Episode 6: Feelings

Hello and Welcome to the Love your Life Podcast - This is episode 6- Feelings

I hope you are having a great day and have taken some time to notice the 50/50 negative/ positive ratio in your life that we talked about last week. There has certainly been an opportunity in the USA to notice both sides with the presidential election.

Today we are going to be talking about feelings - so no matter what your ratio was this past week you are going to leave today understanding more about them than you ever have before. First let's clarify the difference between a sensation in the body vs. a trauma response vs. a feeling.

Sensations are physical feelings that start in the body from one of our five senses - sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell. They go from body to brain. Example is I touch the hot stove and my hand immediately jerks away with the sensation of heat before I can think about it.

Trauma response or stress response is the name for what we do when we are in Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Faun -These are automatic, instinctual reactions triggered by the sympathetic nervous system when we perceive a threat or feel unsafe. These responses evolved as survival mechanisms and are deeply rooted in our biology. They are often automatic and out of our conscious control, kicking in before we can logically assess a situation. A classic example of a stress response is a person experiencing intense anxiety and sweating when they unexpectedly encounter a dog after having been bitten in the past.

So sensations and stress responses start in our bodies, are automated and out of our conscious control - But A feeling which I will sometimes refer to as an emotion - starts in the brain with a thought and then moves through the body as a vibration. Remember, the Latin root for emotion - means energy in motion. Each feeling’s vibration is a different frequency than another - and we learn with experience to tell the difference between them all. When I am talking about feelings today and going forward I am talking about this definition of feeling.

I mentioned that there is a domino effect that happens when we think a thought about a circumstance in episode 3. The thought creates a feeling. The feeling becomes fuel for our actions - and the sum of our actions creates the results of our lives. This is happening over and over again daily with each thought we think. Thoughts are the catalyst for our results, but the feelings those thoughts create are big players in how it all happens.

Let’s talk about two jobs that feelings do for us.

#1 - Feelings are fuel for our actions and our inactions. The thought starts the energy into motion that is a specific feeling. I like to picture a sound wave going from my brain throughout my body. The specific frequency of that wave is a specific feeling. That wave of energy is the signal to my body of how we are going to act.

Whether it is something I do or that I don’t do. If I am creating the energy of excitement by thinking a thought like, I can’t wait to see what Santa brought! You are going to see different actions come out of me than if I was thinking - I never get anything I want. Which would produce an energy or feeling of disappointment and resistance as I come down the stairs on the same morning. One set of actions would be light and quick whereas the second set would be heavy and slow. It’s super helpful to think of your feelings as fuel.

One way to tie it into your physical experiences is to Think about how much differently you feel when you drink a cup full of caffeine vs. when you drink a cup of water. Each helps create a result in your body, but it’s a different result. Water doesn’t energize me, like a cup of coffee or coke does - and coffee doesn’t quench my thirst like water does after working out in the sun.

I choose the drink depending on the result I want.

When you think of feelings like this - you start to see that you can choose them instead of having them choose you. So many of us walk around experiencing feelings as foreign entities that keep tagging along with us with no choice or control of our own because we notice that we feel certain ways when certain things happen to us. But to move forward in our emotional growth and health we have to start seeing the connection of the feelings to the thoughts.

It is clarifying when you see a common circumstance like the presidential election this week producing so many different and polar opposite emotions in people. It is the exact same circumstance but there is not a universal feeling that emanates from its center. That is because there are millions of different people experiencing the circumstance and each one is thinking a thought about it that produces different feelings.

We don’t have to think of the feelings as right or wrong - they just are - But let’s give them credit for what they produce in us. Here is an example of how different thoughts about the election could produce different feelings that fuel different actions.

If you think thoughts like my neighbors are horrible people for supporting fill in the blank. You are not going to experience a feeling of love and compassion that drives you to bake cookies and sit down and have a conversation with them with curiosity. You are more likely to feel anger, mistrust, or disdain for them.

This will fuel actions like glaring at them from behind your blinds, staying inside when they are outside, not speaking to them, and possibly taking their yard sign and throwing it away when they are not looking! 

Whereas if you think something like What am I not understanding about the neighbor, sister, or friend’s viewpoint? You might muster up some curiosity and a feeling of openness that would fuel opposite actions from my first example - you might actually bake them cookies, sit down to get to know them, wave at them when they drive into the street, and open your windows and yourself up to go meet people where they are.

Different feelings fuel different actions. You might have heard the saying "It's hard to hate up close."? This idea suggests that the more we get to know someone personally, the harder it becomes to dislike or judge them harshly because we begin to see their humanity, struggles, and unique perspectives. I think it is a code for - I think different thoughts about people when I know and understand them vs. when I don’t.

Good ole Abe Lincoln said, "I don't like that man. I must get to know him better." His life forced him to figure out how to understand the thinking of good people north to south that felt completely different feelings and to then find a way through to middle ground.

The thoughts we think, and the feelings those thoughts create, will fuel the actions we take. It is a cautionary tale for us all because if we remain unaware of the power of these thoughts and feelings we will unintentionally end up hiding behind blinds and never getting to know people who have different perspectives than we do - and the divisions will only get bigger and bigger in our world.

Feelings are also constantly fueling the actions and inactions we take in regards to our health, our finances, our relationships, our education, and our work. It’s also a hopeful tale - because once we accept responsibility that our thoughts create our feelings and not the circumstances or people around us - we can decide what we really want to create in our lives and start to choose feelings that fuel the intentional results instead of the unintentional results-

The second job feelings have is to be messengers.  Each thought we think creates a feeling, and that feeling delivers the message of the thought to us. Since we think many of the same thoughts day after day, we often stop noticing them. But when we remember that each feeling is tied to a specific thought, we can use the sensations in our body as clues to uncover what we're thinking. Becoming aware of your feelings can help you identify your thoughts, offering another pathway to greater awareness.

An example is that you might not notice the thought that whispers to you over and over that your children don’t love you or they wouldn’t throw clean clothes on the laundry room floor for you to pick up - but you do notice that you feel blind rage when you walk into the laundry room and see the clean clothes you just folded thrown around and blended in with the dirty ones.

That rage has a message to deliver - it wants you to know that your children don’t love and respect you. When you slow down and pay attention to this feeling and receive the message you now have the opportunity to decide if you believe the message or not.

I spent years losing my mind when I walked into the laundry room - it was a game changer when I realized what I was making it mean every time I saw my efforts dismantled. Thank you feelings for the message! Turns out my children did love me the whole time - but we all needed a better process - which I was able to think up once I was not fueled by rage.

If you are like me, you never had a class as a child that taught you what feelings are, what they do, and how they help you. As a girl of the 70’s and 80’s I mostly only ever got the memo to control my feelings and not have negative ones. Ie - ignore - distract - and hide them - and get on with life -

I have now learned that feelings have an important role that helps me create beautiful things in my life. I use them to fuel the things I want to do - especially the ones that are scary, hard, and new- and I negotiate with them when they are fueling inaction and hiding that stops me from progressing. They also help me understand what my unintentional perspectives are which give me the opportunity to interface with thoughts and processes I have absorbed that I never had decided as a grown up if I want to keep believing.

Feelings can be big, loud, and scary - They tend to get louder and bigger the longer we ignore them. They have a message to deliver and they are going to do it come hell or high water. If yours are screaming at you, consider this your call to sit down and have a good listen to what they have to say.

You might not want to hear this, but your action item for this podcast is writing down what you are feeling and then getting curious about what message that feeling is delivering? I would invite you to notice what your top three most consistent feelings have been each night before you go to bed this week. Then ask yourself what you think they are telling you? 

It will be an enlightening experience. You might be surprised what your feeling’s messages are, and you should be prepared for the messages to not necessarily be true. That’s ok - apply the good old american freedom of speech idea with your feelings - let them tell you every single message they need to deliver without editing them - Just sit and listen and write down what they want to tell you.

Because after all I have shared today, the craziest thing about feelings is once you pay attention to them you set them free. Join in next week and I will give you the blueprint for feeling your feelings and setting them free.

You might be surprised how much more you love your life when you are listening to your feelings and using them for intentional fuel than you did when you were ignoring them.

Thank you for spending some time with me today! I love imagining who you are each week and considering what might be most beneficial to share next.

If it has been beneficial today, I ask you to subscribe to the show and share with other people who want to create more peace in their own lives, who want to evolve, or people who are working really hard to build lives they love but can’t quite figure out how to manage the circumstances they have been dealt.

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This is relaunching in December after a three year run, and then a pause and a revamping while I got the podcast up and running. You can sign up at rondaloveridge.com - and I will also link it in the show notes. The Love Your Life LabIt is the lowest price in the industry because I truly believe that life coaching and life coaching principles should be available for all no matter what your economic circumstance is currently. So for less than a co-pay for one mental health visit - you can have a weekly check in that keeps you moving forward. Check out https://www.rondaloveridge.com/RondaLoveridge.com and I’ll see you next week!