Emotions are the chemical consequences of a past experience. What does that mean?
In our past ‘things’ happened to us. Some fun, joyous, and loving, leaving us with fond memories and a feeling of warmth. Others, not so fun. Scared, angry, doubtful, still leaving us with memories, but ones we would rather forget. Except we do not.
What we do very well is we like to relive it. We tell others about it. We wonder how it could have been different. We get angry all over again. We feel the hurt, the vulnerability, the powerlessness.
And all the time we make the emotion associated with the story stronger.
Once we have built a solid bedrock for a specific emotion, it starts running our life. Any, literally any situation, no matter how small, when we feel that we are being ignored, when we feel powerless, we might feel a victim, etc., will get blown out of proportion and now we will have an added story to hang onto.
In the meantime, we pump our body so full of norepinephrine, cortisol, and adrenaline, that we create a body addicted to these hormones. Why? The body becomes so used to them it no longer knows how to function without and it starts craving the hormones when we are at rest. So, off the mind goes, feeding it more, because the body needs a ‘fix’.
A vicious cycle, that we find near impossible to let go of.
Again, I ask – How emotionally fit are you?
Have you ever done a physical fitness test? You are put onto a treadmill or might be asked to do a rope skipping exercise? Your heart rate is measured before, again just after the exercise and then timed how long it takes your heart rate to return to rest. The quicker your heart rate returns to ‘normal’, the fitter you are.
That is how your physical fitness is measured. The same can apply to your emotional fitness.
How long does it take you to return to a place of calmness after a stressful situation?
We are experiencing a period of intense, and often seen as continuous events, that leads to stress, anxiety, and doubt. It might feel as though your every button is pushed to get a reaction. You might even ‘manage’ for a while and then you loose all control and you lash out. You are not alone. Whether we are aware of it or not, life as we know it is ready to change. Actually, the change has started, that is why we experience the turmoil - because we are fighting against the change. The natural reaction of man/woman? We do not like change. Change means we must face our fears and one of the greatest fears we might face is the fear of the unknown. So, a changing world brings many, many opportunities for change into the unknown. And wow, did the past 2 years bring change in abundance. This is part of the reason we see so many suicides – people find it very difficult to cope with this kind of forced change.
The way we thought and acted before 2020, no longer provide the same outcomes. Globally we are experiencing this. Nice on one side but testing on the other side. Nice, because we are not alone. On a level we are aware that every person is busy with a transformation. Testing, because we are all going through it at the same time – we are all scared and doubtful. This means we are not open to seeing things from the other side.
That all said, how much of your past are you carrying with you that will keep you in an agitated state for longer than required?
The moment we realise that past events had one goal, and that goal is for you to grow and transform, we can start the transformation. That is it. We learn from the past.
Instead of feeling scared, you had to learn to be more confident. Instead of being a victim, you might have had to speak up for yourself. Perhaps rather than feeling powerless, you could have learned where you power lies (within) and how to apply it to your life. The reality is that we focused on the negative emotion and forgot to learn the lesson.
The emotion has a trace – it has a chemical residue. The lesson leads to transformation, one of our fears. So, we rather feed the emotion.
To answer the question of your emotional fitness, you must take a look at the impact your emotions have on your life.
· How much is your life ruled by your emotional state?
· Which emotion predominantly is at play?
· How easily do you anger, go into doubt, feel a victim, etc.? Is it a knee jerk or does it take a little longer? How long?
· How easy is it for you to pull yourself ‘together’ or out of the emotion?
· How much time do you spend replaying every event that might have led to the emotional outburst?
· How addicted you might have become to the emotion?
· How often do you experience extended periods of love, joy, peace, etc.?
· Are you ready to take responsibility for your emotional fitness, or do you blame the world at large for your predicament?
Answer these questions for yourself. You will soon enough know how emotionally fit you are. I would venture to say, you already know. If you are no longer experiencing an instant reaction to a situation and you can remove yourself, observe and then react, you have gained fitness. Should you experience a negative emotion and you utilize that emotion to take action, and you let go of the story and the emotion as soon as you have acted, you gained fitness.
The biggest question is if you are ready to let go of your ‘addiction’ to become emotionally fit?
Going to the right therapist, life coach or psychologist will help you with powerful techniques to re-programme your thought processes and help you to detox the body from the addiction. There are so many different modalities to choose from, we no longer have an excuse to say that ‘it’ will not work for me. That in itself tells me that you are committed to your addiction.
Your emotional fitness will determine how easy it will be for you to follow your dreams, go after your goals and create the life of your dreams. Now that is a fitness to work towards and keep in mind when you deal with troublesome times.
Learn the lesson, let go of the emotion, and move towards your dream.
Sue Leppan
Transformation Life Coach
NLP Practitioner
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