Starting with the bleedingly obvious. How do you FEEL with your head?
You’re a human being, right? Sooo…living life is about engaging in a feeling experience with the world around you. We do stuff, we affect things and people by our engagement with them. Our feeling engagement is what influences us – we may love certain things or hate them, we may feel conflict or peace … either way it’s the feeling engagement that moulds our life experience.
So why then have we been trained to skip over the feeling part?
Wouldn’t it make sense to focus on that part and really ‘educate’ ourselves in it? Mostly, it goes something like this: event, feeling, think about feeling, think about how to change feeling, think about what we see and don’t like, what we have we want to change, think about getting alcohol, having sex, buying clothes, taking drugs. Think about how upset you are with your partner, your children, your boss, think about who your partner’s with, why they aren’t doing what you think they should be doing. Think, think, think.
Then, if you’re like me, you’ll start to research: how to fix, how to change, how to be better, think better, get … as… much… information … as… I …can so I can feel some sort of relief. This may even move onto finding someone to tell me how to feel better, an ‘expert’, someone with a degree (attained by thinking and accumulating information).
I’d like to start a new conversation.
I’d love to invite you to watch what you do with your next feeling reaction. I’d love to invite you to pause before taking your heart into your head and simply feel your heart. Simply be with the feeling and change the way you think about your feelings. Rather than looking to the apparent cause of the feeling, or what you expect the result to be from the feeling, look at the feeling itself. Can’t stop obsessively thinking, what’s the feeling? What is it your thinking is really trying to draw your attention to?
I’ve practiced living the other way around, which has been feeling much more natural for me and unfolds into a more permanent resolution of inner conflict.
My ‘How-to’ process goes something like this:
- Event occurs
- I have a feeling activated by that event
- I observe the feeling – for example, say I feel longing for something, I may notice I feel ‘a gap’ that the object in front of me simply isn’t filling (or maybe the object of desire is not in front of me!). Let’s call that an emotional need.
- Then I turn my gaze inwards with curiosity, looking for what I FEEL is missing inside me. I’ve identified the ‘feeling’ I’m missing – the emotional need (note: even though it may have been caused by something outside of me, my feeling is MINE to deal with) There may be a big aha when I see what’s missing,
- I generate love for myself – I FEEL compassion, support welling up inside, which dissolves the emotional need.
- Often, I can see clearly “ahh, this is not about them. It’s about the ‘gap’ (the emotional need activated) in me. I can do something about that!” what a relief! Then I act!
I’ve come to know that feeling, the emotional need or gap, in me arises when I separate myself from the wholeness of who I am. It arises when I’m not being the real me. If I’m dancing to someone else’s tune, if I’m not saying or doing what feels right in this moment for me, because I’m people pleasing, wanting external validation or trying to control people and things for my inner security.
Your feeling is your heart reminding you to come back into your wholeness.
To cease walking away from your true self and focus on walking towards it. Your feelings exist not to be fixed, but rather to show you where you turned your back on yourself – where you expected someone else to do what only you can do – meet your emotional needs. You are being called, by your heart, to investigate where you weren’t there for you, where you placed someone else’s truth before your own, maybe for money, love, security, to please or be accepted. (You might like to read “Are you an Emotional Hostage”)
I’d like to invite you to take your mind into your heart and experience the empowerment of living the truest, ‘mostest’ you that you can possible be. Be there for you and let me know how it goes.
Sending love,
Lisa x
Lisa Jayne is an Emotions and Relationship Specialist, Educator, Speaker and Author. She provides a systematic and actionable path to resolving the emotions generated by personal challenges, so mental clarity and feelings of deep connection can arise in their place. Lisa teaches her practical and proven keys at workshops, events, festivals and in the corporate arena. For more information visit www.lisajayne.me or email info@iamlisajayne.com.