How To Talk Openly and Why It’s Important
Without doubt it’s been a tough year. It’s been a tough year for you and for me, and for everyone else. It’s so easy now to become lonely, or sad, or anxious and let that feeling fester.
It’s frustrating at times for us as well. There doesn’t seem to be an end to it. Governments seem to be making bizarre decisions. When we see people acting in a way that we may not agree with it makes us angry or upset.
I think that these feelings are even more potent during lockdowns. You might see a blogger or an influencer jetting off without a care in the world and it might ruin your day. I know for sure things like that happen to me from time to time.
When we feel these things it’s absolutely essential that we get them up off our chest and away from ourselves. It’s a strange little glitch we have. We always feel better after talking about how we’re feeling but we’re always reluctant to talk at all. Opening up is the last course of action for us, even though it’s the course of action that makes us feel best, hands down.
I talk a lot about resilience, and about Stoicism. I talk a lot about fortifying your mind so that external things don’t affect your internal mental. I think it’s essential. That being said, if you build your fortress without building a gate, without building a way to let people in, you’ll be in trouble.
If you lock yourself inside your fortress, you’ll begin to struggle.
Opening up your gates and letting people in is incredibly important for our wellbeing. It can also be quite difficult to do for many people. We live in an age where the default setting is to show a life that’s perfect and happy and wonderful.
But life is rarely always perfect and happy and wonderful. A lot of times, life can be quite hard to deal with. During these times, it’s important that we find a way to let down our walls. We need to fortify our minds, yes, but we also need to accept when we need help.
You can start small. The first time you open up can be hard, but it doesn’t always have to be this big, serious, troubling thing. These days when I feel sad I just say it.
“I’m feeling a bit sad today, lads”
I don’t need you to do anything with that information, I just needed you to hear it, and now I’m already feeling a bit better. We should always talk about the things we don’t want to talk about.
When you verbalize how you’re feeling you quantify it. It’s no longer this big abstract scary thing. When you verbalize how you feel, you begin to move through it. But when you keep it to yourself, the way you feel can seem insurmountable. It can feel overwhelming and hopeless.
Negative emotions hate the attention of others. They only want your attention. When you alert someone else to their presence, they shrink in size and that’s when you find yourself wondering how they were controlling you for so long.
The point of today’s post is that you should open up. Start small. Make it a regular thing. Make it a normal thing. And then, if something colossal comes your way, if you find yourself spiraling, you’ll already feel comfortable sharing your feelings, and I guarantee there’ll always be someone there to listen to you.
Drink water,
