Bonus: Feeling Your Feelings
This is another bonus episode to help support you further during the crisis we are experiencing as a global community. As a life coach my main intention is to show you just how resilient you are when you have the right tools and knowledge to leverage your mindset and perspective. It's so important that you are able to be a leader in your life- whether you're a mom, a sister, a daughter, a wife, a business owner. You are the CEO of your own life and it’s time to take the responsibility to heart and step up for yourself.
As a continuation of the other bonus episode, today we're going to talk about how to feel your feelings. If you haven't listened to the other episode, please do so first!
The Next Steps
So what happens when you employ the STOP tool and observe what you're feeling. You might be feeling awful. You might be feeling anxious. & then you're like ugh Chanee that’s why I didn't want to do that in the first place- excuse me while i sit on the couch and buffer away my life because I am just not motivated to do anything!
Feelings are emotional state or reaction. Feelings can not hurt you. Your thoughts create your experiences.
So if you have been avoiding journaling, avoiding meditating and are buffering by being on social media all day- ask yourself why am I afraid of being with my feelings?
I asked this yesterday to someone on my Live and she said its because she associates being sad with being weak.
Totally understandable.
Acknowledging Your Feelings
In our culture and society we have been conditioned to think that showing our feelings somehow makes us weak. But as a human- you are going to experience 50% of sad or negative emotions. It's just a fact of life. When you learn how to sit with your feelings, validate and acknowledge them, THEN choose to shift- you become a very empowered version of yourself.
If you, however, don't allow your feeling to come through will eventually find a way to be known through tension headaches, insomnia, anxiety or depression.
The quote I love is, “whatever you resist, persists”. SO the moral is- you can't shove away your emotions. You have to learn to feel them, to heal them.
Process of Sitting with Your Feelings
So here are ways that you can sit with your feelings and feel them:
Identify the stereotypes you place on feelings, and remind yourself that these are not true.
Ex. being sad makes you weak- so when I am sad I am a weak person. Not true. When I am sad I am being authentic and human
Ex. Being angry and mad makes me bad. So when I feel angry im a bad person. Is this thought true? NO. When I am mad and angry I am being authentic and human.
Notice the feeling in your body- tight chest, heart beating, panic feeling in head. Identifying the physical sensations creates neutral ground and helps you stop labelling feelings as good or bad
Name the emotion. I use an emotions chart with my clients to help them increase their emotional intelligence. Part of being your highest self means being emotionally well. Use the chart to help you identify how you're feeling instead of just using broad words like sad or anxious. This will help you identify your needs much easier.
The truth is, feelings are important factors to getting shit done. On the model, you know that feelings trigger actions. You can't make a new thought model for yourself if you don't know how to feel your feelings. You'll just stay in your negative feeling loop and never make that shift to be the self confident person who is in charge of her life.
So in all seriousness- How do you want to emerge from this experience? Do you want to be a better personal overall or do you want your patterns to stay the same? This is my invitation to you to rise, to take the time to invest in your mind even more and become your highest self.