Embracing your emotions
Let’s talk about emotions.
We have all experienced different emotions from time to time as situations come along in life.
These feelings may range from being happy, angry, loving, fearful, sad, or just feeling plain ugly. The problem isn’t the emotion itself. We are allowed to feel. The problem is that we tend to ignore or downplay the emotion which makes it difficult for us to embrace it and work through whatever it is that is going on.
Instead of ignoring the emotion, we must get into a habit of embracing the way we feel right at the moment. Here are some ways to embrace your emotions:
1. Identify the emotion
Get into the habit of putting a name or label to the emotion that you feel. If you are sad, acknowledge your feelings of sadness. Embrace your emotions by getting comfortable with identifying exactly how you feel.
If it helps, try to call out the feeling. It’s totally fine to say, “I feel angry” if that is exactly how you’re feeling at that moment.
2. Welcome the emotion
Now that you have identified the emotion or feeling and given it a name, welcome it. Gently welcome the feeling and allow yourself to feel whatever is happening right now.
Take some time to sit with yourself before making any decisions, calling anyone, or doing anything.
Focus your attention on breathing and redirect yourself if your mind wanders off. Don’t settle for mind distracting you from your feelings. Give yourself enough space to just be.
3. Write down your thoughts
Journaling or using a creative way to get your thoughts out is very beneficial. Instead of keeping those emotions and thoughts jumbled in your mind, let them out.
Free your mind of any mental clutter that may be there, so that you can think clearly and get through whatever it is that you are struggling with.
Take a moment to dump everything that is on your mind onto paper or your phone’s notes app. You can even record a video of yourself talking on your phone. You have the option to delete the video afterward.
The main thing is that you want to make it a priority to release your thoughts.
4. Embrace failures
The fear of failing is absolutely real, but....we have to come to a place where we can accept that failure exists sometimes and that ultimately it's an opportunity to learn and grow.
Try not to let your emotions around failure cause you to give up on things that are important to you. If you need to have a good cry about it first, go for it. After that, you can start at it again.
One more thing, try to keep in mind that when you fail at something and then you try to go at it again, you are going into it with more experience this time around.
5. Don't pile it up
Try not to let things pile up before you decide to say or do something about how you are feeling. Practice dealing with these things on the spot.
This can look like recognizing that you are feeling a way and then taking the steps to identify the feeling, welcome the feeling, and write it down or speak it out loud.
It’s best to with how you feel right here and right now. It’s not fair to you and/or the people that are around you.
6. Keep in mind that there is no ‘bad’ emotion
All emotions are welcome. Even anger is considered a good emotion because it allows us to cleanse and fight for something that's important to us.
We often look at anger as being really bad, when in reality, it’s what we do with that anger that is most important.
Don’t run from it or deny it, no matter how ‘bad’ it may seem. We have to accept all emotions!
7. Be kind to yourself
It can be difficult to embrace how you feel when you are experiencing a strong emotion. After you feel a way, you may associate that feeling with your personal view of yourself.
For example, If you feel angry, you may view yourself as an angry person. If you were to rationalize that negative thought about yourself, you may find out that isn’t true.
Is that a nice thing to do to yourself? No. It impacts your character and confidence in yourself. We don’t need that.
You don’t want to imply negative thoughts or feelings about yourself. Instead, offer grace and be open to embracing the emotion for what it is.
Tell yourself that you are allowed to feel this way and then encourage yourself to work through it. You shouldn’t attack yourself when you are facing tough emotions.
7 ways to embrace your emotions
It’s not always easy to deal with your emotions. Everyone has felt angry, sad, happy, love/loving, and fearful before in life and everyone’s experiences may not be the same. I hope this blog post was helpful in showing you the importance of embracing your feelings.
Let me know in the comments below your experience with embracing your emotions.
