Usually, I practice watching my thoughts, actions, words, and habits. But yesterday, I shot first and was thoughtful later.
For what I thought was a good reason, I wrote a couple of negative online reviews of a business. Not a great choice on my part. The owner of the company responded to me, and I learned, has only the best of intentions. Do I believe it? Yes. But there’s still issues. Even so, I thought about it and tried to justify my reviews. At the end of the day, I didn’t feel good about what I’d done.
Speaking up for ourselves can be a tricky business. All I can say is that it depends on the situation.
I don’t want to be the goddess of righteousness. Is there a problem? Yes. And yes I spoke up about my experience. But this time, broadcasting to everyone only gives everyone one piece of information. It’s not the entire story. The issue I wrote about is for the owner to figure out how to address it. A negative review these days, online, can have catastrophic consequences for a business. I don’t want to be a part of that. There are other ways to complain.
Every day I’m still learning to pause first and feel into what response would be most beneficial. Sometimes I mess up.
In this recent experience, I felt that my poor review wouldn’t help the solution, it only served to fuel more negativity. And I felt awful, physically. The more I practice managing my thoughts, actions, words, and habits the more I’m picking up on physical feelings. The feelings and sensations that go along with my thoughts, actions, words, and habits. Our bodies offer a masterclass on living intuitively. Which can be misconstrued as a fun woo-woo thing. But it’s really just about learning from within ourselves. My entire being is speaking volumes to me all day long. It’s best when I listen.
Sometimes I feel like speaking out and sometimes I keep my thoughts to myself. Either way can still be me coming from a strength of power.
Because I haven’t been great about speaking up in my life, when I do, it can be a bit much. It feels so good to release my thoughts that my words can flatten someone’s hair back. Flattening someone’s hair back is so not what I’m intending.
But living intuitively is easy. When I…
When I operate from a place of constructive feedback, I feel warmth or those good chills I love. When I choose to go the other way, I feel a tightness and feel low. More and more I’m becoming aware of how I feel as I go throughout the day.
In this case, it wasn’t constructive. I’ve since removed my critical review and edited the one I couldn’t remove. I feel better already.
“Good vibes only” is a lovely intention. But as human beings, we’re going to experience and sometimes create vibes that feel uncomfortable. We absolutely have a right to speak up. And if whoever is on the other side of that, doesn’t like it, then that doesn’t necessarily mean we shouldn’t have spoken up.
It depends. That’s where I’m at with the good vibes only thing. It just depends.
For the most part, I’d rather my thoughts count for something positive.