YOUR LIFE A-Z: FEELINGS

ALIVE!

FEELINGS

It takes microseconds to register FEELINGS within your body and those FEELINGS are responses to your personal biological Affects, empowered by your scripts (history and belief system).  The coaching process helps clients identify FEELINGS building an awareness of connection between the past and the present.  For instance, if you are walking down a grocery isle and you hear a mother shame her child by saying something like, “Don’t act so stupid,” at first you may just be annoyed at the bad parenting.  Being annoyed is a FEELING.  Depending on your own childhood history and personal experience with shaming messages, you may discover that in a few hours you are experiencing deep sadness or anger.  Sadness and anger are part of your nine-affect family.  At first you may not make the connection between your sadness and anger and the earlier grocery store scene.  However, if you will explore your affects you may come across personal childhood scenes where you were shamed publically several times.  Now, your system is beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together and your memory elicits other FEELINGS such as betrayal, hurt, and discouragement about your childhood.  FEELINGS are internal radar systems that help us live more in the present by being emotionally healthy.  When all of this activity lurks in the unconscious then often non-productive behaviors take over such as overeating, using substances, or checking out emotionally in front of the TV for hours.  FEELINGS are important to pay attention too whether they seem small like, “annoyed” or big like “betrayal.”  Make a pledge to stay connected to what you are FEELING.  I guess you could say FEELINGS are personal greetings not to be ignored.

YOUR LIFE A-Z OCCUPY

OCCUPY ALL WITH LIGHT

OCCUPY

Yes, it is okay to occupy the space you need and the dreams and desires you have.  Why dream if you cannot occupy them?  In this first few months of the twenty-minute coach, I have talked about action words that get us out of our comfort zone and into a mental, spiritual, and positive emotional space of action allowing us to use our own best resource, ourselves.  Thus it is time to move in and take possession of ourselves, our choices, decisions, and dreams.  If we are not getting to a space where our lives are producing what we desire, then we are not occupying the decisions that we need to be making.  We are wishing, but wishing changes nothing.  By now we are old enough to know that Santa Claus does not exist.  Thus, the only way we are going to get what we want is to take the risk to move in the territory we want and set up camp.  That means we disable negative thinking and enable positive action.  I mean think about it, positive thinking helps us feel better, but it does not get the job done.  Action gets the job done.  To occupy the territory (goal or dream) that you desire requires responsibility.  You are head of state and you have to delegate jobs to your brain, body, and spirit.  To think about meditation, yoga, health, is not the same as doing something.  To occupy is to act. To act is to be responsible.  You cannot occupy your dream unless you act with sole responsibility.  It is up to you!

It is time for an Emotional Health Check-Up!

Do you need an Emotional-Health Check-Up?


Medical and dental offices always are reminding you that it is time for your annual check-up whether that is your annual physical, annual mammogram, annual Pap smear, prostate, or colonoscopy. Medical doctors see a need to snoop around in your body and make sure that those things we cannot see with our naked eye are still in proper and healthy working order. Dentists do the same thing. For people like me that hate to floss, dentists want me to clean my teeth with a hygienist every three months. My accountant wants to take an annual look at my taxes and if I had a financial advisor he/she would want to sit down with me once a year, and my attorney wants to make sure my will is up to date.

So, what about your mental health? What if we changed the term from mental health to emotional health? Is the word emotional health, more palatable to you? Or have you been raised to believe that the only way to be in life is stoic, non-emotional. Or, do you think if you use a coach or psychotherapist that you are weak? Why is it shameful to make an appointment get an annual “how’s my life” check-up? It usually feels better to talk about what is going on in your life, what hurts, what is working, what you want to make different this year? Why is that you have to wait until the emotional hurt is a full blown bleed that needs a triple by-pass on your anxiety, depression, and adjustment scales before you take better care of yourself?

I would like to offer you a different way of looking at your mental health. I would like you to take a moment and challenge your thinking. If you are wondering if this is all there is or if you are wishing that life were just a bit more interesting, then perhaps you are settling for the status quo of the day-to-day humdrum. When one day of humdrum leads to another day of humdrum then you are likely to become humdrum yourself. Who wants to humdrum? However if the word dynamic or vibrant just do not appeal to you perhaps you are more than humdrum, perhaps you are depressed. Who does not want to vibrant, to squeeze every positive moment and encounter out of life that they can?

There are several ways to think about your emotional well –being. Here is a checklist of five. If you check three out of five it might be time for you to call a psychotherapist, coach, or psychologists and see what is happening beneath your happiness bar.

1. Do you worry about the things that you have no control over? For instance, do you worry about “what-if” I am laid off from my job rather than having a plan B in case you do?

2. Are you more argumentative or negative than usual?

3. Are you more indecisive than usual, even down to where you can’t decide to what to wear or eat?

4. Do you find yourself daydreaming about what you wish your life were like?

5. Do you feel a sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction?

If you find these questions thought provoking, perhaps it is time to call me or someone else, sit down and have a discussion with them about what is going on with your life. Also, there are various psychological tests available to help you and your therapist figure out what might be percolating underneath the surface. Sometimes, emotional health determinates so slowly we don’t even notice that our life is changing negatively. Testing is a good way to obtain a fair and objective read about what is going on with you.

My challenge is that you make your emotional health a priority on a day –to- day basis. You count.