Your emotions are your allies.
Emotions underlie everything you think and every action you take.
When you can connect with your emotions consciously and even have a conversation with them, they have valuable insider information for you. Learning to listen to your emotions in a culture that teaches you to ignore what you’re feeling may seem counterintuitive, until you stop to consider what feels right for you.
How can you know what’s right for you? By relying on your emotions as allies, by trusting them to inform you about what’s important or dangerous or worth celebrating, and by learning to listen to them when they whisper rather than when they roar.
When you get to know your emotions,
you get to know yourself.
I don’t have a fancy graphic for you of how your emotions work. Honestly, it’s beautiful and transformative, but it’s not a formula. You have to make space for your emotions. The closest approximation I have is a spiral, a shape that’s found over and over again in nature.
Meet your closest ally: Anger
You might not think it but anger has your best interests at heart. This wonderful, essential emotion fires up when your values are at stake. A simple way to get in touch with your anger is to ask yourself, what is truly important to me? The answer will tell you so much about yourself and your relationship with your anger.
Anger’s counterpart: Shame
Shame keeps you honest to the agreements you’ve made with yourself about how you want to be in the world; your expectations and intentions, no matter when you made them or how realistic they happen to be.
Sadness helps you let go
The job of sadness is release, to help you let go of all that extra stuff you’ve probably accumulated along the way that you’re not even aware of. The other side of sadness is rejuvenation, refilling your well with nourishing soul-bits. Letting go is a release, and it leaves space in its wake, space you can fill in the way you choose.
Fear keeps you safe and aware of change.
Have you ever walked on a regular route, even something as familiar as the path from your bed to the bathroom, and noticed something different? That awareness is your fear, paying attention to what’s changing around you.
Where is happiness in all of this? Happiness is the magic that arises when you listen to all of your emotions.
Happiness is the flow state in between feeling sadness, contentment, anger, confusion, pride, shame, frustration, and peace. Happiness is not a permanent state of being, and anyone who is happy all the time is hiding something. Having an array of emotions is normal and desirable, since each of your emotions has an important nugget of information just for you. If you chase happiness, it’s like choosing to see only one color in the rainbow, or to eat just one food. You miss out on so much, and the pleasure and richness of feeling happiness is diluted.
The key is to welcome all of your emotions as the allies that they are.
An operculum, the doorway of a Chestnut Turban snail.
Find out what your emotions are trying to tell you.
The Emotional Vocabulary list can help you flow with your emotions. Naming your emotions as you notice them gives you the power and choice of which action to take in response. Using your Emotional Vocabulary list is simple (not easy, but simple). Watch the video below for a quick tutorial.
You are always somewhere in this spiral of life, and while you will pass by the same point, you will never be in exactly the same place. When you flow with your emotions you grow and change, bringing new information with you so that you cannot be the same person you were before.
Using the Emotional Vocabulary list can help you sort out your emotions.