The 'in or with' of the feels

Your emotions 'the feels' – both good and bad – are one of your greatest living tools. The greatest life lessons are learnt in the midst of intense emotional elation or turmoil. When we deny ourselves permission to experience the emotion and explore it we stop ourselves from growing.

The balance lies in our skills to 'live with emotion' and not 'live in emotion'.

Live in emotion- you are owned by your emotions. You have surrounded total control to your emotions. It governs everything you think, feel, act, believe and do. The supreme ruler is reveling in the mayhem of chaos. All logic, reason and grounding are tossed out the window.

No matter what you do when you live in emotion- you can not escape. Its hooks are embedded so deep that you can't let go. Most of the time you won't let go.

You will ride the highs and lows. It will feel like you are being thrown around on a bucking horse.

What is the point? Why do it? Why not just stop?

That is live in emotion... you don't know the point. You wonder aimlessly through a confusing pool of mixed emotion. Then all the other emotions jumped in and they had a party. No one was missing out- and there you are in the middle. Swept along. Tired. Overwhelmed. Anxious. The party was fun, you were caught up in the emotion and then BANG- not so much fun anymore. But it won't let you go- the emotion has total control.

How did you get there?

Have you got like a lifetime to dissect this question? The truth is that you have probably been doing it your whole life. Then you wake up and want to just get off the merry go round.

I stumbling point- the thing that kept me chained to the live in emotion was this idealistic view of existing in a constant state of happiness, peace and calm. You ignore it. Run away. because if we sit with it it will take away the fake happiness that you tricked yourself into believing was the purpose of life. It so doesn't work. But you keep trying. You keep getting bruised and battered. You keep reliving the same emotions. You keep doing the same things. you keep expecting change.

You will be waiting a long time for those changes.... I bet you are still waiting.

Emotions are a minefield that we tiptoe through in the hope of navigating a clear and easy path. You use so much of your precious mental and physical energy in an attempt to keep the emotions at bay, protecting yourself from hurt, disappointment, rejection. You hold yourself to ransom in fear that taking a step will open the ‘can of worms’.

You are human. You have emotions. You can't be happy all the time. You can't be calm all the time. But you try. And you ignore how you truly feel. You squash it. Bury it. Tell yourself to move on. Forget it. You don't sit with the emotion and understand it. Where did it come from? What triggered this? Where in me is this sitting? What part of me is reacting? What else is playing with it. Does this serve me? How?

This is living with emotion.

Ask. Explore.

Define.

Understand.

Your emotions give you power- the power to truly understand what drives your success. They are your greatest tools in the achievement of your aspirations. Listen to their guidance. They will tell you the direction, the path that is right for you.

This way is not easy.

This way means you feel.

You experience.

You move through the emotion.

This way you don't get stuck in the emotion.

Emotions are a part of us. Try as you might, you will never get rid of them, control them or ignore them. No way around it, over it or under it. Just through it.

Emotions are your insight, you gut feel, your wisdom, your teacher and your student.

Live with your feels. Move through your feels.

Use them to power you.

To energise you.

To understand you.

To evolve you.