The previous 2 parts in this series of articles dealt with eliminating negative self talk and changing limiting mental pictures into useful ones. This article will show you how to transform unwanted feelings into resourceful states.
Here’s how:
Get to the root of your stress, tension, negative emotions and limiting perceptions by enhancing your kinesthetic awareness (how you sense your body). When you find yourself feeling distress, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and feel the sensations in your body. Take your attention off your thought-stream and avoid labeling the feeling or emotion, just observe your direct experience of it.
Negative feelings are a sign that your thoughts are in resistance to your current reality. Know that there is purpose behind all your experiences, if at least something for you to learn about yourself. This doesn’t mean trying to find the positive side to something, just look for how you can benefit from the situation, and its purpose will arise sooner or later. Then put your attention on how you feel and let it be. In this way you allow the energy to pass instead making it worse by trying not to have it.
As an example, here’s how to turn fear into excitement:
The actual energy we feel in our bodies that we usually call “fear” is similar to the energy of “excitement!” What creates the difference in our experience of the feeling is our attitude toward the feeling, our approach to the emotion. When we change the way we name “uncomfortable” states, the more approachable the condition is for us to feel, the easier it is for us to experience it – and therefore, the faster we move through the state to another condition that is more enjoyable.
Resistance is persistence, so if you want to rid yourself of unwanted feelings you need to welcome that experience and in so doing its energy subsides. So, if we approach undesirable states like crisis, loss, grief or anger with neutral labels like situation, sensation, energy, – we will be more willing and able to fully experience those states and move through them quickly and gracefully.
Discipline yourself to only respond to a situation once any unwanted emotion has passed. That way you avoid dragging old feelings into your new experiences. Unwanted feelings are a sign that your thoughts need to be investigated. Good feelings are a sign that you’re on the right track.
Now you know how to get back on track when your thoughts derail you.
Written by Jevon Dangeli – MSc Transpersonal Psychology, Coach & Trainer
