Emotional Awareness vs. Emotional Indulgence

I listened to a call with Gary Zukav and Linda Francis the other day about tapping into our Authentic Power. Do you know Gary? He’s a favorite of mine so if not, check him out here. Also, I can strongly recommend The Seat of the Soul – I read it years ago and I can say that still, it is one of the books that has had a profound influence on me and my life.

The thing that impacted me the most from the call was when Gary was talking about Emotional Awareness. He talks about how being aware of our emotions is necessary for spiritual learning. Their talk was very much geared to what they label spiritual learning. I don’t necessarily like that wording as I would simply call it Life Learning. And I heartily agree that we need to really feel and be aware of emotions in order to learn about ourselves and about life.

 

It can be tempting to stuff down those emotions as they aren't always so comfortable. If you're not used to feeling fear or guilt or shame or sadness, it can be very disconcerting to allow yourself to feel them. We tend to want to deny them or rush past them. And when we do, we aren't allowing ourselves to truly feel and to learn from this feeling. It can be a little uncomfortable in the beginning. But the more you allow yourself to feel, the more you learn. You can get started with this process with simple questions such as "What am I feeling right now?", "What do I most need right now?"

 

The other side of the coin of not allowing ourselves to feel our emotions is to REALLY let ourselves feel them. This was the gem of the call for me - when Gary said that being emotionally aware was not the same as emotionally indulgent. It is absolutely necessary to FEEL what we are feeling, but it is not helpful at all to get stuck in the emotion. Sometimes we have the tendency to get stuck in the drama of it all, asking questions such as 'why did this happen to me' and 'how could she/he do that to me?'. It's like we get stuck in this loop. And actually, we do - we train our brains to do this. If you haven't read Jill Bolte Taylor's A Stroke of Insight, I invite you to as it's excellent. In the book, she describes how the actual chemical reaction of an emotion lasts 90 seconds. The rest is all us - playing it over and over and over in our brains, strengthening that particular loop.

 

So when you find yourself being emotionally indulgent, take a step back. Remember that you have a choice. And this is when one of my favorite questions is so very helpful. And that is "Ok. This happened. And I'm feeling this way. And as a result of this, who do I choose to be here, right now?"

 

It can take some practice to reach emotional awareness - to feel what we're feeling without indulging in it. I invite you to experiment with this. Be gentle as you practice and notice all the gems you find along the way.

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How Happy Are You?

A couple weeks ago I attended the Happiness Initiative Forum in Santa Cruz. This was a gathering of people to hear more about the topic of Happiness, what it means, how we measure it, etc. I’m over-simplifying now, but basically it has to do with the idea that Happiness or Wellness or whatever we call it, could be a better way to measure the sustainability of a country or community than the GNP – the way a place’s quality of living is currently measured. Activist leaders and authors John de Graaf (Affluenza) and Cecile Andrews (Circle of Simplicity) were the leaders of this discussion. To read more about this movement go to: http://www.happycounts.org/. There’s a survey that gives you a look at your happiness level in different areas of your life. To access it directly, click here.

I found the evening and discussion extremely interesting. The topic of what makes us happy is something I’m always exploring with myself and with clients. Happy can sometimes seem like a hard thing to pin down. What does it feel like exactly? Is it fleeting or does it stick around a while? When are you happiest? How do you know?
 

I know that for me Happiness feels more like the culmination of other sensations & emotions that I experience – joy, contentment, harmony, peace, expansiveness, for example. And it’s not the absence of conflict, necessarily, but knowing that I’m connected enough with myself and that I have the tools I need to handle the conflict.

 
I invite you to explore your own happiness this week. Perhaps start by taking the survey on the happycounts website. Or perhaps use your own internal scale – your own Happiness Scale (there’s a blog post on internal scales here if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about). Whatever feels best for you is the perfect (and happiest!) place to start.

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