As a human being, you know all about emotions. You can go from strong to weepy in zero to sixty. Don’t forget to add frustration, anger, and bouts of sheer joy. It can be a veritable roller coaster ride; sometimes leaving you feeling as if you were never even strapped in tight.
However, if you change your view on emotions, you can change your life. We all have good days and not-so-great days. By looking at the value behind emotions and not being stuck in the mud with them, you can learn to navigate the tricky waters of this thing known as life.
There are three important steps in learning how to make your emotions work FOR you and not against you:
1. Recognize the Value of Emotions
When you begin to understand the true value behind emotions, this is where you gain your most power. You do want to feel powerful over your emotions rather than your emotions having control over you, don’t you? Emotions are a gift from the divine, a guidance system; however, just like a good gps (in this case, a God Positioning System), you need to know when you reach your destination.
Emotions are a tool that guides you; however, if you sit in an emotion for too long, then it becomes swimming upstream instead of easily floating down the river of life. Emotions are a valuable tool if we learn how to use them to our best and highest purpose.
2. How to Use Emotions as Fuel
There are a host of emotions and an equal variety of ranges of emotions:
- There is anger and there is frustration
- There is happiness and there is joy
- There is gratitude and there is sheer bliss
- What about frustration and impatience?
The list goes on extensively. Learning to use emotions as fuel is exactly that – a learning process. You can, however, train your brain to turn those fierce, negative emotions into fuel.
Take anger, for example. If you are angry about something, there are many scenarios and reasons why that may be so for you. You may have some old stuff triggered that does not have anything much to do with you, but you went ahead and made it personal anyway. Or, someone may simply get on your nerves because they do not do things the way you would do those same things. Probably, the most common scenario though is when something does not go your way.
This is a great opportunity for you to turn your anger into action. Turning anger into action is an excellent tool to compel and propel you forward. If something is making you angry, there is a good chance that an opportunity for change is somewhere in the mix.
Take the zest, the zeal, the power and the passion of that anger and turn it into action! Did someone just tell you that you live your life afraid – afraid of stepping out of your comfort zone? Go ahead then and get angry, but then get busy! Take action. Prove them differently; stretch yourself a little bit further in one area of your life.
Change direction – reset your God Positioning System. Tap into the will of God, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. You never know, you may wind up out of your comfort zone and into your bliss.
3. Put a Timer on It
When it comes to emotions, it is important to recognize that these are little clues and hints of something that will either guide us or divide us. Emotions are sometimes unsettled issues from the past begging for mercy to have healing. Additionally, emotions can be clues that something is not well in our world.
If you feel the need to cry, be angry, be a bit fearful in the name of caution, go ahead, and feel those feelings in all their glory. Do not, however, sit in them for too long. Give yourself some time, recognize those emotions, and honor them and then move on to your higher self. If you have to, go out and buy a timer – an hourglass filled with pretty pink sand, a kitchen timer, an app on your cell phone – whatever works for you.
Sitting too long in any one emotion causes imbalance, and whenever you are out of balance, then so is your life.
Get in touch with that emotion, put a timer on it, and then wave it a peaceful goodbye as you begin to recreate it into inspired action.
