I guess I didn’t know that, and when I was learning this I think I felt a little behind, like ‘why didn’t someone teach me this in grade school?’ So, I am on a mission to inform people much earlier than I learned this concept. I guess I thought feelings, or emotions, just came on, and really were a force to be reckoned with. Positive emotions, like happy, just came to me and put me in a great mood. The negative feelings were harder to deal with. Like, when I am on my period I deal with anger, frustration, and hormones. When I liked a guy, I felt I had to deal with all the feelings that came with it; which typically made me extra vulnerable to jealousy, tears, and self-loathing. I guess my definition would be something that hits you upside your head and you must terrain as best you can. The positive ones were easy to deal with, and the negative ones—not so much. That sounded like a rationale definition.
Really…’just vibrations in your body.’ When you say it like that it seems so harmless, right? And those vibrations just come from a thought in your brain. We did an exercise in my coaching class and we partnered up and pretended there was a green Martian with us to learn all about feelings. We were asked to pick one negative feeling and think thoughts that made us feel that way; all while describing to the Martian where the feeling was in our body. This exercise was really mind blowing because you know what happened... When I started to describe the feeling, it didn’t have as much power—it felt like it slowly faded. As I described where it was in my body; what it felt like, what color it would be, if it was moving or standing still, it was like I was honoring it in my body and then letting it go. I so often avoid feeling something because I am afraid of what it will feel like. For example, I don’t like to feel uncomfortable and to avoid that I chose a more powerful feeling like anger, or frustration to not have to feel uncomfortable. That was so interesting to me, that if I would just honor my negative feelings, give it the time and attention it needs, it wouldn’t be so negative in my life. I tend to compound the negative by trying to avoid one feeling, and just act out of a different more powerful feeling. Because being angry and frustrated gets me much farther than uncomfortable, right? No.
So now that we know feelings are just vibrations that come from thoughts, what do we do? We should practice them. Like really see what feeling you have—how it feels and what thought is creating that feeling. Funny thing is you have lots of thoughts going on, so take a deep breath. See what feeling is in your body, explain it to the green Martian, and then see if you can find what one thought is making you feel that way. This is a great practice for AWARENESS. Knowing what feelings we have on a regular basis can help us understand ourselves better, and can help us see if we want to have those feelings. Often we are unaware of how we feel, and just try and make it through our days. Maybe that is just me. 😊 Check out the post tomorrow to learn about the two sides of feelings, and how to increase, or decrease the intensity.