Learn to feel your emotions and tune into joy.
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” ― Oscar Wilde
Life is filled with a myriad of opportunities only limited by your eagerness to anticipate them. When you allow your mind to imagine, you feel excited!
Excitement motivates and urges you to act, but what if feelings of doubt and confusion seep in and nullify your optimism?
How then do you reestablish your eagerness, so that you’re able to move forward with confidence?
Your choices are the key.
Change is the one constant in life. Unfortunately for most of you, the need for change breeds fear from the uncertainty that your choice may not solve the problem you face.
The ability to make effective choices is a valuable craft only a small percentage of people ever truly develop.
Many people will look to others for answers to challenges. Some of you will hopelessly ignore problems altogether and live with the painful consequences of looking the other way. There are even those that will narrow options down to flipping a coin, and willingly accept a 50% chance of success or disappointment. But where is the peace in that when your happiness is hanging in the balance?
This begs the questions: Is there a fool-proof way to know every time that your outcomes will be fruitful? Can you grow to enjoy the process of making a new choice for the sake of expansive change?
Your inner world has the answers.
Your inner world of thought is generated by two versions of you. The authentic you and the derived you.
Your authentic self is the deepest part of you – the part that speaks from your heart. There are many theories about where this part of you comes from.
Some say your authenticity is the result of your DNA or genetic inheritance, which is a part of your family’s evolution.
Others believe that there is a larger part of you, let’s call it the soul, that carries a blueprint. This blueprint speaks to the core of your beingness – the part of you that is meant to come into life to share a specific message, talent, knowledge, or all of the above with the world around you.
Regardless of what you believe about the origins of the authentic self, it does exist. That said, when you learn to go within and trust your impulses you will begin making better choices to ensure that your life outcomes feel good.
There is also another part of your inner world. This is persona or ego. Your ego is a self-derived projection of yourself – a construct – that you share with your outer world so that you will be validated and accepted. This also requires you to hide specific authentic traits that you perceive to be incongruent with your family and peer groups.
From birth, you begin the process of adopting beliefs and rules about life through observation and modeling of parents, caregivers, family, media, schools, religion, and culture, etc. This requires you to look outside yourself for answers, until eventually you forget you have an inner world that is capable and even more effective in guiding you. You place your trust and value in the counsel of others instead of yourself.
Why is this a problem? Well, when we live authentically, we feel joy. When we reject or ignore our authentic nature to please those around us, we will feel varying degrees of negative emotion.
Being yourself provides confidence.
The authentic self is where your personal power resides. When you self-direct from this inner domain, your strengths, values, and talents readily present themselves to you. You engage with life more confidently and your actions feel natural and effortless. Life feels good.
Whereas the constant drive to be what others prefer leads to aberrant behavior and feelings of powerlessness. You find yourself stepping into awkward roles time and time again. Resistance grows within you. You wage a self-imposed battle in order to live as someone else. Your inner world is fragmented and filled with inconsistent messages. Negative emotion is the norm.
Emotions are your guide.
Your emotions act as your internal guidance system by signaling you with negative emotion when you make a choice that moves you farther away from your authentic self. Whereas, when you turn inward for positive inspiration and choose from that place, you align with outcomes reflecting the abundance you were born to expect for yourself.
Remember, the authentic self wants you to expand your life. So, when you learn to feel your way to your best choice, life unfolds effortlessly and beautifully.
Many of you have been conditioned to believe that you must be a martyr and sacrifice yourself for the good of others. But how effectively can you support and help others when you’re feeling regretful, unappreciated, and taken advantage of? Worse yet, at a deeper level you live with the knowledge that you’ve agreed to be treated this way.
You always have a choice, even if you refuse to admit this truth to yourself.
Your emotions are a gift provided to you by your creator, evolution, or both. Regardless of what you choose to believe about the source of your emotions, like a tuning fork, they exist to guide you.
You have what it takes.
The next time you are faced with an exciting opportunity to make a change, notice your emotions, the sensations in your body, and how they feel. Do you feel excited and have an urge to move forward? Are you able to maintain that excitement as you act? If so, you are accessing and trusting your authentic self. If negative emotions such as fear and anxiety are replacing your joy, your limiting thoughts are the product of your habitual ego mind. Recognize that and reframe your thoughts until you once again find your excitement and align with your authentic self.
Positive emotion and excitement should be your priority, don’t accept the fallacy that life has to be hard. Make it your priority to align with your authentic self. Yes, living this way requires practice and patience to recondition yourself. Give it a try and see what happens over time. Appreciate yourself and remember that you are the best source of wisdom for your own life. Others can provide input, but the final decision should always be yours.
Your emotions are your best source of guidance for what that final decision should be!
Download my free Happy Ways of Being guide and learn how to elevate and maintain positive feelings through journaling.