Feeling your feelings. When was the last time you did that ? Who teaches us how? The lovely Lorna Patten, founder of Open Up Communication shares with us a beautiful article on why we are not our emotions. I had never heard a message quite like Lorna’s. Her writing style is poetic and her tenderness will permeate your heart. My favorite teaching is to ‘let emotion move through you.’ Ninety seconds is all it has to take! Enjoy and leave your comments below.
You Are Not Your Feelings by Lorna Patten
No you are not.
And you are not your story or your suffering or your triumphs or your transformation…
You are not your ideas or your beliefs or your learnings or your failings or your mistakes or your successes…
And you certainly are not your feelings….
Who you are is the stuff of heaven, the magical, mystical, is-ness of the all of the all:
Who you are is LOVE…
Pure, simple, boundless, limitless, joyous, expansive, creative, powerful…LOVE
No matter what has happened, no matter how awful the particular stuff, no matter what you think or or feel and certainly no matter what others think or feel…
You are perfect love – you are.
And that can and will never change.
Simple truth.
Hard to live in this polarizing reality because you have mostly forgotten who you are and have spent a lot of your life fearing and feeling you are a great deal less than perfect anything, let alone perfect love.
And the truth is that is how you have felt….and the truth also is…you are not your feelings…feelings are not facts and none of what you think and what you feel is WHO YOU ARE…none of it, nada, nothing at all.
Let me say it again: Who you are is perfect LOVE.
What you feel often is anything but that. And you are not your feelings…you are the one who chooses to feel the way you feel. Jill Bolte-Taylor made the observation that emotion (energy-in-motion) takes 90 seconds to complete it’s journey though you and be done. If any feelings lasts longer than 90 seconds…you must be doing something to make them stay…you start to feel something, then you agree with whatever meaning you make out of the feeling then you feel it even more and on it goes…sometimes for a lifetime!
Yes, you do choose your feelings.
Now you may not like this or understand it…in fact I can hear the silver-tongued fearful ego voice in your head saying…”this is nuts, I don’t choose all my feelings, sometimes other people just make me feel stuff”.
No they don’t. No one can make you do anything you do not choose to do. You always have a choice even when you feel you do not. The truth about ‘I didn’t have a choice” is actually: “I did not like any of the other options so I chose the least painful/awful of what was available to me at the time”.
No matter what has happened in your life to date, the key to healing and restoring wholeness is how you deal with your feelings.
Who taught you how to feel your feelings?
Where did you learn how to respond to what you are feeling rather than react?
My guess is…no one did.
In fact, you have probably had no education or training in what feelings are, what they mean and how to use them as a resource for change rather than as a reason to stay wounded and suffering.
Consider this: How much of your life have you spent feeling that you are not good enough – not worth enough, or deserving enough or pretty enough or smart enough or successful enough or strong enough or brave enough or lucky enough or quick enough or calm enough or …just not enough?
Enough I say. Enough of feeling not ok, enough of doubting your own loving heart, enough of choosing the illusion of fear when only love is real. Enough of pretending to be who you are not when the truth about who you really are is magnificent.
Time to step-up, show up and start accepting the fundamental truth about yourself and what’s possible for you right now!
Step One: Choose to accept you are ok, lovable, valuable, powerful and unlimited
EVEN WHEN you don’t feel it. Let go of needing to figure it all out rationally and just accept that you are LOVE and let yourself BE.
Step Two: When you start to feel anything at all…pause for a moment, take a breath, get present in your own body, breathe, and let the feeling (energy-in-motion) move through you – remember 90 seconds and the energy will shift.
If you find yourself getting involved with your fearful thinking mind, tell yourself “this is just a feeling, it’s not a fact… just because I feel X doesn’t X is true, it’s just true that I am feeling X” and breathe…
Step Three: Choose how you want to feel, what you want to do next and how you want to
show up – then BE and DO what you have chosen. Revisit Step One often and Step Two as needed!
Top Tips:
Make colorful reminder cards and stick them up where you will see them every day e.g.:
- I am OK, I am lovable and I am valuable
- LOVE is always the answer
- BE Here Now
- Feelings are not facts!
- Breathe
Practice allowing your feelings to move through you rather than suppressing, depressing or denying them. Avoid direct dumping of feelings on living things…go outside and tell the dirt how you feel… it doesn’t care.
Keep a journal/feelings diary and regularly dump them out on paper and leave them there.
Remember to pause regularly throughout the day and breathe….and BE here now and breathe…
Whatever your story, wherever you are now, whatever has been before…you are OK, you are perfect LOVE and you can experience this if you are willing to accept your magnificence and choose to live into WHO you are moment by moment, one loving breath at a time.
PS It’s really very simple…but don’t mistake simple for easy. Sometimes simple is the hardest to do and yet, when you accept, surrender your resistance and simply choose to accept LOVE rather than fear…well it starts to get pretty simple!
Lorna Patten
Dynamic. Passionate. Loving.
Recognized as an expert coach, facilitator and mentor, Lorna rigorously questions the way things are, and challenges you to think differently about everything. She will confront you with breathtaking truths that truly are life changing. www.openup.com.au
Fore more on this topic, watch this short video from Lorna Patten, The Value of Feelings.
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