Honor your emotions, don’t dwell on them

“In dealing with emotions, the first step is awareness. Identify the emotion, but don’t identify with the emotion.”
— Stephanie Noble, “Emotions as Honored Guests”

How do you deal with your emotions? Do you let them overwhelm you, giving them added energy? Do you try to ignore them, forcing them to get your attention by whatever means possible?

Emotions are a normal, natural part of being human. Each emotion you feel — happiness, joy, love, frustration, anger, sadness — is trying to convey a message to you and has a purpose for your present journey. In order to learn from them, you must honor them enough to acknowledge their presence. However, it is important to realize that you don’t need to become the emotion in order to understand it.

My personal technique to deal with the more negative emotions is to become aware of the exact emotion I am experiencing. I allow myself to feel it. I allow myself to understand where it is coming from. And then I quietly say to myself, “release”, to keep the emotion in motion and out of my being (emotion = energy in motion).

Be the neutral observer to your own emotions and you will neither let it take over your life right then and there nor later when it ends up boiling over from years of neglect. Deal with each individual emotion until you understand why it has come to you at this time. You don’t need to be a victim or hostage to your emotions any longer. And you will probably surprise yourself at the wisdom your emotions hold.

Listen to your feelings

“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.”
— Audre Lorde

Our feelings are the base of our human experiences in life. Feelings tend to come first, and they then result in a corresponding reaction. With this new awareness, we can begin a new understanding of our life and we can see the cause and effect relationship between our feelings and what we subsequently create in our life.

It would be wise, therefore, to choose what we keep in our hearts with the same care that we choose what we say and do in our lives. If we want to have less conflict, fear, stress, and depression, then deep within our hearts those more desirable emotions must be truly present in order to manifest that reality.

The most important feeling we all need to experience more is love. In order to accomplish this, we can simply include more loving feelings in our life. However, remember that feeling more love does not always mean only to act it out on occassion, but rather to always have it in our hearts and minds.

Let yourself be present to your emotions

“What if, instead of ‘reframing’ my emotions, I simply welcomed them and allowed them to be fully felt? I wonder if I might find this peace she is speaking about in the core of the feeling?”
— Brandon Bays, The Journey

What an interesting concept. Not only does Brandon Bays suggest that you accept your emotions, but she actually believes that we should welcome all our emotions and feel them completely. These days you hear everything from changing your negative thoughts to positive ones, do whatever you can to avoid the emotions, or even recommendations to take drugs to numb the feelings.

It has been on my journey of self-discovery that I have discovered that nothing is what it seems at the surface level. All the emotions I have been working through to get to my best me has proven that my first surface, impression was usually inaccurate. My anger wasn’t just anger, it was fear. My self-destructive thoughts were actually there to show me that I lacked self-confidence. I could go on and on.

Once you allow yourself to feel your emotions fully, but not wallow in them or dump them on someone else, you can start to peal away the layers that have been building up on the original feeling. Sometimes you will even discover that your present day breakdowns have more to do with a past emotional hurt than with the trigger event that brought the feelings up in the present moment.

Focus on the real issues

“Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.” — Unknown

When a situation or even a person comes into my life that stresses me out or pushes my buttons, the knee-jerk reaction is “Why is this situation so difficult?” or “Why is this person so difficult (or whatever word might suit the occasion)? But what happens if we turn the table and see the real issues being my reactions to these situations or people? How much easier would it be to change my reactions (v.s. trying to change something or someone else out of my control)?

When we focus our attention on changing anything outside ourselves we are putting large amounts of energy out and most likely going to receive very little return on that investment of time and energy. Remember, as John Maxwell said, “Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”

Simply turning it around and focusing on myself and how I can handle the situation or person differently will bring much more immediate and healthy results into my life.

A case for peace

“Of one thing I am certain, the body is not the measure of healing — peace is the measure.”
— George Melton

Researchers claim that quarrels with your partner may stop your body’s ability to heal quickly. Hostility, depression, and stress all promote the release of an inflammatory protein in the blood that works two-fold. At healthy levels this protein helps in the healing process. However, chronically high levels of this blood protein can contribute to cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and some forms of cancer.

Take steps to boost your emotional and physical well-being by working on promoting a peaceful relationship and doing things you enjoy together.

Letting go to find your gold

“The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there’s gold in letting go of them.”
— John Seely Brown, Fast Company

The weight of emotional baggage can be overwhelming at times. I once had someone explain it to me this way: Imagine that all our negative emotions go into a bucket, and each time we hold on to a negative emotion it raises the level bit by bit. Sometimes, we may just be mildly upset and only a small drop goes in which doesn’t raise it up much. Other times we may be very upset and it starts going up to the top faster and faster.

But what happens when the bucket gets full? In my experience, even the smallest upset will allow all the old emotions to spill over the sides and it becomes very, very messy.

How do we overcome this? Letting go. If you need to have a bucket, make sure it has some holes in it and visualize the negativity escaping out the bottom when you are not looking. Let go of anger and resentment about things that are not controllable. Let go of the pain you are carrying with you in that heavy bucket from things that happened long ago. Let go of the regrets, disappointments and excuses.

Forgiveness, love, compassion, understanding — these are the tools to keep you moving forward and living the life you are in right now. When you let go, you will find your gold.

Speak your mind with clarity — avoid the drama

“Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.”
— Thomas J. Watson

Sometimes I want to throw my arms up in the air and say “why bother”! Even if I speak my mind, it never changes anything, right? But then I wouldn’t be true to myself if I didn’t speak up. The key is for me to learn to speak with a balance between clarity and emotions.

Not that my emotions shouldn’t be heard either. They are usually the driving force behind my thoughts. But if that is all people can hear, they may not hear the message with the clarity required to enable change.

My voice is an authentic part of me that needs to be expressed. The only way others can get to know my true self is when I speak from my heart. So I now allow myself to communicate my thoughts to others at the appropriate time (because timing is essential — meaning, if you are still emotionally upset about something - that’s where the drama comes in - don’t confront anyone just yet. Let it settle first…), with the correct amount of emotional intensity.

When something bothers you, walk right into it

“Friends are the mirror reflecting the truth of who we are.”
— Author Unknown

Have you ever had someone say or do something that really bothered you? It could have even been something that was even very minor, but it irked you or maybe even angered you at the time.

What should you do in such a situation? Ignore it? Walk away from it? Make a conscious effort not to feel that way again? Actually you should walk right into it. I’m not saying you should start a confrontation with the other person. But in your mind, you should start examining why that issue bothered you so much because it was a clear message that there is a strong lesson in it all.

You may discover that the reason it triggered such a strong emotional reaction was because it reflects something in you that needs to be recognized and dealt with within yourself. Someone around you always angry? What anger issues have you been ignoring within yourself? Lazy people really bother you? What are you procrastinating doing in your life? And so on.

What are you keeping out?

“Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends.”
— Czech Proverb

I know some people who have been hurt, emotionally, by people they thought loved them. And understandably they are now cautious of trusting again, loving again. So they put up their protection shields to keep people out. That way they won’t get hurt again, right?

But what are they keeping out? Perhaps they won’t get hurt by others, but the life they are now creating seems to be hurting their chances for joy, their chances for feeling love again. As much as we all would prefer to live without hurt, keeping everyone out for fear of them hurting us again will also keep out all who would love us again.

Instead of surrounding yourself with a fence of mistrust and fear, surround yourself with a circle of supportive and loving friends. Allow yourself to attract those that would love you by loving others first.

Healing old wounds

“The divine flow is like the flow of a river, however many rivers nowadays are polluted, full of junk or simply stagnating. It is time to take care of them - meaning it is time to take care of our emotional bodies and to look at them as rivers, where stuff got thrown in over the years. For some, there is so much built up, that it works like a big dam which does not allow any flow of energy. You can easily recognize the flow of energy, by looking at how much love is flowing in your life, how much happiness, how much time do you have available, how much money is flowing etc.”
— Quantum Angel

It may be time to ask yourself how polluted is your river of emotions? Has there been some junk and pollution thrown in there when you weren’t paying attention? Are my emotions contaminated and perhaps poisoning others that come in contact with them?

One quick way to figure out the answers is to look at how much discomfort or pain you have in your life. Is it all the time, only in certain situations, only dealing with certain people? We are like our planet, and over the years of use and misuse the environment now needs our protection.

Science shows us that we do release chemicals in response to our emotions. Over time, if these chemicals are not cleared out, they build up and can become toxic to us. So take action and break down the dams that are restricting the flow of energy in your emotional river and get the vitality of living back on track.

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