I often talk about how we live through our emotions. Those feelings make us perceive ourselves and the reality a certain way, which completely subjective.
To realize that, I had to observe myself as precisely and objectively as possible. And that’s a very good first step to understand how we work, and what are the rules of the game!
Today I’d like to bring you in an observation even more extreme. Yes, I say extreme because if you are able to look at your emotions objectively, then your emotions don’t control you anymore. In fact it is because we strongly believe that what we feel is the reality that we loose completely grasp of the real world. And so we loose our free will, and our power to act as we see fit.
Look at your emotions
Now I suggest that when you feel a little down (or even completely depressed) you take a closer look at what’s really happening. Why doing that with negative emotions? Because that’s also going to be a big part of the solution you’ll be looking for at this very moment. Change your present state! Unless you enjoy it…
According to my own observations, emotions are basically made of two parts
1- The physical part
You can literally feel your emotions. It’s happening within your body. Focus on what you feel physically, and only physically. I mean don’t bother what’s happening in you head, just focus on what is happening in your body for a while. You’ll have plenty of time to recall how sad you are right after 😉
You should notice two kinds of feelings :
- some contractions a bit everywhere in your body, but more intensely in your guts. A bit like when you feel stressed.
- a more diffuse sensation mostly on the surface of your body. Like a sizzling, or an interference running on your skin.
Both make you feel not at ease, not very well. And we naturally tend to try to escape by all means to those feelings.
Now 2 things are very important to notice:
- although not enjoyable, thoses feelings are completely bearable. There’s no physical pain, just an unpleasant sensation
- those sensations don’t prevent us at all from moving or doing exactly what we want. They may not be what we prefer, but they are relatively harmless
2- The mental part
Now come the most important aspect. What’s happening in our head!
Emotions are mainly based on what we think. And what we think has usually nothing to do with the reality. It is essentially a story we tell ourselves! Emotions act in two ways on those stories:
- they focus our thoughts on one or several related stories, all going in one specific direction. They just keep a very little aspect of the reality to make the story appear as real, but are completely nonsense
- they magnify the theme of the story: sadness, injustice, lonelyness, etc…
What seems important to notice is that our reality becomes this story. And the more we focus on it (which the emotion tends to do), the more we nourish the story, which in turn becomes more and more unavoidable whatever we do, wherever we look.
The physical part adds to the story by making it more real!
How to get rid of the downward spiral?
Yes, you entered in a negative spirale! Now what we tend to do is anything that can bring back some good feelings, or at least diminish the tension. What do you do there? You go to eat? You watch your mobile phone? You drink? You turn on the TV?
Hum… yes, that’s the kind of reaction which is triggered very often.
Now you must also realize that all those “solutions” are just a temporary lull that covers the emotions for a while. You have solved nothing! And that just make your stories more real, because they are so there that you took action to calm the suffering.
But if you just observed all that with me, you can also come back in the real world much more easily!
- You know that the physical part is just a little tension that you can totally stand!
- You also know that what drives you crazy is a story that plays with an aspect of the reality. Nothing more than a story…
So ok, the difficult feelings are still there… but when you know what it’s all about, now you start to take action in the way you choose!
I’ll come back on what’s next, but basically you have two things to do:
- change the story, review it a really objective way. And let it go for a while, you know that you’re not necessarily at your best to think about it realistically! So just choose to focus your thoughts on what you enjoy. What are the words that describe best the experience you want to live? Choose and focus on them. You have control of what’s happening in your head, and what you choose changes everything
- take action! Any action. Don’t try to feel like it, because for now you start with a feeling you don’t enjoy. So accept this start, and just decide to take actions anyway. Do anything that is usefull. Any action is going to change your reality, because what you do is the reality! So just know that once you have done one or several positive (useful, enjoyable or not, but useful) things, your emotions will have no other choice but to enjoy who you are.
The solution is not to find a solution to your emotions. They are not real! So any solution has to be as unreal as the problem.
The solution is to realize what the emotion that hurts so much is made of, and to discard it. Don’t accept a feeling as being something true!
Then choose what you’re experiencing now, by putting a bit of energy into your thoughts and your actions. It is clearly not the most enjoyable moment, but it is also not really difficult at all… unless you believe your stories 😉
Have a great life!
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