Hello! Last week we talked about the What No One Ever Tells You About Eating Healthy And Losing Weight That Sabotages Your Progress in four parts. Before you read todays article, I highly recommend you go and read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 🙂 If you read through all of those, and are now sitting with the idea that you have some uncomfortable emotions you want to work through, then this article is for you 🙂
Remember, you are free to move through your feelings at whatever pace and speed works for you. There is no finish line, and there is no goal place.
A conscious life means that you will be moving through different emotions and feelings as your life shifts and changes. The trick is to learn to move through them without resistance. When you are able to fully embrace and utilize your emotions as a tool to help you create a more fantastic, rich and rewarding life you are where you want to be 🙂 It is not about reaching a state where you never feel anything 'negative' again - but rather a state where you can use everything you feel to help move you in the direction you want to go. 
If you feel like your emotions are something you need to avoid, push down, eat away, drink away, distract yourself from or otherwise circumvent dealing with directly, it is most likely due to a fear that your negative emotions will last forever if you look at them. The real truth? The longer you avoid your emotions, the longer they last. Time will not heal them. Time will not take them away. You will not distract yourself for long enough to make them disappear. The longer you avoid them, the longer they will last. The longer your other negative habits will linger. The longer you wont be living the life you want to live - the life you deserve to live. One more time - The longer you avoid them, the longer they will linger. In essence you are creating your own worst fear - that your uncomfortable emotions will last forever - by avoiding them. So lets make a deal together that we are going to support one another through this. I believe in you. I know you can do this. With that, here are your 4 steps to dealing with your emotions, so that you can use them to propel you in the direction you want to go in life.
Step 1: Start Viewing Negative Emotions As Stepping Stones And Messages
This is my personal definition of emotional intelligence: To understand that all your emotions are there for a good reason, and that you can use all of them to help move you in the direction you want to go. They are all tools, guides and teachers. All emotional states are to be embraced fully. Right now, your negative feelings might not feel like they are there to help you. It may feel like the only thing you can think to do is to avoid them, run from them, stuff them down or try to drown them in some form or fashion. It may feel like if you were to sit with them, to allow them to grow that you will end up drowning in them. You may fear that facing your emotions will take you down and create a puddle of mush on the floor out of you. You may even feel like your emotions are there to drag you down, stop you from being happy and living your life - but again I want to tell you - your emotions are there to help guide you to what you want.
Negative emotions are guideposts. They are your most true and essential nature speaking to you about what is going on with your life. Your negative emotions are there as little alert signals, sounding the alarm that something in your life is off track with what is truly best for you.
In this moment, when you are feeling your more uncomfortable emotions or when you are thinking of feeling them, start to shift your thinking about them from feeling that are there to take you down, towards knowing that they are all there to help you. They are your friends. They are messages. Just this simple switch in thinking may decrease the intensity of your emotions because you will be removing the element of resistance, which tends to make everything feel so much worse! 
As you start this process, you may feel like you have a lot of negative or uncomfortable emotions to move through. I invite you to think of them as several un-opened e-mails in your e-mail inbox. Then move through them as you would a full inbox - one e-mail at a time. You can only tackle what you can tackle. Give yourself all the time and all the space you need to address each message. Again there is no race and you will start to feel better as soon as you start this. You wont have to wait until you have gone through all of your emotions before you can begin to feel good. Start with one. That is all you have to do.
Step 2: Send Yourself Love And Compassion
Next, send yourself love and compassion. What do I mean by this? Well, most people I know will start to feel negative emotions, and in that moment they will start to berate themselves for feeling. You may be thinking that you should be able to handle your life so much better, maybe you think you are being dramatic and ridiculous. Perhaps you feel like you should be 'stronger' and able to just move on. On the other hand, you may immediately jump to an emotion avoidance behaviour like eating, drinking, sitting down, watching T.V and so on. Perhaps you will engage in a behaviour you know has a negative effect on your life and then you will beat yourself up for doing that. 
You may even be sitting and wallowing in your negative emotions. Perhaps you are throwing a bit of a pity party for yourself. Wondering why these kind of things always happen to you? What is wrong with you that you just can't be happy? Whatever the case may be, send yourself love and compassion. You are allowed to be where you are, feeling what you feel. There is nothing wrong with you. Emotions are normal and natural. You have done nothing wrong and you do not deserve punishment. A Meditation To Move You Through: Step 1:
- I invite you in this moment, or in the moment you are feeling your negative emotion to start with step one - acknowledge that your emotion is there to help you. Recognize that it is a messenger there to help move you forward to the life you want.
- Then, sit quietly with your eyes closed and take a deep breath.
- Place your hands on your heart and tell yourself it is OK.
- Relax. Relax your shoulders. Relax your belly. Relax your legs. Relax your face and your head. Allow your body sit and let go.
- Let go of the resistance and the negative self talk.
- Give yourself permission to feel how you feel and send yourself all the love and softness and tenderness you can muster.
This step is critical to allowing your emotion communicate to you what it is doing there. You must create softness, kindness and gentleness. Love is what creates the environment for growth. Love yourself in your dark place right here, right now.
Step 3: Allow Yourself To Observe
Once you have relaxed and sent yourself love, you are free to stop. If that is enough for you in this moment please honour that. If you feel like you want to keep going, here is your next step. A Meditation To Move Your Through: Step 2:
- After you have made yourself aware that your negative emotion is there to help you, and you have made some fertile space for it to grow and communicate with you, just sit for a moment and allow your feeling to bubble up.
- Next, I invite you to create a picture of your heart space in your mind. This is your energetic heart space - your centre of love and compassion. Visualize that your heart space is a room you are standing in. Paint a clear picture of your heart space room.
- Now notice that your negative emotion is in there with you. See it outside of you as an object, person, colour or whatever it is that your mind creates. What does your emotion look like? Is it heavy? Is it light? Is it big? Is it small? Be as detailed as possible with this step. It is critical to make space. between yourself and your emotion, and to allow it to fully become what it wants to be.
- Allow your emotional state to be what it is. Allow it to grow or rage or explode or do whatever it wants to do - again as though you are observing it from an outside perspective. Take notice of everything about it. Paint the clearest mental picture that you can.
This may take some time and some practice, so do not beat yourself up if you can't get here on the first, fifth or 100th time. If you get stuck, just go back to step two and send yourself love. If that is as far as you can go right now, that is perfect 🙂 Move at your pace.
Step 4: Sit With Your Feelings, Allowing Them To Communicate With You
This is where it gets good 🙂 If you have been able to move into your heart, create love and compassion for yourself, and can see your emotion as a personification you are ready to ask your emotion what it is there to tell you. 
A Meditation To Move Your Through: Step 3:
- Simply stay in your meditation, feeling your emotion, seeing it do what it wants to do.
- Then open the space for it to tell you what it is doing there. Simply ask. Then wait. You can visualize yourself standing in front of it, asking it what it is doing there. You can simply energetically make space for it to communicate with you. Do whatever feels right for you.
- It may tell you want it is doing right away, or it may not. Again, this is a skill that may need to be practiced.
- You may now get some strong feelings, perhaps an image of a person or a situation, a knowing, a sense or some other intuitive hit that lets you know what the emotion is doing there. It may communicate to you with words/thoughts, or it may not. If you do not get words when you practice this that is OK. Words may not be how your emotions speak to you! Trust that whatever it is that comes to you is exactly what you need in that moment.
- Allow the communication to go on for as long as it needs to.
- Once you feel complete, be sure to thank your emotion. Thank it for leading you, guiding you and letting you know what you needed to know for your best and highest life.
- You can then invite it to leave, promising that you will head its advice, or you can let it stay and be. It may naturally decrease in size or vanish all on its own. Whatever the case, just know that whatever happens is exactly right.
- Start to draw yourself out of your meditation with your breath. Gently wiggle your fingers and toes. Move your head side to side. Then when you feel ready, acknowledge yourself for your awesome work. Love on yourself once more. Then gently come out of your meditation.
How did that go? Remember, take this at whatever pace and speed you need to. Then, once you establish communication with your emotions, be sure to give yourself room to act on what they have revealed to you WHEN YOU ARE READY. The real secret here is that you do not have to do anything with the information presented in this moment. Awareness is the most important first step. Then, give yourself room to process as you see fit. I truly hope that this is helpful for you. If you found this helpful, and feel like you would like to explore your emotions deeper, I have many more exercises and tools in my book, which you can check out here! You are worth the time and space it takes to do this. Sending you all my love. <3
