When Life Squeezes You

That story Wayne Dyer used to tell has never really left me. He would hold up an orange and ask, “When you squeeze an orange, what comes out?” And of course, the answer was always the same. Not lemon juice. Not apple juice. Orange juice, because that is what is inside.

I think about that a lot. Because when life squeezes me, what comes out is not always what I would like it to be.

Sometimes it is patience, calm, even gratitude. Other times it is frustration, fear, or anger that I thought I had already outgrown. And that is the moment I realize this is the juice I am still carrying around inside of me.

Something that has helped me over the years is simply paying attention. When an emotion rises that I do not like, instead of pushing it away or pretending it is not there, I stop and notice it.

I ask myself, “What am I feeling right now?” I let the emotion show me where it lives in my body. Sometimes it is a tightness in the chest, sometimes it sits heavy in my stomach, sometimes it feels like it is caught in my throat.

Then I give it a name. Anger. Shame. Loneliness. Guilt. Whatever it is, I call it out for what it is. And in naming it, I suddenly feel like I have a little more choice.

From there, I ask myself if I want to keep carrying this or if it is time to let it go. If it is time to let go, I use my imagination. I picture it leaving me, almost like a substance being pulled out of my body.

Sometimes it drips away like black liquid, sometimes it blows out of me like smoke. And sometimes it does not feel like just an emotion at all. It takes on a shape.

There have been times it looked like a younger version of me, the part of me that never felt safe or loved. Other times it felt like a past life self, a piece of someone I once was that still had not healed. Sometimes it has even shown up as the image of someone in my life that I needed to forgive or finally make peace with.

The strange thing is, once I let it go, even just a little, something shifts. I feel lighter. I feel clearer. And there is space for something new to move in. Peace, love, gratitude, whatever I have been trying to cultivate has more room to take root.

So when life squeezes me now, I try not to judge what comes out. I use it as information. If what spills out is something I do not like, I take it as a sign. A sign that there is still more inside of me that wants to be cleared. And the work is just that, emptying the old little by little so I can fill myself with something new.

That is what spiritual growth feels like to me. Not perfection. Just learning what juice I am really made of, and slowly changing it.