From the moment we wake until we close our eyes, we experience a variety of feelings and emotions. All are important and communicate helpful messages about the world around us - we must work to understand them and not judge them.
Numerous factors can trigger our emotions, including fear, happiness, circumstances, and even the weather can affect our feelings.
Quit treating your feelings as good or bad.
It is not surprising how many of us treat emotions as good or bad. The words good and bad are adjectives we learn soon after we are born as we begin to understand the spoken word. As children, many of us were labelled as good or bad, depending on our behaviour and circumstances. It's no wonder we use and feel these two words so automatically and regularly.
It's natural and often simpler to want to separate good and bad emotions - but if we treat our feelings as good or bad before we consciously feel them, we are judging the emotion instead of understanding what is causing the feeling.
We never want to feel bad emotions, so most often, we immediately attempt to dismiss the feeling as soon as possible.
Take the time to recognize, understand, and manage your emotions.
Typically, good emotions excite us and create an emotional high. Still, again if we judge our feelings before we feel them, we don't understand what is causing the emotion, and it stops us from using the feeling in a useful way.
For example, have you ever awoke to feel stressed or anxious (both are negative feelings), and when you attempted to pinpoint what was stressing you, you realized it was manageable and not earth-shattering? Have you ever had a day when you felt you could handle anything, but the day before, you couldn't, and you don't understand why? Possibly, it is because you were judging your feelings instead of taking the time to recognize, understand, and manage them.
Keep in mind that your feelings are there to assist you in understanding something important.
The next time you feel your emotions are taking hold of you, accept them and don't judge them; that’ll help you begin to get to know and understand them.
If we afford ourselves the time and opportunity to sit with the emotion and become fully aware of it - we can understand what is causing it. Continuing to judge our feelings prevents us from understanding them, it generates more emotions and reduces the possibility of understanding and working through the initial feeling. Removing judgment of emotions allows them to run their course and vanish and stops us from carrying unwanted feelings around.
