5 Steps to Beat Emotional Baggage (Part Two)
As promised, here are 5 very basic steps to help you process and begin to work through your emotional baggage and begin healing:
1) Admit & Accept – More than likely, your baggage is not your fault. I’m willing to bet it stems from your childhood. You didn’t set out to create the problem that created your baggage. Remember, do not accept responsibility for what you can’t control and did not commit. However, you do have the responsibility of accepting what is your emotional baggage.
2) Identify Effects – Identify how it is being played out in our lives. Which of the emotional kinfolk listed above do you experience? What triggers you to experience or display the kinfolk behavior? How do you treat other people? Especially before you know them personally. How do you react when you experience the same situation with different people?
3) Identify Causes – Time to sit quietly and track back into your childhood, your teenage years, your memories, etc. This is usually the hardest part. I find that my clients have buried their Secret Stories so deep within their subconscious, it takes time, intentional focus, sincerity and pain to pull the memories back to the surface. But honestly, it’s the only place you can be healed from them, bringing them back to the surface. Why do I feel this way? Do you remember the first time you behaved or reacted in a dysfunctional manner? Did your elders (mom, dad, aunts, grandma, etc) behave this way. Take a week or so to meditate of each age and think of the time period and different events for each one. Where were you living? What was your average day like? Who did you spend the most time around? What music was popular?
4) Study Overcomers – JK Rowling was a single mother on welfare. Tina Turner was once battered by an abusive husband. Mary J Blige was once an avid drug abuser. Yet they all now stand as very successful survivors. Don’t put too much stock in what you read about them, research their interviews and listen to what comes out of their mouths.
5) Practice Self Talk– Meditate on scripture and affirmations of positive self-talk and celebration. Sometimes my clients tell me scripture and affirmations are hard to meditate on because they can’t quiet their minds. In that case, I recommend burning CDs of positive music, such as I’m Good by Tim Bowman Jr., Be One by Natalie Grant, Conqueror by Estelle, Roar by Katy Perry, Lovin Me by Jonathan McReynolds, Master Plan by Tamela Mann, Look at Me Now by Kirk Franklin, Already Alright by Yolanda Adams and my personal favorite – I’m The Best by Miss Mykie and Rick Ross.
Continuing the same behaviors will continue to deliver the same results. Are you happy with who you are? Are you happy with where you are in your career, business, life? Change starts and ends with you. Commit to make the change and begin to create the life you crave in your heart, in your dreams. It’s in reach. It is possible. It is time! It’s time to learn to live Unashamed of Your Secret Story.
A former school and community agency counselor and creator of the 7-Step Method, Anita’s helped guide people from the ages of eleven to fifty through their own life issues, personal transformations and professional endeavors. With an old soul and a comedic, honest voice. She uses many southern colloquialisms and colorful expressions to unwrap personal stories of surviving a homicidal alcoholic father, a mother in denial and four physically and emotionally abusive brothers and relates them to guiding principles and healing techniques.
Through her powerful and uplifting interviews at ThatAnitaLive.TV and The Emotional Happiness Podcast women get to see and hear real women with resourceful stories living relentless lives after life's most devastating events. Through her charismatic and compelling speaking, Anita helps women use the tools and resources they already have to reveal and release success blockers such as childhood trauma and family dysfunction so they can build self-confidence, boost their self-esteem and feel free to live true to their own personality, spirit and character.
In her newly released ebook, 7 Simple Steps to Beat Emotional Baggage, Anita shares actionable techniques that will walk women through letting go of the past and rising above the glass ceiling to reach higher levels of success and satisfaction in life.
From nine-to-five, Anita is a Senior Acquisition Support Specialist, possessing over nineteen years of performing and administering program management and cradle-to-grave commercial and federal contracting activities for acquisitions ranging from $500,000 to over $2 Billion. She has progressively worked her way up the federal acquisition lifecycle and commercial supply chain through various positions from pre-award and requirements definition to commodities buying to contract close-out. In her career, she has mastered the art of transitioning to level-up.
Anita is a graduate of Limestone College, Virginia State University, and Strayer University with a B.S. in Mathematics, an M.Ed. in Guidance & Counseling, and an M.B.A. in Contracts & Acquisitions. You can find Anita online at ThatAnitaLive.com, Twitter, Periscope, Instagram and Facebook. Her handle is That Anita Live on all four social media platforms.
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