For some, the idea of owning their feelings is inconceivable. They prefer bottling them up and blame everyone but themselves for the way they are feeling. However, living life like that will eventually result in having emotional walls that prevent you from being vulnerable. And maybe, you are reading this like: hey, that is great, I do not want to feel like that; but the thing is that only by being vulnerable you experience positive emotions like joy, for example. Are you willing to sacrifice experiencing good emotions not to feel uncomfortable again?
One thing you need to understand about living is that if you want to enjoy it, you must experience it. So, building emotional walls is not part of it. You need to understand all of your emotions, as well as the reason why they start firing by external stimuli. In other words, you have to honor how you feel to live a better and happier life. Luckily, this post is all about the power of owning your feelings and how to practice it.
Why Is It so Important to Own Your Feelings?
As you may already know, we are emotional beings with the ability to rationalize, and because of that, emotions are as natural as breathing for us. In fact, our ability to feel joy and have a fulfilled life depends on how well we experience and express our emotions. The smartest thing you can do is to let feelings pass through you instead of suppressing them.
If you do it, emotions will come and go and will never get stuck inside you.
If you ever wondered why some emotions cause you so much pain is because of your resistance to experience them. Let me explain it better, suppressed emotions never go away, and the worse is that it can take years until external stimuli make them resurface.
We are taught to smile and fake happiness in front of everyone, even if that is the last thing we want to do. The issue with that behavior is that we are putting people’s emotions first instead of us. Do not fake happiness, instead work on recognizing why you are not happy, experience the feelings, and release them.
Something to keep in mind is that feeling awkward, sad, uncomfortable, or downcast is unavoidable. Though, you can shorten the time you spend feeling that way by acknowledging your emotions.
How To Own Your Feelings
It all starts by being self-aware of your thoughts and emotions because self-awareness allows you to identify the people and environment that trigger your feelings. But that is just the tip of the iceberg because once you recognize your emotional triggers, you need to experience and understand them before letting them go.
What that means is that you cannot let go of something you do not understand. Otherwise, you are not letting it go but bottling it up. Take your time to process it, write it down if you need to, but discover the reason behind that emotion.
For example, let’s say that you saw your ex-best friend early in the morning, and you have been sad and downcast since then. You arrive home, but nothing has changed, so you take your journal and start writing. Soon, you discover that seeing your ex-best friend triggered sadness and melancholia in you because you remembered the good times you had with her. And now that you know the reason for your mood, you allow yourself to miss your ex-best friend, and also understand that some things are not meant to last, so you let it go.
That is how you own your emotions. It is not about being ashamed or feeling weak. On the contrary, it is about understanding that you are an emotional being, and as such, you experience a wide array of emotions every day.