Circumstances are the things that happen in the world that we can’t control. Circumstances include other people’s behavior. Circumstances include what’s going on in the world. Circumstances are the facts of our lives. They are neutral until we have a thought about them. Thoughts are just sentences in our minds. There are so many of them all throughout the day. We have about 60,000 sentences that go through our mind daily. We want to look at those sentences individually, and we want to evaluate those sentences. If they have any subjective terms, any adjectives, any descriptive words, we know that they’re thoughts and not facts. Facts are circumstances. Thoughts, which are sentences in our minds are what are brain generates in response to the circumstances.
When you are going throughout your life, remember that. Nothing that happens is painful, nothing that happens is wonderful, until you have a thought about it. When you choose a thought to have about something, that’s when you’re going to determine how you FEEL. So often, I’ll ask someone how they’re FEELING, and they will give me their thoughts. Your FEELING can be described in one word like happy, sad, mad, anxious, fabulous, wonderful, loving, caring. Whatever it is that you are FEELING based on what you’re thinking, try to keep that to one word. The thought should just be a sentence, the circumstance should just be the facts, and your FEELING should just be one word that’s describing how you’re FEELING in this moment because of the thought you’re having.
Your FEELINGS will drive certain actions. Think about when you’re FEELING caring, what you might do, versus when you’re FEELING angry, what you might do. Those actions are going to be very different based on what you are FEELING.
Your FEELING is always going to create an action, an inaction, or a reaction.
If someone says, “I’m so anxious,” that would be a FEELING. The cause of the anxious FEELING is always going to be a thought. That’s why it is so important that you pay attention to what is going on in your brain. Because your brain and your thoughts are responsible for everything that you FEEL.
Most of us don’t keep an eye on our brain, because it takes effort. It takes effort to use your brain to watch your brain. Most of us would rather go into default mode and not pay attention to what we’re thinking.
That comes at a huge cost, because even if you’re not paying attention, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t thinking. You’re probably thinking on autopilot. If you’re thinking really positive, wonderful thoughts that give you great FEELINGS, then that’s a great thing.
Notice, if you present with a fact, then you want to look at what are your thoughts you’re having about that fact, what are the FEELINGS that thought is creating, and then what are you doing because of those FEELINGS. Be really careful here when you’re asking yourself the question. What do I do when I FEEL disappointed? What do I do when I FEEL depressed? Make sure that you’re capturing the action that is driven by that exact emotion.
When you spend some time understanding your mind, when you start looking at your thinking and you start seeing the FEELINGS that you’re creating for yourself and the actions that you’re taking because of those FEELINGS, it can be overwhelming. If you have a lot of negative thinking, you’re probably going to have a lot of negative FEELINGS in your life.
You might decide, it’s really frustrating to know that you have so many negative thoughts. Just be curious and compassionate, because when you start understanding your mind, you may not like what’s going on in there, but it means there’s so much potential for you to change your FEELINGS, and change what you’re doing in your life.
Sometimes when clients start looking at their thinking, and they start seeing all of the negative FEELINGS that they’re creating in their lives, they immediately say, “How do I change it?” One should slow down, because until you really see the current patterns, until you understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and the thoughts you’re choosing in a really compassionate and observing way, it doesn’t usually help to just try and thought-swap or just try and come up with a new thought and be happy all of a sudden.
It’s much more useful to understand the patterns, and see the effects of your thinking, and really understand it’s not the things happening in your life. It’s your thinking about the things that are happening in your life that are causing you to have negative FEELINGS. That can be alarming, but it can also be really liberating to understand how much power you have in your life and that all these things you thought were just happening to you are really not happening to you. You have control by what you decide to think about those things that are happening to you.
As we become aware of our FEELINGS, as we become aware of our thoughts and start paying closer attention, there will be a tendency to beat ourselves up because we’ll understand that our negative emotion and negative thinking is all self-created.
We start to blame ourselves or other people for how we’re FEELING and how we’re thinking. We beat ourselves up instead of using it as a reason to FEEL super empowered.
There is a huge difference when you decide that FEELING sad is what you want to FEEL, versus FEELING like an emotion is not within your control. If you FEEL like your anxiety, your frustration, your sadness, your loneliness, your pain is caused by the external world and you’re unable to control the external world, you will be tempted to escape how you are FEELING. You will be tempted to avoid your emotion because you will FEEL as if your emotion is being caused by the world outside of you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
If the reason you want to FEEL better is because you can’t manage your emotions, you need to learn how to FEEL a FEELING all the way through before you start trying to change it. Step one in managing your emotions is awareness, step two is being willing to FEEL any emotion for as long as it takes, and step three is to change your thinking.
Most of us have no idea how to actually FEEL our FEELINGS. Most of us have learned to resist our emotions because as children, if we had tough experiences that we didn’t have the emotional maturity to manage, the way that we survived was simply by resisting emotion. No one pulled us aside and taught us an alternative option. For many of us, we never really learned how to be present with our emotions. We only know how to resist them.
Our FEELINGS run all of our motivation and our FEELINGS run all of our lack of motivation. Everything we’ve created, everything we’ve done, everything we’ve put ourselves out there for is because of emotion.
A lot of people believe that FEELING an emotion means you need to react to it. They believe that if they’re going to FEEL anger that they have to act angry by yelling or throwing something. If they’re going to FEEL sad that they have to express sadness by crying.
The third option we have when it comes to our emotions is to distract ourselves from it. I’ve had a lot of experience with this by overeating and over-drinking and binging on Netflix. There are other ways of distracting ourselves from emotion that may seem more positive like over-exercising, overworking or being overly busy. It looks productive, but it is still a way you’re distracting yourself. Taking a walk or a bath, or getting a massage or a pedicure can be a way of not FEELING, of distracting yourself from an emotion, by not focusing on it, not thinking about it. It means that the experience of the emotion is being buried away, because you’re distracting your mind from it.
The last option is to actually FEEL it.
If we start judging our emotions, we will not allow ourselves to FEEL them. We will distract or react or resist them.
When I try and fight, resist, distract, or react to emotions, it always makes them worse and makes them fester and makes them stay longer. When I allow them and I am willing to coexist with them, they may stick around for a while, but it’s okay because I’m allowing them to be there and they usually go in waves.
Here’s the process broken down for you in detail of how to FEEL a FEELING on purpose. Number 1, be willing. Number 2, greet the emotion. I want you to imagine that you are opening your front door and letting the emotion in. You’re not trying to get it to pass by the door. You’re not trying to punch it in the face. You’re not trying to hide from it in the closet while it’s at the front door. You’re literally not afraid that it’s there. You’re opening the door and allowing it in. You’re saying, “Come in, emotion. If I don’t get to know you, if I don’t welcome you into my house, you cause me all sorts of trouble, so I will let you in.”
We need to open up and embrace and be willing to FEEL all of the negative emotions that we’ve been trying to shut out for so long because we’re terrified of FEELING them. Number 3, create and practice and rehearse positive emotions. The emotions that will help us create our dreams. Remember, our FEELINGS are what create our actions and results. So we need to be able to create a balance of FEELINGS that produce the life that we want to produce.
Once you understand your patterns, and are willing to FEEL any emotion, then you start examining and choosing intentionally what you want to think and FEEL about your circumstances.
You can go to a more neutral thought, and practice that new thought. It has to be believable. It has to be something that you genuinely believe, and it FEELS slightly better than the previous thought. As you practice that new thought, it can become more dominant than the previous thought. That’s how you move away from a really negative thought to a less-negative thought, and then maybe to a neutral thought.
When you change that to “I have a body” or “I have a healthy body” or “I have a capable body,” that’s going to change the FEELING slightly. It may change it to acceptance. It may change it to just neutral. It may change it to ecstatic, who knows. You have to check in. How does that thought make you FEEL? When the FEELING changes slightly, then the action is going to change. You may still overeat, but it just may be less. You may overeat with more awareness, or you may just stop overeating altogether, which then produces a different result, which will give you different evidence for the original thinking that you had.
The brain is looking for evidence for whatever it’s thinking. The brain likes to be efficient, and it likes to be right. When you start trying to change your thinking, you’re going to have this cognitive dissonance. You’re going to have this discomfort of adjusting from one thought to another. Most people don’t like the FEELING of that discomfort, and so they give up on trying to adopt new beliefs.
I want to offer to you that if you’re willing to go through the discomfort and you’re willing to make the effort, once you’ve thought the new thought and believed the new thought enough times, then it becomes the easier thought to think. That’s where you want to get with yourself. You want to get to the place where thinking really positive, nurturing, nourishing thoughts comes naturally. You can’t get to the point where that habit of thinking comes naturally until you practice it over and over and over again.
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