Processing Emotions

All motion comes from e-motion. It can either drive our behaviours in high gear, helping us achieve & thrive, or undercut and subvert our performance.

Ultimately, the quality of our lives amounts to the quality of the emotions we experience in the body. And when people run across "nasty" emotions, the kind they don't enjoy feeling, most tend to stuff them at the back of their mind.

I've dealt with plenty of clients whose presenting problem was that they didn't feel anything. They experienced neither joy, nor hurt, neither motivation, nor ennui... Zilch! Squat! Sounds familiar?🫣

The thing is, when you repress emotions, when you don't allow yourself to 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 them, you can't really do it selectively. It, rather, happens with all of them at once, and altogether.

What can you do, instead? Well, emotions also work like a biofeedback mechanism. They represent the language our unconscious mind speaks, to let us know how we're doing down the path of life.

Are we fulfilling our needs, and checking off our values? Are we living up to our standards? In that way, emotions are like road signs - don't read them, and you might not fare so well in "traffic."

So, the solution is to pay attention to our emotions, unpack the message they convey, 𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙜𝙤, and take the appropriate action. Today, I want to share with you the questions you can ask yourself in order to do it effectively.

For instance, anger tends to indicate someone's crossed your boundaries. So, how do you uphold them? How do you communicate them proactively? And, after all, did you even know your boundaries, in the first place?🤔

Disappointment points out you, or someone else did not live up to your standards. So, what were your standards, to begin with? How can you adjust them? Or your relation to what you expect from yourself/others?

Sadness shows you disconnected from someone or something very dear & important to you. How can you reconnect? Or maybe, how can you let them go for good?

Anxiety is the sign of your unconscious mind that you're focusing on what you 𝘿𝙊𝙉'𝙏 want in the future (and dreading it). So, what do you want 𝙄𝙉𝙎𝙏𝙀𝘼𝘿?

Guilt derives from acting against your own values... and it's pretty much the most useless emotion of all (I say that with full confidence).

Undesired emotions, although they don't feel good, can relate to a situation happening 𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙣𝙤𝙬, and thus, they might let you know you need to 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙮.

However, unlike most of them, guilt always refers to something in the past, which is already done and dusted. And no matter how badly you feel about the outcome 𝙣𝙤𝙬, it can't and won't change history.

So, just drop guilt (like it's hot)! Ask yourself what's important to you about that situation? What needs to happen for you to restore it? And how can you best uphold it in the future?

And, of course, this is by no means an exhaustive list of emotions. Everyone experiences them in their own way, and under their own labels. So, I suggest - the most general question to ask yourself in order to process emotions:

*𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙄 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨, 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙛 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙚𝙣𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙮, 𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙞𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙚𝙛𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙡𝙮 𝙡𝙚𝙩 𝙞𝙩 𝙜𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙬?

To make it work, be sure to get the learnings...

* in the positive (you can't not focus on what you 𝙙𝙤𝙣'𝙩 want to focus, so how about you focus directly on its opposite, instead?😉);

* in the first person (you can only learn for yourself, even when it's about dealing with others);

* and in the present tense (the past is gone, the future hasn't happened yet, you only ever have 𝙉𝙊𝙒, and that's when you want your unconscious to apply the learnings).

So, what cool things have you recently learned from your emotions?🤓