HOW ARE YOU FEELING?

Today I got to thinking about feelings. Humans are a very emotional sort, we have a feeling about everything. We all feel so differently and about so many different things. We allow our outside world to so greatly impact our emotional state that we can find ourselves riding a constant wave of highs and lows. When was the last time you looked inward to see how you really feel?


What we focus on plays a tremendous role in our constant state of feeling. Are you dwelling on the guy that cut you off in rush hour traffic or are you reflecting on how good it felt to receive a thoughtful text from a friend? How we cultivate our thoughts and the ones we choose to train our focus on create who we are on our deeper emotional level.

For years I allowed feelings of anxiety and fear manifest within. I would always think that happiness would come later once I worked hard enough for it, peace would follow and things would be better down the road. I wasn't letting moments of bliss to settle in my soul, I brushed them off as fleeting moments of things to come.  Little did I know that in every moment of everyday there is an opportunity for peace and happiness if I only acknowledge it. It has been there all along,  I just chose to focus on other things.

A practice I like to put into play is to heighten my awareness and recognize my feelings in the moment. Its a practice I need to do more often- I find it easy to do on the weekends when I am with the ones I love- so I am challenging myself more this week to do it continually. Not only does this work on mindfulness but it helps to reinforce those good feeling vibes.

And obviously we don't always have good feelings- last night I was suuuuuuuper frustrated because 3 things in a row went wrong for me. I was getting grumpy. I was letting that frustration take over and change my feelings about the end of what was a pretty nice day! Reflecting inward, asking myself how do I want to feel, I continued on with my night and made choices of things that I know make me feel good and are pretty hard to mess up! I worked out and wrote in my gratitude journal and went to bed feeling a lot better than I did 2 hours before. See? Acknowledge, assess, and refocus to what you want to feel. I could have stuck with the pouty grump feelings, but I chose to do things to lift myself up. Consider it the higher road for your emotional being.

So today I hope you take a moment to feel. Feel gratitude for blooming flowers, appreciation for the person who held the door open for you, peace when something that troubles you works out, and love for someone who shows you love. 

Over time you'll notice these feelings bubble up without effort and who doesn't want more effortless happiness and gratitude?? ♥