With all that has happened this year, my Dad never gave up on me. He continuously stood by my side, gave me moments of laughter and life, wiped my tears and gave me a shoulder to cry on, and would always try to send me inspirational and heart-felt articles and books to help shine some light on me.
A few months ago, he sent me this article “How to Work with Unpleasant Feelings and Stop Suffering” (author unknown), and I find myself coming back and reading it over and over again.
Hope you enjoy this as much as I did, and I hope you feel a little lighter and brighter after!
“In dealing with your feelings, let’s look at the good, the bad and the ugly. Odds are, you think of pleasant feelings as good, and unpleasant feelings as bad. This is something you’ve learned. As a human being, you’re conditioned to feel this way, so this pattern lives on as a belief in your head. That is, until you take a good look and see it for what it is: a belief, not a truth.
Now, there’s nothing horribly wrong with this. However, the notion of ‘bad’ sets up a whole pattern of responses. Here is where you’re probably going to condemn, deny, and resist your feelings– fighting with something that comes from inside you. Since we know that what you resist – persists, you’re creating a whole lot of suffering on top of an uncomfortable experience, such as pain. And, somehow your mind thinks this strategy is useful and helpful. But it never is, right?
So, what is another possibility? What else can you do?
Well, what if you can look at these feelings – all of your feelings, just for what they are?
For years, I hated cloudy days. I’d miss the beautiful blue sky – the sunshine on my face. A sky filled with clouds left me feeling heavy, unmotivated – maybe a little depressed. It was like the cloud cover meant it was always just about to rain and that would really ruin my day! “If only the sun would come out!” Cloudy days were never good!
That is, until I became a video producer, and learned what a complete and total blessing cloud cover was for an outdoor shoot. Clouds create soft, even light over everything. It’s nature’s diffusion! With no shadows to deal with I didn’t need to set up filters, bounce cards or extra lights.
My days as a video producer are pretty much over, so I don’t do outdoor shoots anymore. I’ve been out of the production business for over fifteen years now… and I continue to think of cloudy days as a good thing!
An experience that was– for most of my life– followed by unpleasant feelings of heaviness and nagging discomfort, is now associated with deep relaxation and relief. Now, I connect cloudy days with the warm memory of knowing that I’ll be getting though my day’s work with less effort and more fun – with every shot basically pre-lit for me. And, it’s never a real shoot day anymore! I don’t need a camera crew and shot list to enjoy the cloudy day. It just happens.
When you find ways to reframe your unpleasant thoughts and feelings, you make great strides to free yourself from them. However, this isn’t what most people do! Usually it’s more like: “I feel sad, there must something wrong with me.”
You have an intense unpleasant feeling or thought, and then you make a conclusion about yourself. You live the feeling as a truth, rather than just a feeling. This isn’t helpful, and it can make you suffer needlessly.
What if you could feel the feeling without the story? What would that be like?
To be able to say: “I feel sad”… and just feel the sadness. In that moment, with enough self-awareness, you might be able to notice your mind’s attempt to attach the feeling to something. Just notice that attempt, and just feel what you’re feeling.
As you notice your mind’s tendency to attach to anything it can find, you can make room for this not to happen. By witnessing your thoughts and letting them pass– like fluffy clouds on bright blue sky – you’ll be able to just feel the feeling… alone… by itself without believing it is true!
You can learn to make room for the feelings – to directly and deeply live the experience of what you’re feeling, no matter how uncomfortable and unpleasant that may be. This is something you can do for yourself, but you may need support and encouragement at first… with the ability to identify these feelings and articulate them.
Just on the other side of this process is where pain-free lives: not only getting rid of your pain and getting back to the life you miss so much, but to a deeper sense of yourself and a greater experience of feeling alive.
How to Stop Thinking So Much and Start Feeling Better
The key first step is: finding and feeling unconscious emotions. This is the challenge —the goal—something we go after, and often, it feels like a problem. Likely, it’s very different from anything you’ve done before. And so, it’s a challenge that has to be approached in a whole new way.
Especially if you’re very good at getting things done, an expert at making things happen. If you try to use these tools with this problem– the problem of thoughts you can’t stop and feelings you can’t find, it doesn’t work. That can be a source of enormous frustration.
The old way, the way you think things through, figure things out, and make decisions are useful to uncover new understanding. How you dig into process, into learning, expanding your awareness is through your thoughts. The old way is “I just have to figure it out.”
When it comes to connecting to your deeper self = which is finding and feeling unconscious, often painful feelings (sadness, rage, or shame), leading with your thoughts simply will not work! You are not going to think your way out of this one! Your brain got you into this. But it’s going to take more than your brain to get you out.”
Einstein said “We can’t solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
The fascinating thing about a Mind-Body Connection, is that you must engage in this process through not thinking, but feeling. Your thoughts are not the way. This means you have to quiet the mind—or at least put thoughts on the back burner for a while. You lead instead with your body, your experience, feeling your way into it.
Here’s where it’s helpful to ask ourselves the right questions: What is it to experience something… but not to think about it? How do I get to the experience – not just thinking about the experience? What’s it like to learn not through thought? Some call this wordless awareness, intuition.
The problem with over-thinking is that it holds you in a world of some false beliefs. Now, you can’t just stop thinking… so what do you do? The process of getting beyond your mind starts with observing your thoughts, without judgment. You accept them and you learn to see your thinking for what it is.
You are not your thoughts. You are the observer of your thoughts. That’s how you cultivate a deeper sense of self, beyond thinking. After you’ve observed your thoughts a while, eventually, you gain the ability to catch glimpses between thoughts. It’s in these moments that you experience the Truth: You are not your thoughts, but you have them. However, when you notice how much your thoughts run your mind and your life it’s more like your thoughts have you!
You can’t fight your thinking any more than you can fight with gravity. All there is to do, is sit and observe your mind, see what it’s doing. To sit, feel and deepen your experience of life is, outside of thought. Not below it, like drifting off to sleep, or passing out, but beyond it.
I remember setting a goal, telling myself: “I want to lead more of my life from my heart, and not my mind.” Maybe you’d like to ask what would that be like for you? To more fully experience life, to feel more deeply, and think less? You start by observing thoughts, looking for space between them. Listening to silence. Looking for stillness in that silence. In doing so, you make room for other experience: for feeling. For being. Not from, but rather beyond thought.
Too much thinking limits you to a world of mental concepts and abstracts. But you can relax and let your thoughts just be there, and look for space between them. When you do this, usually something else comes forward– sometimes a feeling– and often, it’s uncomfortable. Perhaps a little anger, fear, sadness, or shame… something rumbling below the surface.
If you’re not paying attention, the mind will dominate the experience with a kneejerk reaction: “Whoops! We’re not going there. That’s too painful. No thank you.” This is the mind’s desperate attempt to control, grip, and avoid; to keep you from feeling deeply.
And when you can see this happening– when your mind tries to stop you from feeling the smallest piece of unpleasant experience– as it’s coming forward from within, and you feel the feelings anyway… this is when you’ve stepped through the doorway into finding and feeling your deeper emotions. Learning to make the Mind-Body Connection, is the way to a happier and more fulfilling life.
Making the Mind-Body Connection
As you continue on the journey of becoming better friends with yourself, – your journey of learning to make a deeper connection with yourself, try to make a connection with your deeper innermost fears and emotions. Why is this important? Buried feelings never die. They will surface somehow, some way when we least need them to be in our consciousness.
Give yourself permission to find and feel your deepest feelings. Learn to quiet your logical mind and allow these deeper feelings to emerge. Listen and pay more attention to your inner voice. When you are uncomfortable with your feelings it’s okay. Share them with someone, if possible, or write them down. You can be sad, angry, anxious or fearful but it does not mean those deep feelings are true nor are they reality! Denying them or stuffing them down won’t help. They are very real and powerful but they are just feelings. They are not the real you!
Guilt, shame, regret, denial and self-pity are but symptoms of our old way of believing our feelings are the truth. We try to deny our feelings because our conscious mind tells us we should not feel this way or that way. We beat ourselves up again and again over feelings that we can’t control.
Remember, what you resist, persists. What if we just acknowledge and accept our feelings without judging ourselves, scolding or sometimes even hating ourselves? What happens then? Then our “so-called negative feelings” will lose some of their power over us. We can deeply feel them but we do not need to act on them? We can feel fear but do we need to run away? We can feel anger without labeling ourselves “ugly” or “mean.” We can make a mistake, hurt someone or have negative thoughts without torturing ourselves and wallowing in self-pity. If we hurt someone make a sincere apology and move on with life. Become a better friend to yourself.
What would you say to a friend who was thinking negatively? We would encourage them and try to inspire them with positive thoughts. Why don’t we do this with ourselves? Shouldn’t we be just as kind and encouraging with ourselves as we are with our friends and loved ones?
On Meditation
People have a lot of beliefs and stories about it. Not as many people I’ve talked to have any real experience with it. I often hear people say, “I just can’t meditate.” Probably what they really mean is, “I can’t stop my mind from racing.”
This is a problem that most of us have had at one time or another—whether trying to meditate or just getting through a meeting at work. Sometimes, trying to meditate can even stress you out and make you feel worse. Maybe this is why most people try it once, and never go back to it again.
I’ve experienced this a lot, myself. However, I’ve always been intrigued by what’s possible with meditation. I’ve even spent weeks at a time at ashrams (full-time live-in yoga retreats) where people dedicate themselves 24/7 to living a calm and peaceful life. These people are what I call ‘meditation professionals.’ I figured, if they can’t teach me, nobody can!
Here’s what I’ve learned: Meditation is not about learning to be a good meditator. (This was news to me…) Like most of us, I need to be good at everything I do. That, I found out, was setting myself up for failure. I just got frustrated with trying to clamp down my unruly mind… and it never worked.
So you might ask, “Okay, then what is meditation about?” Meditation is about learning to become better friends with yourself. Rather than doing battle with your thoughts, you learn to treat the content of your mind more gently, as though you were calming an upset child.
There is no ‘right way’ to do this, other than to stay with what’s happening as it happens, in any given moment. I was taught that whatever feelings arise when you’re sitting or walking (and there is such a thing as walking meditation), are exactly perfect for you—at that time.
Meditation is not about getting someplace; but rather, it’s about observing whatever’s going on with you right now… and allowing it to just be.
Observing without judgment and accepting without resistance—these are not things we find in our everyday thoughts. They are what meditation teaches us, however.
Here’s something you can try:
Just close your eyes and take three, slow, deep breaths—not like you’re going to be holding your breath underwater—just deepen the natural breathing that you’re doing right now.
For the next three breaths, as you inhale, think to yourself: “I’m grateful.” As you exhale, say, “for this day.”
Then, for the next three breaths, as you inhale, think to yourself: “I’m grateful.” As you exhale, say, “for this hour.”
For the next three breaths, as you inhale, think to yourself: “I’m grateful.” As you exhale, say, “for this moment.”
For the next three breaths, as you inhale, think to yourself: “I’m grateful.” As you exhale, say, “for this breath.”
For the last three breaths… think of nothing. Relax and simply enjoy the experience of being alive.”
- Anonymous
Have wonderful, beautiful week!