This is so tricky.

We are social beings coming into contact with other people every day.

Some of these people we love, and let’s be honest, some of them we don’t.

Okay, if we are really, completely honest here, then it’s worth stating that we don’t always enjoy being around even the people we love deeply.

This discomfort is normal.

We all have energy fields, often referred to as auras, that extend out beyond our bodies. Everything is energy; everything is more than meets the eye.

The more we open ourselves to the fact that we don’t see much of what’s happening around us, the more options we have to react to the challenges of everyday human life.

Our energy fields aren’t static. They are changing with our thoughts, feelings, behaviors and environments.

Unfortunately, because we usually aren’t in tune with our energy field, we’re unable to alter what happens there, which can cause us to blame ourselves and others for discomforts we feel throughout the day.

Our energies are meant to connect, but in my opinion, the healthiest place for each of our energy fields to be is with us. When we learn to keep our energy with us, we feel more settled and less reactive to our environments and the people in them.

Years ago I had a student in one of my mindfulness meditation classes whose energy I could sense strongly. It was obvious to me this student was excited about the class, had been feeling pretty badly lately and was hoping I was going to help her.

I instantly made the choice to send her energy back to her.

How did I do this? I imagined light traveling from her body over to my body, and then traveling back to her. This only took a microsecond of my attention.

I did this not because I was mad at her, but because it was the best thing to do. She needed her energy, and I knew it didn’t feel good on me.

You see, boundaries are compassion. I didn’t send her energy back with anger; I did it with love.

This is what is so exciting about opening to our innate ability to sense energy; it offers us more options for our reactions. If I hadn’t been able to send her energy back to her, I might have become resentful or possibly dreading teaching the class.

This wouldn’t have helped her—or me.

People don’t misuse their energy to be mean or hurt us. They do it out of an innocent inability to manage it.

That is why each of us needs to be responsible for how we manage our own energy.

People are going to get mad at us, be sad around us, ask too many times for our help or ignore us. This is going to happen because we are human and have such a wide range of emotions and experiences that we are never just going to be kind and peaceful.

Constantly thinking that other people need to change the way they behave so we can be happier is the perfect way to stay miserable.

Instead, we have to choose how we need to feel. Then we can “sense” the energy in our systems below the heavy-handed thoughts that play in our minds all day, seeing what internal adjustments we need to make in order to feel more comfortable in our daily lives.

This takes practice, but learning to sense our own energy, keep our energy fields close to our bodies and give other people their energy back so they can thrive are some of the healthiest choices we can make.

It takes courage to give our energy this type of attention.

We haven’t been taught how to do it, and it goes counter to our society’s focus on action and blame.

But in the end, we choose if we want to give other people the ability to make us miserable—or if we want to be empowered by holding our own precious energy close so we can thrive as we were meant to.

I know you’re ready to thrive!

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Author: Ruth Lera

Image: amenclinicsphotos ac/Flickr

Editor: Toby Israel

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