When I work with myself or my clients, in early days, we want to be coached to avoid negative feelings.
When we feel negative emotions, we catch ourselves and do our best to reframe the thoughts.
It works from time to time. But it’s also not sustainable. Often time, avoidance can be disempowering.
Why? You ask.
Because, what we don’t accept and push down, grows.
As much as we like to not be in the negative thoughts or energy, we can’t stop playing the events wishing to have a different outcome.
We always lose when we try to fight with what has happened (since we can’t change the fact).
Positive thinking alone doesn’t help. We know in our body what we believe at that moment. We can lie to others but not ourselves.
When we force ourselves into think positively, a part of us feels rejected. When we dismiss the emotion, it’s always there until we are triggered again.
In the process of moving ourselves to positivity, we often miss a very important step – acceptance.
The emotions that come up from various events reflect our existing beliefs. Our emotions are great signals of where we are on the journey and lead us to what we need to learn at that moment. It’s almost like a treasure hunt if we dare to follow our emotions!
Overtime, I learn to sit with the discomfort, accept it, and explore what’s behind it.
I gotta admit. It’s not fun diving into those emotions in the beginning, especially when our default is to avoid the discomfort. But I promise you – it gets easier and better!
Once I accept what just happened and where I am, I ask myself with curiosity – “given the situation, what do I want to create?”
This is NOT positive thinking because we can’t fake our feelings. We know in our body what we truly believe at that moment. We might or might not be ready to move on.
However, we can always choose what we do next.
- I can choose to dismiss all these feelings until they come back again in other forms.
- I can choose to be in my misery if it works for me to get more space and empathy.
- I can choose to accept and do nothing because there is nothing to change.
- I can choose to see the situation from a new angle and ask myself what I want to do with it.
- I can choose to think deeply about who I want to be and be that person now.
You see. There are endless options. Any of them are perfectly fine when we choose with intention. We always get to choose because we CREATE our life with every single decision we make. It’s that easy!
Love,
Wen
P.S. I’ve been busy with travel, workshop, conference, a book deal (will write about this soon), and coaching programs in October. I’ve been putting off a few things but the idea of creating a group coaching program designed for immigrant women leaders keeps coming up to me. I decide to surrender to the call for action. I’m going to write up something by the end of next week (putting it here to hold myself accountable! 🤓). If you want to hear more, book a time with me!