Curiosity: What Are My Emotions And What Are They ACTUALLY Saying To Me?

Hello and welcome!

In case you missed them, you can check out:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Today, we're going to be exploring the deep importance of developing CURIOSITY in this life.


We’re going to be diving deep into what it really means to have curiosity and what it really means to USE that curiosity to figure out what our feelings and emotions are telling us, and how they are leading us towards true reality.

Curiosity is something that many of us have lost touch with as we’ve aged - and it’s one of the most powerful tools we have when it comes to understanding our emotions and understanding the world in general.

Developing that ‘child like’ mind that is inquisitive in nature is one of the BEST things we can do in terms of setting ourselves up for success in life, so let’s talk all about how to do just that!


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What Does Curiosity Have To Do With Emotional Mastery?

Remember - this series is all about learning how to have our emotions, and how to use them to help us figure out what’s true and what’s not true.

It’s about learning how to be with our anger, sadness, rage, fear, happiness, joy, excitement, attraction, repulsion and everything in between - so that we can use these tools of guidance to our advantage.

It’s about learning to FEEL what our emotions FEEL LIKE deep in our bodies (instead of just ‘thinking’ about our emotions) so that we can fully determine what their messages are.

Learning to take a step back from our automatic REACTIONS and RESPONSES to what we feel, what we’re doing, the stimuli of life and to our thoughts so that we can take a moment to find compassion for ourselves and then to find curiosity around what we’re going through is a MASSIVE tool for finally being able to break out of what’s ‘normal’ so that we can find what’s actually TRUE.

Curiosity is the PAUSE.

Curiosity is the SPACE that we need to create that allows us to step out of patterning and into actual awareness.

Curiosity is how we reclaim our humanity and our connection to reality.

So as you’ve been practicing the step of compassion for yourself from last week, learning to give yourself the benefit of the doubt when it comes to how you behave, what you do, what you don’t do, how you feel, what you’re feeling and what you’re thinking - hopefully you’ve been noticing an increased capacity to find just a little bit of SPACE for yourself.

Hopefully you’ve been noticing that even if this compassion doesn’t CHANGE anything - doesn’t change how you feel, how you behave or how you think - it’s at least providing a safe space for you to EXIST how you currently exist without having to feel SO bad about it.

Because remember, our culture has conditioned us to be in a constant state of self rejection, to be continually believing that who and what we are isn’t good enough, to be perpetually forcing ourselves to be and do differently - and this is like having our hand on the burner and  being blamed for the pain we’re in and the ways we trying to cope with and manage that pain.

How you feel and how you’re currently living is your current BEST strategy for getting your needs met and staying safe based on what you’ve experienced, how you’ve been conditioned and what you were raised to believe is and isn’t true.

Now for most of us, we fear that if we have too much compassion and curiosity that this is going to mean that we never change. We’re afraid that if we do all this validating and making who and what we are right now ok and safe, that this is going to mean that we never improve or change what we’re doing or how we’re feeling - and that this means we will then be stuck in pain forever.

We all perceive that the REASON we’re in pain is because of who we are and what we’re doing - because it’s really hard to see that in many cases what we’re doing and what’s actually happening in our lives ISN’T really that bad, it’s just the stories we’re telling ourselves (and have been told) about the circumstances that are bad. Many of us can’t see that what we think is the cause of our pain - our coping, numbing, self sabotage, our scapegoat behaviors, our ‘bad habits’ and our negative emotions and thoughts - are actually RESPONSES to the ‘normal’ way we are living our lives that hurt - and that the true root of our pain is the conditioned way we are living - not our reactions to it.

Taking this pause, finding this compassion, learning to be kind to ourselves - this is how we figure all of this out.

Being nice to ourselves, then learning to get curious is the way to figuring out what’s real reality, and what’s a story, what’s real reality and what’s conditioning.

You see?

Finding Neutrality:

One thing that may be helpful if you are struggling to find compassion for yourself, is to begin with looking at your ways of being, thoughts and feelings as NEUTRAL.

So rather than seeing them as good or bad - can you give yourself some space and time to simply observe them as phenomenon?

Can you allow a thought to exist without labeling it as a ‘good thought’ or a ‘bad thought?’

Can you allow an emotion to exist without jumping straight into trying to ‘do’ something about it?

Can you allow a feeling or sensation to arise and just WATCH it - see what it feels like, see where you feel it in your body, see what that sensation is like, notice what happens if you don’t do anything about it? Can you allow for a feeling to rise and fall naturally and notice that it’s just a feeling?

Can you watch yourself engage in a behavior or pattern, notice all the thoughts and feelings and emotions that come up around that pattern, and then simply allow yourself to say ‘ok, this is what it is.’

What happens when, just for a moment, you don’t RESPOND or REACT but rather just ALLOW what is happening to happen, without DOING anything about it right away?

What kind of freedom comes from just noticing and allowing?

Now from here, I again want you understand that this is not about trying to pretend that there isn’t pain, that there isn’t fear that if you keep behaving the way you are behaving or that if you keep doing what you’re doing that you’re going to be stuck in what you’re in forever. This again is most of what drives us - we see our actions, our thoughts, our feelings and our ways of being as being the CAUSE of whatever pain we’re currently in, and we believe that if we don’t change - and change fast - that we are going to destroy our lives.

We fear our emotions and our feelings because when we are in them, it can really FEEL like they are going to crush us, like they are going to take over, like if we don’t deal with them now, they may kill us.

This is all totally normal, and I want you to know again that you aren’t alone, you aren’t doing anything wrong, and it makes sense that you feel this way. I want to fully validate this.

And the reality is, we MAY need to change in the future to have a better outcome. We may find ourselves learning to respond to our feelings and emotions in ways that end up giving us more freedom.

But the WAY we are going to figure out just HOW to change, and the ways we are going to MAKE those changes without getting deeper into more ‘fixing ourselves’ to align with what we have been TAUGHT will make us happy/healthy/successful but rather going in the direction of what’s ACTUALLY beneficial for us - is to first slow down and get to KNOW ourselves.

We must understand WHY we’re doing what we are, what needs we’re getting met by engaging in what we’re engaging in, we must understand what our emotions and feelings are trying to say to us and we must get a place of actual clarity on what is and isn’t real in TRUE reality before we’re going to be able to make the TRUE changes we need to make.

Curiosity Before Change


Most of us have tried a million times to change - only to wind up not being able to stick with those changes or not being able to figure out how to make a change at all.

This is because we are working from self loathing and ‘shoulds’ instead of true understanding.

I know this can be REALLY hard to wrap the mind around. I know that in this world especially we just want to GET to the answer and FEEL BETTER.

We just want to make the pain stop, and we want to find the solution as fast as possible.

But that’s part of the emotional mastery journey.


Realizing it’s likely going to take TIME to get to a place where we really see, know and understand. It’s going to take patience. It’s going to take lots and lots of slowing down and allowing for a PROCESS to take place.

It’s going to take TIME for the curiosity to lead to insights and revelations. It’s going to take TIME to develop the compassionate witness and to be able to fully give ourselves the benefit of the doubt - especially when our behavior leads to painful consequences, when we have deep negative associations with our thoughts and feelings, when we have been trained that who and what we are isn’t ok so deeply that to consider anything else is just too hard, scary and painful.

Many of us can even THINK that we’re giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt, that we’re being curious, when we’re really just being inquisitive again with the intention of ‘figuring it out’ so we can change as quickly as possible into what we think we ‘should’ be.

It’s not easy.

So again, please be patient with yourself.

Don’t try to rush and give yourself lots of space and time to process this.

Finding Curiosity:


When you get to a place where you feel like you can BE with your behaviors, your thoughts, your emotions and your feelings without feeling like you MUST act or like you simply want to look for evidence to support what you already believe - then you’re ready for the curiosity step.

Again remember, the mind is going to have all sorts of stories and ideas about why you do what you do, what your emotions and feelings mean, what you should and shouldn’t be doing - and learning to take a step back, pause, witness these stories and NOT assume that they are TRUE is this next part of the work.

In curiosity, can you BEGIN with noticing the stories you already have about your behaviors, your thoughts, your feelings and your emotions?

What do you automatically think your behaviors mean about you and your life?

What do you think your feelings are telling you to do?

What do you think your emotions mean?

What are the narratives about who and what you are and how do they feel in your body?

Can you start to get curious about where you’re at right now in terms of what you believe about yourself and what you believe about your life?

What do your behaviors MEAN to you right now? What is going to happen if you never change? Why do you do what you do? What do you currently believe the answers to these questions are?

What are your emotions telling you? What do they mean? What will happen if you never change them? What do you usually do in response to your emotions?

What are your assumptions about your feelings right now? What do you think they mean? What do you think will happen if you don’t act on them right away? What do you think will happen if you simply allow them to exist - to rise and fall? What if you were to just open to them?

What do you assume about your thoughts right now? What do you think would happen if you had a thought and didn’t believe it? What if you were to question your thoughts?

Remember - most of us have our deeply held beliefs about all of these parts of our human experience - and we are acting on those beliefs and continually looking for EVIDENCE to support the idea that what we believe is TRUE - even if there is a lot of evidence in our actual lived experience that says otherwise.

Learning to take what we currently believe and perceive - and questioning it is a HUGE step into freedom.

So your next step on this curiosity path is - asking yourself the following questions:

What if what I believe isn’t true?

What if this isn’t reality?

What if this assumption I have is conditioning and not real reality?

Has what I believe to be true ever WORKED in real reality? Or does it just lead me in loops of doing the same things over and over again and getting the same results that I don’t want?

What are the actual outcomes of my actions - not what I want to believe, but what actually happens?

What if something that feels TERRIBLE in my body - a thought or assumption that feels heavy, dense, like a weight or like a chain, is actually NOT true?

What if something that feels FREEING in my body - a thought or assumption that feels light, grounding, steadying or otherwise like it’s creating some level of relief has elements of TRUTH to it?

Can you start with this?

Can you start with opening to the idea that anything that feels TERRIBLE in your body may not be the whole truth - even if it’s really FAMILIAR to you and feels ‘good’ in the sense that it feels like something you’ve thought and believed for a long time?

Can you start opening to the idea that anything that feels FREEING and LIGHT in your body has elements of truth, even if it feels unfamiliar and odd to you?

Can you simply make SPACE for other ideas to exist - to challenge the thoughts and beliefs you currently hold?

That’s all it takes.


Just opening this much.

What if what you believe currently isn’t the whole truth, and what if there’s something more?

And remember, this will likely lead to a feeling of ‘well if it’s NOT what I currently believe, then I don’t know what it IS and that is scary!

Make room for this.

Allow yourself to be in the not knowing.

Make SPACE for the SPACE in-between not knowing and starting to see new ideas.

THIS is the process of curiosity.

Are you up for it?


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Let’s take another break here.


Next week we will return with the last post, all about using our FEELINGS as guides.

I’m so excited to keep exploring with you!

For now, just practice some curiosity and see how you go.

<3

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