If you’ve ever felt flooded by strong thoughts and emotions, then this one is for you.
Starting to create a healthy distance from strong thoughts and emotions is the first step to creating a more resourceful state where you can lower the stress response and work yourself into better feeling thoughts.
Today I’ll distill a practice I use to loosen the hold on these strong thoughts and feelings to be able to tackle the current situation from a more grounded, less emotionally charged position.
These two phrases come from the work of Susan David and Emotional Agility and they are really quite simple. Our tendency when we feel something strongly is to over identify with the feeling. For me and those I’ve worked with, being able to loosen the grip and see thoughts and feelings as an experience we are having and not something we are has proved extremely useful for creating a mindset that allows for more creativity and solutions to emerge.
The typical response to strong emotions such as anger would be “I am angry.”
Susan David suggests using the two phrases:
“I am having the feeling that…”
“I am having the thought that…”
Putting these two tools to use would look like this…
“I am having the feeling that I am angry.”
“I am having the thought that what she did made me angry”
Everyone’s experience is unique so try these out and play with the variations. You know it’s working when you feel the charge start to subside and you can see it more as an experience instead of a state of being.
I get deeper into this in the podcast, so be sure to tune in and leave a comment below letting me know how you’re going to put this into practice.
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“You are not your thoughts or feelings.”
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- How to Overcome the Voice of Your Ego and Embrace Your True Self with James McCrae
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