When your feelings hurt, it doesn’t feel great.
It can be tough to manage emotions like anxiety, overwhelm, and stress.
And on top of it all, you’re trying to live your best life.
But, what’s the one “secret” to living a full, great life?
Being able to manage your emotions.
On one hand, you have sensations, which start in your body and move to your mind. You’re not able to control these, since they typically happen to you.
On the other hand, you have feelings, which start in your mind and move to your body. You’re able to control these, since they start with a thought. They’re sentences in your mind that you initiate.
Now, what does it mean to have your feelings hurt literally and experience them as painful?
You would describe it as uncomfortable. Sometimes you would describe it as excruciating. Sometimes you would describe it as mildly annoying.
Anything on that negative side of emotion is what we’re going to be talking about in this article, so you can manage emotions and experience a full life.
Stop Getting Rid of Your Negative Emotions
You should get rid of your negative emotions, right?
You should not have to experience them.
Fewer negative emotions mean more positive ones.
Not quite.
The first assumption that people get wrong is that they have to “get rid” of negative emotions to experience a full life.
The opposite is true.
When you are feeling a negative emotion, when you are accessing or creating a negative emotion within your body, the goal is not to retract from it or try to stop it from happening..
The goal is to move through it, so you can access it, and let it vibrate through, and release it.
Because if you try to avoid it, the negative emotion will return.
You end up with a very small life when you have an agenda to not feel pain, to avoid pain, or avoiding hurt.
Avoidance equals atrophy.
Embracing equals evolution and expansion.
You may ask yourself:
“What do I do when it hurts?”
The immediate answer is to let it hurt.
Feel it in your body and stop trying to resist the hurt. Stop trying to resist pain. Stop trying to avoid discomfort. Let that feeling hurt for as long as it needs to hurt.
This is one of the secrets of being human.
How to Allow Pain
This is one of the most important skills you can learn:
How to allow pain.
Allow it to hurt without reacting, resisting, and buffering.
There’s a really important distinction that you must make when you’re accessing and feeling your own pain.
When you have a negative emotional feeling, it is because a thought caused it.
You’re thinking a thought, and then you’re feeling pain.
This is different from the thoughts you have about your pain.
When we judge our pain and beat ourselves up for our pain, avoid our pain, and buffer our pain, we create unnecessary suffering. This judgment creates more pain than we have to suffer in the first place.
When we allow for pain in our lives, we actually reduce our suffering.
When we open up to the possibility and let pain be what it is, we reduce our suffering by moving toward it, not away from it.
Embracing the suffering opens you up.
If it hurts, let it hurt.
Let it burn.
Let it go.
Allow it.
Feel it.
Whatever you’re feeling, let it be. Be the observer of it. Notice where it is and how it feels in your body.
Is it a heavy purse on your shoulder?
Is it a sinking dark inky weight in your stomach?
Is it a buzzing fear of anxiety?
Is it a face crunching, burning sensation of shame?
When you can describe your pain in words without judgment, when you can allow it and feel it and notice it without judgment, you become more of who you are.
You become stronger.
You become more aware.
You become more tuned in and turned on with your life when you allow your pain.
Allow this emotional pain to be here for as long as it needs to be here.
You Create Your Own Emotional Pain
Remember that you are the one creating your emotional pain with your thoughts.
So when we tell people this, they immediately say, “Wait, I’m the one causing this, I don’t want to feel this, I’m going to change it right away.” And we always recommend to allow the pain before trying to remove it.
Then access the thought that created the feeling.
If you can change the thought, change it. This will change your feeling.
But don’t skip the part where you feel the emotion.
Because whenever you have an agenda of never feeling pain, you’re going to avoid your own brain and your own life.
And if you avoid your own life, you’ll never be able to create the life you can only dream of living.
Trying to reduce the number of negative thoughts you have shrinks your life.
Instead…
Embrace the negative so you can evolve and expand as a human.
If you’re struggling to allow pain and manage your emotions, then Get Coached is your next best step.
No more feeling frustrated, anxious, worried or unsatisfied.
Get Coached will help you manage emotions and discover how you can life a full life.