Why Learning How To Feel Your Emotions Is A Superpower
Most people in the self development world focus on mindset - positive thinking, setting the right goals, creating healthy habits - and the enhancement of the performance of the physical body. While those two things are really important I want to share with you today the real game changer of self development - your emotions!
The importance of understanding your emotions
Emotional development is arguably the most neglected area of the self help industry. We focus on developing our mind, learning how to form arguments and think about our problems in an effective way but our emotional self usually stays very underdeveloped. Most adults today don't know very basic fundamental things about their emotions, for example, which purpose they serve and how to manage them on a daily basis. But, emotions are a crucial part of our human experience - everything we do has the single purpose of making us feel better - and if we don’t understand and develop our emotional self our consciousness can’t progress to true adulthood.
“In terms of emotional development many people are actually stuck at a level of 3-4 years old.”
Most people are emotionally underdeveloped
This goes so far that in terms of emotional development many people are actually stuck at a level of 3-4 years old. You can most obviously see how people behave when they are emotionally triggered or are experiencing conflict. In such situation many people seem like they become children again - sulking, throwing tantrums, just suddenly leaving, blaming others for their problems etc. Those are all signs that someone is emotionally underdeveloped.
As you can imagine this leads to all kinds of problems in relationships but also in the workplace. It’s very difficult to effective collaborate with someone who doesn’t know how to react in a mature way when there is a problem - which inevitably happens in any human interaction - conflicts are simply a major part of life. And on the flip side - if you know how to manage your emotions effectively and how to handle conflict in a positive way you will get very far in this life.
What emotions are and why they matter
Emotions are part of your mind - body - spirit system. I encourage you to see yourself as a connected system instead of thinking of yourself as separate parts. In reality everything (mind, body, emotions, etc.) is intertwined and the different aspects inform each other very closely.
The role your emotions serve in this system is to deliver information to you. Who or what is sending this information? You can call this your consciousness, your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to say - you can also say it’s just your brain (although to me this is a reductionist, post modern way of thinking that doesn’t take spirit into account). But who- or whatever you think is in the driver’s seat of your life, you get information from there about where you're at on your life path - through your emotions.
- Connecting with your emotions is a deeply spiritual practice! -
Your emotions protect you
On the most basic level this simply means survival. Your emotions will always tell you when you're in a dangerous situation. For example, you’ll immediately get an emotional reaction when you are about to go into a dark alley, even if you're thinking about something completely different. Something tells you: “Oh my gosh, this is a dangerous situation” and the hairs on your neck will stand up or you feel suddenly really hot and your heart will start beating very fast. You’ll feel fear and you are on high alert. That's your emotions warning you. Another example would be when you meet someone who is in not in a good state of mind, you will immediately know that something is off and you will get some kind of emotional reaction - anxiety, disgust or wariness for example.
That's your emotions protecting you - even if you can’t pinpoint what’s exactly happening or if your mind can’t exactly explain what’s wrong, you know it on a deeper level. Of course this protective mechanism is also called your instincts or your fight/flight reaction and that is correct as well because motions are felt in the body through chemical reactions.
But is it then a physical reaction or an emotion? It’s both! This is what mean when I say your systems are all interlinked and it’s not helpful to think of yourself as separate parts. But it’s important to understand how your emotions are protecting you because most people have a very negative attitude towards their emotions and only every see the way they suffer when feeling overwhelming uncomfortable emotions. But if you want to develop a better relationship with your emotions, the first step is to understand how immensively they benefit you and how lost you would be without them!
For this you can watch my Youtube video: Emotions Explained - How Emotions Connect Us To Our Higher Purpose:
Your emotions and your higher self
But when we take this to a higher level emotions are how your higher self (your soul, subconscious mind, brain - whatever you want to call it) is guiding you along your life path. So, for example, when you've created a life that is completely out of alignment with your higher purpose you will probably experience a lot of really uncomfortable emotions.
Why? Because your Higher Self is telling you this is not where you're supposed to be, you need to change something! This is really clearly visible when someone experiences people burnout - you can often see that they have been guided to a choice point and they didn’t choose the path that was meant for them. So these intense emotions are coming along to shake them awake and to tell them - hey, you need to change something, this is not working for you!
“Enjoyable emotions are your north star, uncomfortable emotions are your guide!”
Emotions lead us to our higher purpose
So essentially what this means is that an important function of emotions is to lead us to our higher purpose! So it’s important to listen to our uncomfortable emotions, they are a sign that we have taken the wrong path and that it’s worth it to take a step back and examine if the life we have created feels right to us on a deep level. This is a process I do with my coaching clients and it’s amazing how quickly people reconnect to the intuitive knowing about what’s right for them!
We all have been equipped with a highly effective inner compass and unfortunately through socialising and ‘shame & punishment’ parenting we get trained to disconnect from our inner compass. However, we can always reactive it - which is what I’ve done in my own life and have the pleasure to witness again and again in my coaching practice!
Emotions make you aware of unhealed inner wounds
However, it could be that you are completely in alignment with your higher purpose and still experience intense uncomfortable emotions. In this case the emotions are informing you about unresolved emotional wounds from the past (childhood trauma) that you need to heal.
In our society we don’t understand the impact of emotional wounds yet but just imagine this: Even if you were a millionaire and you've created the life of your dreams life, if you have a broken leg and you're not mending it you won’t be able to experience joy, because you’d be in too much pain. The same is true for emotional wounds and just because we can’t see them on a physical level, it doesn’t mean that they are less severe than physical wounds.
This applies especially to outward boundary violations, which means the trauma caused by a lack of love and connection. These emotional wounds are as severe as being abused but for many people it’s very hard to understand why they feel so bad because the trauma was caused by what DIDN’T happen.
Feeling emotions in the body as physical sensations
How do we actually feel emotions? It always amazes me that most people can’t answer this basic question although emotions influence our life in such a strong way. Shouldn’t this be taught in school? Well, unfortunately it isn’t, so let’s get into it. It’s actually very simple, you're feeling emotions in the body as physical sensations (this is another great example of how all our systems are closely interlinked!). And what this means is that the first step in emotional training is actually getting in touch with your body! Because if you can't feel your body, you cannot accurately feel your emotions.
“If you cannot feel your body, you cannot accurately feel your emotions.”
If this is something you are struggling with, check out my free Feeling emotions in the body - Guided Meditation. This guided meditation helps you to feel the physical sensations of emotions in your body, which is the first step of greater emotional awareness. And when you do this regularly you will get better and better at pinpointing what you are exactly feeling, which is incredibly important both for finding your purpose and also to create satisfying relationships.
Because if you’re feeling low or stressed but you can’t pinpoint exactly if it’s anxiety, annoyance or disappointment it’s very difficult to know which is the right next step for you or to tell your partner how to get your needs met. Understanding your emotions will greatly help you to understand yourself and create a life that’s in alignment with your highest potential!
Become a stronger, more resilient person
Also, another cool thing about training to feel emotions as physical sensations in your body is that you become more used to feeling uncomfortable feelings. I call this emotional bootcamp and it makes you an incredibly strong and resilient person! Because, when you think about it, the reason why most people don't follow their dreams is not because they are afraid of a particular outcome to happen - but how they think this outcome would make them feel.
For example:
“Oh my gosh, I love this girl, I want to tell her how I feel about her. But I'm so scared of rejection.” So what are they scared of? They're scared of the feeling of rejection - not the rejection itself. Nothing really happens when you’re being rejected, it’s all about your internal emotional experience that you think you can’t handle.
Of course there are outcomes that are much scarier, for example taking a great financial risk in order to build your dream business. Yes, the business could go bust and you could be broke. But again, what are you afraid of? Isn’t it the feelings of shame, guilt or loss this would cause - rather than the financial ruin itself?
Imagine you knew that whichever emotions life would throw at you - you could handle them. Wouldn’t you just immediately go for whatever you wanted without hesitation?!
How to train yourself to feel uncomfortable feelings
Think about how many times in life you're blocked just because you're scared of an emotion. So, when you do emotional work, for example getting more in touch with the physical sensations of emotions through my guided mediation, you train your ability to feel uncomfortable feelings. Can you see how this emotional bootcamp would make you invincible? Emotional work is not for weak people! Sometimes I dream about getting a bunch of Navy Seals together and teaching them how to feel their feelings military style - I think it would be revolutionary!
“Risking emotional pain is necessary if we want to achieve greatness.”
But what do most people do? They are constantly running away from their emotions because they have never learnt how to deal with them. And this keeps them choosing a small, risk-avoidant life to minimise any chance of having to deal with emotional pain. But risking emotional pain is necessary if we want to achieve greatness! Any high achiever will tell you - ‘no gain without pain’ and that is as true for emotional development as it is for building a business or becoming an athlete.
We need to go through uncomfortable emotions in order to progress
But of course the goal here is not to deliberately create a life you hate or stay in situations that make you feel terrible - like keeping up a job that bores you to death for 30 years. But often we need to go through uncomfortable feelings in order to progress, for example, when you need to set boundaries when you’ve always been a people pleaser or need to create a radical change in your life because you’ve drifted off your path too far. This stuff is hard and you’ll have many intense emotions come up! Also, as mentioned above uncomfortable emotions also show us unresolved emotional wounds and we need to take time and fully feel them to be able to heal and integrate them.
So that’s it - you’ve reached the end of your crash course in emotions! I hope that it became clear that getting back in touch with your emotions literally gives you superpowers! They free you, guide you towards your higher purpose and help you create a fulfilled life! So change your mindset - your emotions are not your enemies, they don't want to hurt you. They want to help you, you’ve just got to understand their message and then your whole life is going change!
And if you need support in this journey, book a coaching session with me - I can help you to flow with your emotions, connect to your higher purpose and become a strong, resilient person 💗
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Develop the superpower of feeling deeply with my free guided meditation! Learn how to process emotions in a healthy and productive way instead of running away from them and receive the gift of your emotions - clarity and direction in life!
