When you had one of those days?
You know the type, you just aren’t feeling it?
You feel down.
Frustrated.
Maybe even a little depressed.
When I was much younger, I remember using that word a lot in phrases like:
“I’m so depressed today.”
And,
“Monday’s are depressing.”
This was something very different from clinical depression. That’s not what I’m talking about, and that’s not what me and my teenaged peers meant. Depressed was the word- but it was more of a feeling I was describing. My kids like to say “It’s mid“, or “meh…”
Some days I feel like these silver blobs in the picture above. Slightly formless and directionless. Those days happen to all of us. Sometimes we blame outside circumstances.
Maybe a launch didn’t go how you expected. Are you experiencing a transition in your life? Is something worrying you?
What’s in the news?
What’s in my future?
What did I do wrong in my past?
It’s easy to attribute this feeling to something outside of us. We can even find evidence around us to back it up. But I have to remind myself in these moments that, what is actually causing my emotions is the thoughts I’m having. Notice how our brains attribute it to something outside of us, which sometimes can contribute to or spur a thought. But usually it’s not the circumstances that cause us to feel an emotion.
It’s the way we are thinking about the situation. Good news, and also bad news. Because I get to decide how I feel. After all, emotions really are just chemical reactions inside our body.
As my brother-in-law who’s a doctor often says, “We are a complex walking bag of chemicals.”
Sometimes I actually want to feel like that formless directionless blob. I recognize those days too. I don’t actually want to be happy all the time. That would defeat the point of emotions.
They are really there to help us understand ourselves.
When we have an emotion in our body, that chemical reaction is an invitation to connect to yourself. What would this emotion ask me, if it could?
What do I think about the news?
The future?
The past?
Your emotions are inviting you into a conversation. Are you listening? I had a call with a client last week about their videos and the process they went through to record themselves. Emotions came up A LOT.
When we are doing something new, it feels different inside our body.
It may feel scary.
Frustrating.
Intimidating.
But when we breathe into the emotion, sometimes it changes. For me, scary is excitement without the oxygen. Frustration is anticipation minus the patience of breath. Intimidation is a challenge I haven’t yet drawn breath around.
Try this:
Ask yourself “What is an emotion I avoid feeling?”
“How would it be different if I added a little bit of O2 (the chemical abbreviation for oxygen molecules)?”
“Let’s see what happens when I add those chemicals into my body. How do those emotions change?”
I’m excited to see what you can create with those slight changes in your emotions and adding a little oxygen. Have a great week!
