Can a Tantrum Unlock Your Highest Self?

Here's why and how allowing yourself to throw a good tantrum can boot your creativity.

A week ago, I sat down to work on my bio for the process of finding a book agent to represent Dinah and me, with “I Believe In Me.”

As you know, the game we’re playing is to impact a million lives. If you’re unfamiliar with what I mean by “playing a game,” it’s a juicy concept and way more fun than goals (mainly because you can lose a game and still win!) I put up a post on LinkedIn. You can find it here.

As I started to write, I noticed a lot of resistance coming up. I was shifting in my chair and couldn’t quite get comfortable. The more I tried to “push” through, the more annoyed I became.

After about 15 minutes, I stopped writing, took a few BIG breaths, and dropped into my body. It felt tight and constricted. I decided to go outside.

Once outside, I tuned inward and asked my body what it needed/wanted. Right away, I feltheard: I am so upset.

Feltheard is a word to describe the process of connecting with my higher self. It’s not quite a ‘voice,’ and it’s not quite a ‘feeling. It’s a little bit of both.

I let my body flow the way it wanted, fully. In this instance, it felt like a grumpy six-year-old. I started to stop my feet. I started grunting, and suddenly I wanted to drop to the ground, so I did. I stomped my feet, grunted some more, and suddenly, it all stopped, no more than 60 seconds later.

Here I was, staring at the sky, the bright Colorado sun right in my face, and all I felt was peace. Stillness. The energy was fully expressed.

I got back up and went inside. Sat down and got back to writing from a much more grounded, present, and inspired place.

The idea of writing something I perceived others could judge me for, activated the alarm system in my amygdala. To my brain, this wasn’t creative writing. It was a stressful event that could lead to a very bad thing (possibly death).

Getting outside and moving the energy through allowed my nervous system to self-regulate and process what was happening without me getting stuck in that loop.

Growing up in church, I was often asked to memorize things and recite them in front of our congregation of hundreds of people. I would practice and feel good about it, but I'd freeze when I was handed the mic. I’d stand there, all alone, with everyone staring at me.

Little Luisa, my eight-year-old psyche, wanted more than anything to impress the adults and receive applause because that meant I was a “good girl,” so when nothing came out, I thought surely they would cast me out. All I had was the shame of letting the adults down and being a “bad Christian.”

All of this was, of course, the narrative I carried. That narrative carved grooves in my psyche. That same narrative shows up from time to time, 30+ years later, the only difference is I now know how to work with it. I now know how to keep the energy flowing through my brain so the cycle is complete rather than stuck.

So the next time you get that sense of stuckness, consider letting the tender, sensitive parts of you express themselves. Feel it for a full 60-90 seconds, and then get back to the path of purpose you are on. Because the world needs your light, and in order to shine, you sometimes need to return to the space or place where you once allowed it to dim and let love dissolve.

You won’t want to miss the next publication, where I share the big twist that just occurred in our book journey! We were going full steam EAST (metaphorically speaking) and then realized going WEST was the path I wanted to take.