Feelings

Which feelings do you experience in an average week? Most people I ask about this need some time before they can give an answer. It’s not something they’ve paid much attention too. Emotions and feelings are something that happens to you; “I feel low today”, “I woke up feeling sad”, “What he said made me feel so angry”..

Emotions and feelings

I just finished reading High performance habits, and in it Brendon Burchard expertly gives a possible definition and difference between emotions and feelings;

”Think of an emotion as mostly a reaction, and feeling is an interpretation. The emotion of fear can come up but you don’t have to choose to feel frightened and run away. You can experience the sudden emotion of fear, but in the very next moment choose to feel centered. Whenever you “calm yourself down” you are choosing a different feeling than the emotion that may have come up for you.”

This was a new distinction to me and one that I think will help me. I already believed there is a difference between the instinctive reaction, an emotion, and the feelings I choose to live in for a longer period. Learning that I could control my feelings, some of the time, was such a revelation and feeling of freedom. But I’ve also believed that the emotions themselves can be controlled/altered by changing your mindset and every time a negative emotion comes up I feel it like a reminder that I haven’t mastered this yet… And then I’ve blamed myself and for hours lived with the feelings of shame, frustration and guilt.

Metaphor for life

I’m always on the lookout for new metaphors, visual or written, for the mysteries of a life well lived. We’re all different in how we best absorb information and so I try to cover all bases and get as many angles as possible on the important things. Metaphors, just like stories, have a tendency to enter our subconscious and we remember them better than just mere facts. Recently I came across a new way of visualizing the saying; “what you focus on is what you get” –  Imagine your internal mind as a cup. In this cup you pour your feelings.  The feelings in it, at any given time, will determine – yeah, how you feel.

I bet you’ve encountered the self-help theories like the daily affirmations and gratitude practices? These theories are everywhere and have been for some time now. The reason they won’t go out of style is because they’re working.

Someone who consciously focus on things to be thankful for fills her/his cup with a dose of gratitude. If you think about how you helped your child with their homework yesterday, although you at first felt too tired to do it, you might notice that warm feeling of pride and satisfaction dripping into the cup. When you notice the sound of pure laughter from your daughters’ room your cup gets flooded with love and joy.

All feelings can’t be in the cup at the same time

You can feel many different feelings but they don’t fit in your cup all at the same time. You can find yourself unsuccessfully grappling for that true sense of gratitude or joy. Sometimes that is because your cup is already full with other feelings.

Your cup might be full with:

• 26% guilt because of that chocolate cake you ate last night
• 42% worry about your kids not seeming to have any friends at school
• 12% stress over difficult assignments at work
• 20% fear for how the future paychecks are going to come in

When you find your cup is filled with feelings you don’t like it’s time to drain in! A coach or therapist could be a great partner when you want to empty a cup brimming with negative feelings. If you think you want to do some cleaning on your own then I’d recommend a practice of mindfulness. Letting yourself be still so you can feel your feelings and just name them will help a long way. Contrary to the fairy tale truth where if you name a fiend it will appear I’ve learnt that naming a negative feeling will make the feeling weaker.

Fill your cup purposefully

In the same way it might be hard to connect to joy, when the cup is full with disempowering feelings, it’s equally difficult to find sadness or anger when your cup is already full with gratitude, curiosity or any other more empowering feelings.

This is what all the hype is about regarding choosing feelings “deliberately”, affirmations and journaling on things you’re grateful for.

The more you practice the feelings you want to experience the more easily they will fill your cup. It’s like the bottles of joy, love, focus and the others are placed furthest out in the cupboard. The other feelings get pushed far in to the back. Practicing means thinking about how these feelings feel and on different situations when you’ve felt them in the past.

Get a journal and in it write things you’re happy, grateful and amazed for. Write down situations where you showed up in a way that made you proud of yourself. Where you showed focus and grit. Maybe a situation when you felt truly loved or appreciated.

Do it often. If you can then do it every day. It doesn’t have to take long, just 5-10 minutes and you don’t have to think of something “new” every time, just write down what comes to mind.

If you do this you will have your empowering feelings close at hand and you will already have filled your cup leaving less room for negativity to enter your life.

Changing emotions

So feelings we can choose and I still believe that even emotions, the ones that come more on instinct, also can be changed. With enough time and conscious practice I think I’ll be able to change the underlying meaning I’ve anchored to a situation. In the meantime I’m going to focus on filling my cup on purpose and let myself be the work in progress I actually believe we all are 🙂

As always..