What if your feelings were data, not facts?
It's a mindset shift.
Especially for those of you who would rather push away your feelings. Let's face it, it's usually the less desirable feelings...sadness, anger, vulnerability, guilt...etc.
We're encouraged to feel the "good" emotions and sometimes to squash the not so desirable ones.
Maybe you can relate?
Me? I blamed my ignorance on my British upbringing, you know, stiff upper lip, all that stuff. Essentially...never allowed to express the undesirable feelings...anger etc. Maybe allowed isn't the right term... it's more like these emotions - the less desirable ones - were not modeled for me.
I've come a long way. Being married to an Italian for a very long time has definitely given me a model for expressing feelings and coupled with 10+ years in the coaching world, doing the work, I definitely have a much healthier relationship with my feelings.
How about you?
What's your relationship with your feelings?
Thankfully there's a lot more literacy when it comes to naming emotions now and children are given a language to label them.
I remember working with a client a long time ago who was going through a huge change. When we explored how they were feeling about the situation, it started with anger, shifted to scared and eventually...sadness.
It took a little work and identifying the real emotion was what helped them to move through it, because, as you can imagine, working through anger is different than working through sadness.
Understanding what you're feeling...the data...is the first step in order to process it. Naming it This is what brings it out into the light. It's a skill. That's always good news …because any skill can be learned.
What if rather than treating your feelings as facts, you looked at them as data? Information to be explored.
Are you ready?
Let's get to it...
Your challenge...
Are you in a situation right now where you're feeling 'big" feelings and you're brushing them off? Maybe it's time to sit with them and get curious.
What are you feeling?
There's a lot more literacy now when it comes to naming emotions and you're never too old to learn.
Learning to name them means that you can process them and move through them.
It normalizes all of the emotions, not just the selected few you may be comfortable with.
Look at them with curiosity, rather than avoiding them.
Know that they're not locked in. It's just information, and when you process them, you can take the information and move forward.
It's a mindset shift.
There's a real freedom in recognizing, feeling and processing all emotions. This is truly what leads to a fully lived life.
Ready to shift your mindset? Contact me
Cheers,
Ann
*Confidence *Mindset *Performance Coach *Author
What if feelings were data…not facts?