Exploring difficult emotions

We tend to post the 'good stuff' on social media, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, only it's not very realistic. In the interest of honesty and balance, here, this is me on a day I felt particularly excited, and then on a day I felt off and downbeat, much like yesterday. I'm happy with my life; I am fairly self aware, and I work with this stuff. But no matter how centred, grounded, or positive we are emotions are real and we're entitled to all of them. 

Last week has been an emotional rollercoaster and yesterday I felt super frustrated with how my bad mood was affecting every area of my life. I huffed and puffed to no end until I made the wise decision of taking the rest of the evening off to just be. And that's exactly when the frustration passed and my mood finally started to improve. 

The moment you are able to step back and observe your emotion without judgment, the moment you accept it as it is, that is the moment it shall pass.

A useful exercise if you want to explore what might be going on with strong emotions is track down. Think of it as an investigation, you are not aiming to praise or condemn, you simply work to gather information, find out. You could ask yourself:

~What am I feeling? What word best describes it? Where do I feel this? When have I felt this way before? ~ Acknowledge the feeling as it is ~ Identify potential triggers, both internal (for example your thoughts) and external (for example events) ~ Identify your role in the situation ~ Work out which of these elements you could change going forward . Through this process, what you're basically doing is engaging your problem solving, information gathering and decision making capabilities. As a result, you bring yourself back to the present moment and you have insight which can be used towards action.  With action, you reclaim your sense of personal power.