Tag Archives: feelings

What Are You Feeling?

Most people try to hide their feelings and the result is that the emotions come out sideways in their relationships and work.

Matt Lieberman, a neuroscientist from UCLA, says that by labeling our emotions we diffuse their power over us and they can become informative instead. Labeling works because it gets us out of our reptilian brain and back to the reasoning part of our brain.

You might have learned this in a parenting class–instead of trying to appease an upset child your best strategy is to help them identify (label) what they are feeling. This allows them to process it and rise above the feeling, rather than be engulfed by the feeling.

Well, the same is true for you and I. Although you may have been taught that you are too emotional and should get a handle on your emotions, that type of conditioning only makes you more likely to explode or react from an emotional space. It does not actually make you more rationale.

Emotions are indicators that can help us navigate our environment and make choices that will lead to our happiness.

They should not be stifled. Neither do we want to become victims of our own emotions to the point they have shut down parts of our brain and put us into ‘fight or flight’ mode.

When you feel angry and acknowledge it then you can look at the circumstance and make choices to ask for changes or remove yourself from situations that aren’t in your best interest. If you try to hold in your anger you are likely to stop listening to the mild messages until they become an explosion.

My experience with my own pent up anger is it always comes out destructive and it never gets me what I actually want.

Cultivate Curiosity

So in order to make sure I hear my anger, or any other emotion, while remaining in the driver’s seat of my life–I am learning to label how I feel and start to become a curious investigator of my emotions.

The more I listen to and ask questions about how I am feeling the more I am starting to make choices I like. By labeling how I am feeling it keeps me from diving deep into the feeling. On those deep dives I rarely learn anything that helps me react to my world in a productive way.

Labeling your emotions is a great tool. Try it next time life sends you spinning. Cultivate curiosity for how you are feeling and it can become a wonderful guide. Life is too short to spend it pretending we are happy when we are not.  The easiest way to make a life where you are happy is to notice what makes you feel good and what doesn’t. Then do more of what does.

 

 

 

Graceful Transitions of Seasons and Self

As winter storms start appearing in the Northern Hemisphere, springtime is beginning to bloom in the south. Cycles of life that we expect, often look forward to, and plan on.

Yet, so many other cycles of life–like children growing up, parents dying, and other passages–while still predictable are not always welcomed or easy.

Your ability to feel your feelings in these circumstances, while not getting pulled into a complete downward spiral, is the key to healthy transitions. I am in the midst of these transitions as my youngest child leaves home, I move out of our family home where I raised my children these past 18 years, and I move across country, embark on a new business venture, and start a new chapter of my life.

A passage in James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh has held me during this time and might help keep you from allowing challenging life passages to send you into realms of emotions that are hard to break:

“Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown away by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise woman, only she whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey her.”

Of course, I modified the passage to meet me as a woman and added emphasis.

I choose to control the storms of my soul, do you? There are definitely times in my life where I have allowed uncontrolled passion to make me lash out at others, unprocessed grief has run havoc on my life, and anxiety and doubt have overwhelmed me. If you are like me, these are not states you choose to experience. So why do we?

It is because we believe our thoughts to be the result of our external life, instead of something we have control over. The key is watching where your thoughts are leading and to be their master instead of them dictating your state. Does that mean you will never experience passion, grief, doubt or anxiety? Absolutely not. But it does mean these will not control you. I am learning to be master of my thoughts, and therefore of my fate. How about you?

 

Are You Addicted to Accomplishments?

Are you driven by checking off your accomplishments? Or do you find pleasure on the road to completion as well?

I recently learned that Dopamine, one of the key hormones we produce, gets triggered each time we have a sense of accomplishment, which can actually make us addicted to checking things off our lists because it makes us feel good physiologically!

I am a little releived to know my weird habit of adding things to my list that weren’t originally on it just so I can check it off is actually not that uncommon. The sense of accomplishment you get when you check something off your list gives your body a little zap of dopamine.

But the benefits from oxytocin–the hormone released at childbirth, nursing and every time we hug someone– actually last longer and has the ability to reduce addictive behaviors like overworking, shopping, or any other pattern used to get a shot of dopamine.

Isn’t that interesting?  If on your path to check off your next big accomplishment you spend more time connecting with co-workers, shaking hands, hugging, and being in relationship you will actually get the benefit of the dopamine at the end of the journey AND a wonderful happy feeling along the way from oxytocin.

“Don’t worry your life away waiting for the elusive prize at journey’s end. The journey is the prize.”

– Marsha Mercant – Actor, Singer, and Writer