I have been doing a lot of introspection recently, thinking about what it is about certain situations that make me feel a certain way. Why I feel empty often after something that initially lights me up. I felt confused, conflicted and completely unsure. Then Neptune went direct and it was as though the clouds parted and clarity emerged.
I have been someone who, for most of their life, hasn’t particularly been in touch with my emotions. I’ve felt things of course, but I haven’t honestly often been sure what it was and what it meant. Over the past few years I have sought to correct that, and I’m getting better and better at recognising not only what I am feeling but also what is missing from my life.
In therapy terms, we can see aspects of our lives as boxes or cups or some other type of receptacle. So, we have a cup in this instance for our career fulfilment, one for our spiritual fulfilment, one for our maternal/paternal fulfilment, one for our social fulfilment and so on and so forth. A friend of mine told me they cope with aspects of their life by compartmentalising them into these cups or boxes and putting them away, packing them off to manage the things in their life that make them unhappy. I get it. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve done many times in the past at a subconscious level. I realised yesterday, though, that I’ve run out of road on doing that.
As I say, something has been niggling in the back of my mind for a while as to why I feel empty at a moment in time when I shouldn’t. As I was musing about this, trying to get to the bottom of it yesterday, I got this sudden clarity by thinking ‘stop accepting the scraps people give you, decide what it is you want and go for it’. I can honestly say, this is the first time in my life I have ever thought that way. It’s connected to my understanding around standing in my power, and it meant really thinking about what it was that was missing in my life, what I wanted in it and what may need to go from my life in order to make space for what I want.
It was then that I realised that the cup for my emotional fulfilment was empty. As was the cup for my sexual fulfilment and that the cup of my intellectual fulfilment was only slightly full. It is important to me that these cups are as close to full as I can possibly get them and it is equally important to me that the bulk of the fulfilment is satisfied in a relationship by a single person. Now, obviously I am in a relationship insofar as I am married. Yet still these cups are empty. Can my husband fill them? Maybe, I don’t know. It’s something to work on. What I do know is that I am not going to compromise anymore on wanting them to be filled and finding the ways to achieve that. A difficult thing to say I know, but it is my reality. I’m at an age and a stage in my life where I just don’t want to look into my future knowing that those cups will remain unfilled.
I have also decided to work on this as part of my coaching package, to help people to realise which cups in their lives are not as full as they would like and how to fill them back up.
I have a vision for my life, it has been emerging for a while now and it is getting clearer all the time. I have now realised that this vision is purely about having all my cups at a level that I am happy with, that leave me feeling fulfilled. As this vision gets sharper, it is my absolute focus. I may not know the details of how I am going to achieve it, I don’t need to, I just know that I will achieve it.
Louisa Simpson 