The Bel Ami is anchored in Anegada with new charter guests who came, as they all do, bearing gifts. I now have a Wisconsin badger t-shirt that says “Captain Dave’s Wench”, much wisdom about business, art collecting, history, second marriages, cooking okra and a new vocabulary word, lagnappe.
We consider our guests’ likes, dislikes and wish lists for what to see, where to go and what to do and we consider the weather. . My captain consults weather sites daily that zone in on our part of the world and tell him about wind direction, wind speed and likely precipitation. We share this information with our guests when planning their trip. Since we’re are a sail boat that rarely turns on its motor, the weather makes heading certain places easy, doable, challenging, not advisable or impossible.
It’s amazing to see the same places under different conditions and watch the world morph from benign or inviting to scary and forbidding in a heartbeat (like when I realized that picking up a mooring ball at the Baths in Virgin Gorda might turn me into a woman overboard). It’s a whole different trip to sail to Anegada in a straight line ( one tack) than zig zagging and taking twice as long.
We live in a world of climates and shifting weather. Waking up to a sunshiny day and a rainbow is better than vitamins. Grey skies and torrential rains not only impact our moods but how early we leave for work, what we wear, whether we look for that lost umbrella and how carefully we drive our cars down roads that are walls of water. We pay lots of attention to the weather outside. We listen to the radio, read the newspaper and check internet sites when deciding whether to plan a picnic for the coming week- end or not. The weather is a reliable topic of conversation as we worry about global warming and plan vacations to escape cold or heat.
The world outside stays the same except in extreme weather conditions like hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis that change the landscape (sometimes forever). Even if it looks different when its raining, or hazy or so hot and still that everything seems to be baking and drying up in the heat, the rain can come and turn the island green. In places of dramatic seasonal changes, things are basically the same underneath no matter what the season.
Our emotional lives are the weather on the inside. While I’m on a sailing journey, I’m also on an emotional journey and I’ve learned that taking stock of my inner weather conditions (emotions) makes all the difference which is why I tune into my inner weather channel every morning. I ask : feeling good? or feeling bad? and to get clearer about the subtler movements of my inner weather system I ask if the feeling bad is anger, depression, sadness or the feeling good is hopeful, enthusiasm, joy.
Inner conditions are good to know when gearing up for a corporate presentation, an exam, a visit to your folks or to getting started on a new project at home or at work. Like deciding not to go to Anegada if there’s no wind, you might decide to wait for better inner weather before you make an important phone call or a crucial decision. It might be wise to consider the acronym HALT and ask if you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired before doing something that you might regret and taking the appropriate action to mange the weather – eating, venting, calling a friend or taking a nap. There are some things that are better on fair weather days. Even if you can’t reschedule or avoid the “what’s up next”, it’s helps to take inner weather into account.
Inner weather is trickier than outer weather. All you have to do to know that the weather is inclement is to look outside and see the rain or ‘rain coming’. Since we are taught to hide our feelings (even from ourselves) appearances are often deceiving. When we put on our make-up, our outfits, our stiff upper lips and head on out, we are not always taking inner weather into account and we may find ourselves on sharp shoals, in conflicts with loved ones and colleagues and in places that we didn’t really want to go.
A tool that I use with clients and in my own life is The Emotional Guidance Scale. It’s list of feelings with joy and bliss at the top and powerlessness at the bottom. It is found in Ask and It is Given, a Law of Attraction classic by Abraham-Hicks. Since your emotions are indicators of your vibrational frequency, in order to move up the scale toward happiness, joy and bliss you have to start where you are now – ie, tune into your inner weather report. In between powerlessness and bliss there are many other feelings and once you can pinpoint where you are, you can choose a higher frequency feeling. If you are feeling depressed and powerless, reach for anger because its closer to joy than depression. From there you can reach for other feelings like worry and even disappointment in your climb up the ladder to contentment, hopefulness, enthusiasm and passion enroute to joy,knowledge, empowerment, freedom, love and appreciation.
What if I had only visited the Baths in Virgin Gorda on that stormy day and thought that is what the Baths were like or that because I’m feeling sad and kind of depressed, I will always feel that way. Our inner weather (emotions) have a lot in common with outer weather. Both are always in flux, always changing, always moving from sunshine to rain, from feeling good to feeling bad – and back again. This too shall pass is an apt description for both. If there is no wind today, there will be wind again sooner than later and if I am feeling sad today, happy days will come again.
When you open your eyes in the morning, check your inner weather (your inner guidance system) as well as the weather outside before plotting your course to minimize the chances that you will be lost in a storm, drenched to the bone, overdressed or that you will put your foot in your mouth, project your inner weather onto others or get so tangled up in the swells of your emotions that you make poor decisions, dig yourself into a hole or play victim.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of waiting for the storm to pass or revising your plans and there’snothing like the rainbow after the rain or the relief of finding that good feeling place inside.
Remember, even as the weather swirls around and within us there is an eternal place of deep calm and abiding peace. In a hurricane they call it the eye, and in times of trouble it is that still, silent place within.
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