Hi it's Anton here and in this audio I'd like to talk about how to be good with any feeling.
So what is a feeling anyway?
We hear so much about them.
We hear them mentioned in the media.
Such a person was feeling this way,
He was feeling that way.
We talk about them all the time.
We talk about how we feel quite often,
Some more than others.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how we feel.
We talk to our partners,
Our families,
Our friends possibly about how we feel about different things.
But have we ever really stopped to ask ourselves what a feeling really is?
And that's at the core of this audio,
It's at the core of this solution I suppose I'm going to lay out.
And that is we don't spend all that much time querying what a feeling actually is.
We just take for granted what they are.
And if you stop to think about it,
A feeling is just energy,
Right?
So something comes up,
We feel it.
And if that's all that was happening,
If we were to just feel something coming up and not label it and not give it a story,
It would just drift on by.
But that's not what actually happens in life,
Is it?
We feel something and then we feel an accompanying story come up as well.
So it's not like energy that just comes up and we observe it and let it move on.
It generally comes with a story as well.
The narrator kicks in and starts to make meaning out of the feeling.
So,
Oh no,
Not that feeling again.
I'm feeling this way because of X,
Y,
Z.
You'll also find the thoughts accompany feelings.
So that's really the narrator or the mind or the chatter making sense of the way you feel at a particular moment.
And what's the conventional understanding around feelings in terms of what to do with them?
So the clue is in the last part I said,
What to do with them.
We feel that feelings need managing.
We feel they need coping with.
We feel we need to manage our thoughts and feelings in some way.
We feel compelled to do that.
But if we go back to the first point,
It's really only because we're making meaning out of them that we're telling a story about them.
That means it feels like they need managing.
Because remember if a feeling was to come up and we didn't have any attachment to it,
Any judgment around it,
And we didn't tell ourselves a story around it,
You'll be free to just go on its way.
Be it a feeling of anger or frustration,
Resentment,
Regret,
Unhappiness.
For example,
When a feeling of anger comes up and we attribute it to something our partner said or our children might have said or something we read on social media,
It's natural to connect it with that stimulus,
With what we often call triggers.
But if that was to come up,
If that feeling was to come up of anger,
Let's say,
And we just observed it and didn't get into or start wading into the waters around that feeling and start telling ourselves a story around the feeling,
What might happen?
Could it be that it would come up like a wave and then crash on the shore and dissipate?
You know how you might have been at the beach in the past while?
Or just by a river or lake and you see the water coming in,
Crashing and then dissipating and just moving on?
It's a little bit just like that with our feelings.
So here's an experiment for you to try.
Next time you feel something come up,
You feel a feeling come up,
Be curious about it,
Consider potentially observing it instead of reacting to it in that moment.
And this is not a new strategy or technique,
It's really more about seeing rather than doing.
It's really more about letting something come up,
Letting that feeling come up without judgment,
Without the story,
Without the narrator popping up and making meaning out of it.
But it'll be interesting for you to try that out,
To just sit without judgment.
Just let the feeling come up,
Let it do what it's going to do,
But don't attach to it.
Just be curious about it,
Observe it and let it do its thing.
Just watch it surge up if that's what it feels like and watch how it crashes on the shore when you let it.
I believe this approach could really change the world.
I believe it could,
Can and does,
Change people's lives.
I know it certainly did for me when instead of jumping on the narration train,
I instead just observe what's coming up without any judgment.
And it's so interesting because you can even focus on that feeling in your body and just by virtue of focusing on it in a detached way means it can move on so much more quickly.
But really the core is observing without judgment.
So I really hope this was helpful and I will speak to you soon.
Thank you.
