s basement and before that, living with the family of the British surgeon who took out my tonsils years earlier.
The man who began my tutelage in holistic medicine after seeing my passion for it while we lived with his family.
I like to think he’d be proud of me for following up with formalized education.
When I walked to school alongside his kids I would look at the nice homes and think Wouldn’t it be cool to live in a place like this? I don’t know what it is about that specific area along the path I walk but every time I walk by it I am brought back to those days walking to school.
What’s odd is those days spent walking were in the dead of a Michigan winter.
January February and part of March.
I get these feelings each time I walk by, regardless of the season, or temperature.
Even in 80 degree heat!
Eureka!
The role of feelings in manifesting.
This morning it occured to me that what I’d manifested wasn’t an image so much as a feeling. Each of the locations I thought Wouldn’t it be cool…? were places I felt happy.
Places of refuge in otherwise chaotic times.
Places of peace and security.
The Outlier.
Florida.
Florida was a mixed bag.
It was while living here my parents decided to split up.
In the years since I’ve periodically thought it would be cool to live in Florida again but the circumstances never matched. I got the next best thing, however…Southern California!
It was weather and palm trees I missed most!
In the past year I read a number of books on manifesting that cover the importance of feelings in manifesting and while I understood intellectually I had trouble forcing feelings I didn’t feel.
A number of the books offer suggestions on how to evoke a feeling but I was unable to get any of them to consistently work for me.
It was while tuning into this new awareness while walking this morning – that each of those Wouldn’t it be cool…? locations was a place of security and peace – that I came to see something else. Those are feelings that are part of who I am by nature.
Nature Vs. Nurture.
Painful Memories.
I’ve been in situations where I was forced into survival mode.
Situations where I was living or working.
What’s interesting to note is that until I was out of college I had no control over my living conditions. As for working – before landing in a toxic corporate soup I’d always had good jobs.
Doing work I enjoyed in good environments with people I liked.
In hindsight I came to see that in order to survive that horrendous toxic soup I was in I had to go on the defensive and look out for myself, which goes totally against my nature.
I’d known from the time I was a child I wanted to be a doctor, not exactly a selfish calling.
Being in such an environment – toxic – makes it that much more difficult to dredge up feelings long enough to manifest something positive.
Like escape.
Difficult but not impossible.
This is where memories of better times can really help and if you need a bit of bolstering to hold onto that memory you can add the following to keep the happiness going
- music
- movies
- friends
Music is strongly tied to memories so I made sure what I listened to in difficult times brought comfort and joy.
Whenever I longed for Southern California I would plop in Tequila Sunrise.
Or the soundtrack.
Spending time walking with friends at Kensington Metropark after a long day in toxic soup was a balm for the soul.
Both for time spent with friends and time spent in nature.
Though I find it curious that there’s such a patchwork of different energies in one place I’m gratified to know they are tied together by a wonderful bit of truth. Each is a manifestation of positive happy energy.
My energy.
I encourage people to find ways to keep positive feelings front and center as often as possible.
Regardless of what life is dealing them.
Walking can definitely be a part of that effort.
Be well!
Elizabeth Maxim 