It’s okay that today just doesn’t feel good yet.

It’s alright that you woke up this way, on the wrong side of the bed, with your knickers (or your heart) in a knot, with your brightness buried down, boiling somewhere deep beneath your gloominess, your darkness, beneath your own 50 shades of grey.

It’s okay, and you’re okay, and your life is okay even though today might not be unrolling as you imagined, even though you don’t want to get out of bed, or go to work, or put a smile on your face.

Not every day is going to be sweetly soft and sugary smooth, and that too, is okay.

Everyone has off days—you’re not alone, you’re not crazy, or ungrateful, or broken, or needing to be something else; there isn’t something wrong with you, or something that needs to be fixed, or ignored or pushed away.

This is just life, and here you are, pulsing through it in the full spectrum of it’s radiance, from brilliantly bright to deeply dark, moving through every single gradient in between.

No matter how full you are, how grateful you are, how happy you are, or how evolved you are, there are inevitably going to be days like these where you feel contracted, days where you feel empty, where you feel like your drowning, where you feel like for the life of you, you just can’t seem to decipher the fairy dust from the shit-storm of life playing out around you, and that too, is okay.

May as well put that in your pipe and smoke it, and sit with it, and be okay with it, instead of fighting it, resisting it, running from it, instead of contracting against the ever natural contraction.

What you resist only persists, so no point really in contracting against the contractions.

It isn’t going to last forever; your feelings aren’t going to swallow you whole, or drown out your goodness, make you less likeable, less loveable, less beautiful or bright. We all go through this, we all pulse and pulse and pulse between the darkness and the light. We flux and we flow through all the realms of expansion and contraction, and then back to expansion and then contraction again, so we may as well be okay with it.

Where there is light, there is always going to be dark, so why not drop the pretense that everything needs to be happy, and full and brimming with brightness and fireworks and love all of the time?

It’s okay to feel down, and even better if you can allow yourself to feel that way. Fighting how you feel, or making a run for it in attempts to escape yourself will only plunge you deeper into your own darkness. Let yourself feel however it is you feel—be okay with it, actually acknowledge it so that you can properly react to it.

If you deny yourself, how are you meant to take care of yourself?

If you have no idea where you are, how are you meant to get to where it is you’re going?

If you pretend that you’re already full, how are you meant to find fullness?

Being okay with the fact that you’re feeling down isn’t a sign of weakness, but one of strength. It isn’t a moment of giving up, but one of harnessing your own power of creation so you can start to lead yourself to wherever it is you want to be, whether that’s a place of clarity, fullness, groundedness, restfulness, calmness or feeling full of love.

Just give yourself a little (or a whole lotta’) love. You deserve it. Your mind deserves it, your heart deserves it, just as your body would definitely deserve it if it was feeling run down.

It’s okay that you’re not feeling your best; you don’t have to feel amazing all of the time (what a relief!). You can choose to drop the self-judgement, drop the push and shove, the “I should’s,” the “I wish I felt ____ instead,” and take some time out today to take care of yourself, to nurture yourself, to fill yourself up, to give yourself a break—a little self acknowledgement goes a long way!

Like elephant journal on Facebook.

Ed: Brianna Bemel