“Once you know how big the world is, you will see that all the hardship you went through [insert your personal negative experience] was a storm in a teacup. The moment you leave the teacup, that raging storm will be gone, and a gentle breeze will greet you in its place.” —Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, authors of The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon that shows you How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

To feel dismissed. To feel disrespected, ignored or made to feel your opinions, if they differ, are wrong. To be bullied, to feel you have to shrink, or limit yourself, in the moment, if we are experiencing such behavior from another toward us and made to feel less than or inferior, for the first time or if they are the only way we have ever felt in a relationship deemed a priority by the culture that surrounds us, we may assume, wrongly, that this is just the way it will be, or something must be wrong with us, or something we are doing is wrong, or we are not enough, or we are unloveable.

The most wonderful news I have to share with you today about such instances is that all of these negative and unloving feelings shared above are actually the sign for you to heed as a nudge to be prompted to step out of the ‘teacup’ to use the analogy above. Because it is indeed a teacup you are living which is why it feels so painful, disastrous and inevitable, but that is because we don’t have perspective (or others don’t want us to gain perspective) and the good news is that the world is ever so vast and grand and full of oodles of opportunities, people, and experiences waiting for you to engage with your true and full, thus unedited self.

When you first step out of the teacup and into the world, immediately, it will be exhilarating. You are free! Everything is new! And then the reality of ‘everything is new’ will begin to feel exhausting, unnerving for many, and even daunting for others. However, that is because anything that is new requires us to learn how to navigate, much like learning a new language if we have never stepped foot in such a place or culture before.

Much like arriving in France or Britain from the states for the first time, we are taking in an inordinant amount of new information all at once, and even though it is largely benign, because it is new, we may at some moment feel overwhelmed and thus emotionally exhausted so that even the smallest of normal choices become straining.

Similar to the self-sabotage cycle, if we let ourselves fall prey to the discomfort, we will revert back to what we have known, the people and the culture we knew, even though it didn’t fully accept us, because it is what our subconscious knows, and our subconscious, whether it is the best thing for us or not, wants to ‘know’. It despises unknowns, but the only way to improve the quality of our life if we are dissatisfied with our current state is to make changes in how we live so that change has the oxygen to come to life in our everyday lives.

To return to the traveling to a foreign country as an example.

Each time I return to England or France, I am more and more at ease. Why? Because I know my way around the fundamentals of getting around – the airport, the transportation, how to simply get a cart at the grocery store by inserting a €1/£1 into the handlebar which I will then retrieve upon returning my cart. These simple tasks to locals that are habitual and thus prompt no need to think about can be straining to the new-comer who simply wants a cart to hold her groceries while she shops for the necessary food for dinner. And it is once I have the fundamentals tended to, then I can relax at a level that enables me to fully be present and engage with the cultures I so dearly love, cultures that have called me to them in many ways as they speak “my language”. And thus this is when I began to feel the ‘gentle breeze’ mentioned above, rather than feel I was battling a raging storm to merely to be seen and heard and loved fully for my passions, curiosities and ways of living life that bring me to life. And then that is when the self-sabotage cycle is overcome and we do not fall prey.

Trust your yearnings as well as your discomforts, and let them guide you to where you can come fully to life and be who you wholly are without feeling as though something is wrong or less about you. It’s not so much about acceptance as setting yourself free, because we don’t want to be reliant on being welcomed; we simply want to be let alone without reprisal, bullying or passive aggression so that we can discover the beauty of our unique and one and only life, and while these beautiful gifts will continually cross our paths, it is only when we are free and wholly present, not hanging our head in doubt or focused on something that need not be our worry or concern that we will meet the opportunities and fully engage. This is when we begin to dance with life. This is when we begin to understand what contentment really feels like. And when we have finally felt this deep inner joy, we can identify why the teacup we left wasn’t where we were meant to remain.

Admittedly, it is difficult to understand this truth if we have never known or observed in others such contentment, but indeed it is possible, and you wholly have the keys within yourself to open these doors. It is my hope that TSLL offers guidance about the tools to cultivate to lead you in the direction you wish to go that will lead to experiencing contentment in your everyday life, and moreover, the reassurance that what you uniquely have to offer the world, to contribute, that both lights you up and gives the world something amazing, no matter how large or small it may seem, is absolutely necessary to be discovered and shared.

So today, whatever teacup you might find yourself – a relationship of any kind, a stressful worry about the world that seems far too overwhelming or a situation at work or in your daily life that drags you down repeatedly – I hope you will find the courage to step outside of your current limited surroundings and expose yourself to a myriad of other options, ideas, information and people. It won’t necessarily be easy, but at the very least, the first step will give you room to breathe, to think more clearly and gain clarity about the truth or non-truths you may or may not have accepted so that you can begin to explore anew and open your world up to new possibilities.

Thank you for stopping by today and wishing you a wonderful week.

SIMILAR EPISODES/POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY

The Courage to Live Fully and Deeply: 7 Ideas to Put into Practice for a Life of True Contentment, episode #301

5 Ways to Live Courageously in your Everydays, and Why It Matters

How to Live a Courageous Life, episode #31