Unpacking Your Feelings Gives You Choice and Power (Feelings Part III)

You’ve spent the last two weeks practicing noticing your feelings and allowing them. Now what?

You can just let them be because that is life. Nothing is wrong with you, it is part of the human experience. You can’t appreciate happiness if you don’t know what sadness is, and vice versa.

You can also get curious about them. 

Explore all the reasons why you may be feeling the way you do.

A good place to start is with your thoughts. Your thoughts and beliefs about circumstances in your life often create your feelings (there are exceptions when we are dealing with trauma though).

For example, let’s explore my feeling of restlessness. When I do a thought download I come up with thoughts like:

• I’m bored with everything here.

• I’ve been in NYC for 16 God damned years.

• This transition is taking too long for me. I’m ready to go! 

I’m not always aware that I’m thinking these thoughts. It’s only upon quiet reflection for at least a few minutes that I’m able to uncover them. 

They can easily run on autopilot in the background in my brain, constantly recreating the feeling of restlessness in my body. 

But once I shine the light on them, I can choose whether I want to continue to give them airtime or not. 

Some questions I like to ask myself about the the thoughts I uncover:

• Is this thought really true?

• Is it serving me? (How does it make me act?)

• Do I want to keep it?

There is no right or wrong answer. You get to decide what you make things mean. 

Just make a conscious decision to own the feelings you’re creating. This will give you much more power over your experience in life.

So take a look at one of your top recurring feelings this week. Explore the thoughts that are creating it. Ask yourself the three questions, and then make a conscious decision to own it or let it go. 

Remember, this is a practice. It takes time to get good at this. So keep playing around with it.