"Hey, listen to your emotions"

I came across an anonymous post earlier this year titled “Hey, listen to your emotions” that shook me:

Bitterness shows you where you need to heal, where you’re still holding judgments on others and yourself.

Resentment shows you where you’re living in the past and not allowing the present to be as it is.

Discomfort shows you that you need to pay attention right now to what is happening, because you’re being given the opportunity to change, to do something different than you typically do it.

Anger shows you what you’re passionate about, where your boundaries are, and what you believe needs to change about the world.

Disappointment shows you that you tried for something, that you did not give in to apathy, that you still care.

Guilt shows you that you’re still living life in other people’s expectations of what you should do.

Shame shows you that you’re internalizing other people’s beliefs about who you should be (or who you are) and that you need to reconnect with yourself.

Anxiety shows you that you need to wake up, right now, and that you need to be present, that you’re stuck in the past and living in fear of the future.

Sadness shows you the depth of your feeling, the depth of your care for others and this world.

Inspired by this, I’ve started a morning routine of writing down a list of:

• Everything I’m feeling

• The emotion name(s) closest to capturing each feeling to train myself to recognize them

• What each might be trying to tell me

• How I can act on each in a way that moves me toward my goals and vision for myself

Acting on a feeling may literally mean taking action, but in many cases it just requires acknowledging it, processing it, and letting it go. Via The Untethered Soul:

In the yogic tradition, [an] unfinished energy pattern is called a Samskara. This is a Sanskrit word meaning “impression,” and in the yogic teachings it is considered one of the most important influences affecting your life. A Samskara is a blockage, an impression from the past. It’s an unfinished energy pattern that ends up running your life…If old energies come back up because they were unable to process them before, let go of them now. It’s that easy. Just open, relax your heart, forgive, laugh or do anything you want. Just don’t push it back down. Of course it hurts when it comes up. It was stored with pain; it’s going to release with pain. You have to decide if you want to continue to walk around with stored pain blocking your heart and limiting your life. The alternative is to be willing to let it go when it gets stimulated. It only hurts for a minute and then it’s over.