Welcome to the Our Moral Compass Podcast. Each daily reading focuses on a different quote on how we can best apply it to our own moral compass and one of the five areas in Social Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making. Thank you for listening and we hope you consider subscribing to the podcast for future episodes.
What To Avoid Most
“I cried, for happiness, for sadness, but most of all, for emptiness.”
-Daul Kim
Today’s quote by South Korean model Daul Kim’s is an insightful one. There are many moments in our life when we shed tears. Tears of happiness and tears of joy. We have all loved and we have all lost. We’ve all experienced success and/or disappointment. Emptiness, that sense of boredom, social alienation or apathy is a feeling that to me is where these kind of tears, if not managed better can lead to depression, loneliness and despair: all things that must be avoided at all costs.
Often times when we experience that feeling of emptiness we often don’t know why we are experiencing it or what we should do about it. Luckily resources like PsychCentral there are articles/blogs written to answer such questions as this. Here are several suggestions from 2015 by Eder and Slight on how to overcome feelings of emptiness:
1. Gently acknowledge the emptiness. Be gentle with yourself.
2. Spend time with yourself every day. Carve out time to explore your own desires, fears, hopes and dreams. This helps you create “more meaning in your daily life and your future.”
3. Explore your current feelings. Set a timer for five minutes and noticing what you’re feeling right now. This will gradually broaden your window of tolerance to include bigger feelings for longer times.
4. Explore your feelings of emptiness. Ask yourself some of these questions as you explore these feelings:
Have I been judging myself or comparing myself to others?
Do I tell myself positive things? Or do I tend to notice failures or call myself ugly or stupid?
Are my feelings being considered in my relationships, or am I minimizing what I am feeling?
Am I actively tending to my physical and health needs?
Have I turned toward behaviors or addictions to avoid my feelings?
Am I focusing solely on the needs of another person or people?
What am I trying to prove or win?
Am I blaming myself or feeling guilt about things that are out of my control?
Am I showing myself compassion like I would with a close friend or family member?
Am I asserting myself in my decisions and respecting my personal opinions?
5. Commend yourself. It’s important to acknowledge and accept your feelings of emptiness. It’s important to be self-compassionate.
Remember that we are the ones in control of ourselves. We control that positive and the negative emotions, thoughts and behaviors as different situations arise. We owe it to ourselves to look for ways or methods to help us build on the positive and combat the negative. We owe this to ourselves to do as much as we can to continue to not only survive, but thrive.
What does this quote mean to you and how can you apply today’s message towards managing yourself better?
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Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Relaxing Piano Music” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A special thank you to Feedspot for recognizing the Our Moral Compass podcast as one of the Top 10 Social Emotional Learning Podcasts on the internet. It is an honor to be amongst the other podcasts on this list as we all strive to make this world a better place.
Becoming The Change 