Photo Tengyart
Do you ever find yourself thinking “I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I need to snap out of it.”?
In these days when there is such focus on being happy and positive, you can end up feeling that you shouldn’t have emotions like sadness, hurt, anger or disappointment.
Guess what…it’s okay to not be okay!
Your Emotions Are Telling You Something
Emotions are data. Every emotion you have is telling you something, even the uncomfortable ones. Your key to a more emotionally intelligent and rewarding life is to heed your emotions and to think about what information you are receiving.
Emotions are commonly seen as positive or negative. For example, Happiness = Positive and Frustration = Negative. Labelling emotions this way can make things complicated, as negative emotions are often seen as unacceptable and unwanted.
Supposing you are let down by someone and feel hurt. If you start telling yourself you shouldn’t be feeling this way, then you are having feelings about feelings! Good luck with sorting that out.
Emotions and Needs
Emotions are data. Emotions are telling you whether your needs are being met, or not. If you feel joy when you meet with friends, you may be satisfying needs for belonging and connectivity.
On the other hand, if you find out that friends met up and you were not invited, then you can feel hurt and excluded, as your needs for belonging and connectivity have not been met.
Give Yourself A Break
When you are exploring your emotions it is important that you do so in a spirit of self-compassion. Self-compassion involves seeing all of yourself, even the bits that you don’t like, from an outside perspective, and accepting the reality of all of you.
Doing this allows you to be truthful about your negatives as well as your positives. Now you can get on with tackling the things you don’t like, whilst boosting the things that you do.
Exercise – Explore Your Emotions
The following exercise is adapted from Dr Hugo Alberts, founder of www.positivepsychology.com, and involves keeping a log for whatever length of time you want (I have suggested a week).
Some may keep it on-going, whilst others may explore specific events that unfold in the coming days, or that unfolded in the past. It is worth exploring both positive and negative events, the emotions you were feeling at the time and the data they are giving you.
Write down the significant experiences you have each day for the next week.
Classify each experience as positive or negative.
What emotions did you feel?
What do those emotions tell you about whether your needs being met or not in that situation?
What are those needs?
Do you see any patterns or repetitive situations and emotions occurring?
Are there emotions you are experiencing too much or too little of?
Do your emotions get in the way of you doing what is important to you?
What actions can you take to ensure your needs are being more adequately met in the future?
Wrap Up
Seeing your emotions as data and taking the time to attend to what they are telling you about whether your needs being met or not, will boost your emotional intelligence and make your life more rewarding.
As you explore your emotions and needs, be sure that you do so in a spirit of self-compassion, as this will allow you to be truthful and face up to all the aspects of you.
P.S. The above reminds me of a greeting that I saw recently. Instead of the person saying “You are welcome”, they said “All of you is welcome.” With the above exercise, try to ensure that all of you is welcomed into the process.
James O'Boyle MBA MSc
Emotionally Agile You Newletter - A smorgasbord of tools, techniques and scientifically driven advice to help you thrive.
Comments