Day 5: Allow the Feelings You are Resisting
Read
Once you begin to get familiar with the actual thoughts going on in your brain, your first desire is to change them. But before you can change them, you have to understand them. And you have to be willing to feel the feelings those thoughts bring up.
You may have many thoughts of self doubt. Self recrimination. Thoughts about your worthiness.
Go there. Ask yourself so what? What are you making that thought mean?
If you are thinking that you are not great at performing under pressure, you may be making it mean something like that you are not a worthy athlete. So then ask yourself, so what if you are not a worthy athlete? If you let your team down? Allow yourself to FEEL the feeling in your body that brings up.
Oftentimes, you don’t have access to the actual deeper thoughts you are thinking because you are unwilling to face the feelings those thoughts bring up. You have to be willing to feel any feeling to really understand your thoughts. And you have to understand them and accept them before you can change them.
A feeling is actually no big deal. Shame. Humiliation. Regret. Disappointment. If you let these feelings pass through your body, allow yourself to experience them, they often pass in seconds if not minutes.
It’s the RESISTANCE of the feeling that is so horrible and prolongs the experience. Most people don’t actually know what it feels like to feel a feeling. They only know what it is like to resist it.
Instead choose to open up to the feeling. Let it be present without fighting it and without reacting to it.
Reflect
- What feelings do you resist? Which feelings do you see as bad, wrong or ones to be avoided?
- Why do you think that? Have you ever tried allowing yourself to just feel it? How did that go?
Take Action
Spend 5-10 minutes downloading your thoughts in general or about a specific circumstance in your life.
Now ask yourself what you are making those thoughts mean about yourself. Write down everything that comes to mind.
Ask yourself how you are feeling. Write down every feeling.
Lastly, ask yourself what feelings you are trying to avoid. Write them all down.
Now pick one of those feelings and allow it to be there. Let it process through your body. This video will help you go deeper.