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Feel Those Feelings and Develop Emotional Intelligence.
By Adam Eason
There is an old joke about a man who is walking home along
the street in the early hours of a weekend and he sees
another man, who is obviously very drunk, on his hands and
knees, searching for something. ¡°What are you looking for?¡±
he asks the drunked man. ¡°My house keys¡± the man replies.
¡°Where did you drop them?¡± he asks. ¡°Two streets away¡± he
slurs. ¡°Why aren¡¯t you looking there then¡±, he asks, puzzled.
¡°Because the light¡¯s much better here.¡±
Now, during my initial training and learning, I was quite
unsure about myself in many ways! Yes, even me, some may
say that I have gone rather extremely the other direction now!
I tried lots of the things I learned with self-hypnosis and
different aspects of the standard NLP approaches to
overcome this uncertainty and lack of confidence in my ability
to do what I wanted to do, but none of them seemed to work
for me. I still got the butterflies in my tummy and lacked a real
sense of confidence, in fact I felt nervous about doing what I
wanted to do (what if it all went wrong and I failed!!). I had
spent some time fighting the anxious feeling, then one day I
said to myself ¡°Adam, just experience it, stop resisting it, stop
fighting it; just feel it¡± and an amazing thing happened. I felt
the nervous feeling, then it disappeared! I was shocked. All
those previous months and years of fighting it, and all that I
really needed to do was to feel it. I acknowledged it and
stopped resisting.
Doing this is to heighten your own awareness of your own
map of the world.
One of the presuppositions of NLP is ¡®meet people at their
map of the world¡¯. This is a process of seeing things from their
point of view or being aware of their experience and is a far
depper discussion for another time. Now, I was fine at doing
this with other people and my successful therapeutic
consultancy is over the years has been solid proof to me of
that, but before all that started, all those years ago, I suddenly
realised that I had not been meeting myself at my map of the
world. Whenever I felt feelings that I did not like, I would
struggle, resist and fight them, and you know what they say:
When you fight with yourself, someone always loses, and that
someone is you. So I decided to stop fighting and resisting
my feelings and instead to acknowledge them and start
working with them.
WHere am I going with all this then? If there is a feeling that
you find unpleasant or that seems unhelpful or that you just
plain don¡¯t like, firstly, map out the feeling. This is just a
process of identifying where in your body that feeling is, really
locate that feeling in your body. Now think about what size it
is, how it moves; I used to have a fluttering feeling in the pit of
my tummy that as I reisted it more would spread into my
chest and back down again. Really be aware of the feeling
physiologically, even think about what temperature it is, you
can even take it a step further and think about what colour it
would be if it had one etc.
While most people profess to know what they are feeling, you
would be amazed at how many people have not got in the
slightest bit acquainted with the physical characteristics of the
emotions they are experiencing, they just let them happen
passively without really getting an awareness of them.
Emotions are physical (they are chemicals and all sorts of
other things too), so the first step is to map out that physicality.
Next up, accept the feeling. Become OK with the fact that you
are feeling it. For more on how to accept things in your life,
again, dig out the article from a previous edition of "Adam
Up" that was all about that, it is there in the archive on my
website.
Of course, this can be a bit of a struggle for some people, who
will no doubt say ¡°But I don¡¯t want to feel it¡± or ¡°I shouldn¡¯t be
feeling it.¡± I know some of you are thinking that.
So here is the thing: you are feeling it, and if you want to
change the feelings quickly, the most expedient way to do it is
to meet yourself at your map of the world and accept that
presenting feeling that you are having. If you refuse to do this,
then you are just resisting it or fighting it as I was doing back
then. Then any attempt to change it will involve starting from
where you aren¡¯t, and that rarely works out well (as our tipsy
man looking for his keys on the wrong street can attest to.)
Then, you find the positive intent. What is your body or your
unconscious trying to tell you? Sometimes feelings have a
message of some sort for us. Other times, they¡¯re just
sensations that our body has some purpose for feeling. What
(if anything) is this feeling doing for you or trying to tell you?
Then; feel it. Just feel it. Be sure not to struggle or fight, just
feel it. Remember to breathe too ;-)
You don¡¯t have to do this for long, but it is really good to feel
something. Even if it feels bad, the fact that you can feel it
means that you are alive (woo-hoo!) and it also means that
you are in touch with how you feel. These are both good
things to be able to acknowledge and realise within yourself.
Often, just accepting and realising a feeling is putting it in a
vast different perspective.
The final part of this process is to then play with the feeling.
Increase the feeling¡¯s intensity. The reduce it. If it was one
colour, make it another, if it was moving in a certain direction,
move it in another, if it was a certain size, enlarge it or make it
smaller, basically, have a play with it and discover just how
much influence you have over this feeling. I think you will be
surprised when you realise just how much influcence you
really do have.
One of the things you¡¯ll begin to find as you start to
experience is just how much it¡¯s possible for you to get a
handle on your feelings. You may well discover for yourself
that feelings aren¡¯t true or false. They don¡¯t really mean
anything. They are just sensations that you are experiencing
in your body. If you resist them, they¡¯ll be there for some time,
but if you accept them, you can start to play with them and
change them. Does this mean you¡¯ll not have a bad feeling
ever again? No. Feelings will come and feelings will go, but
what it does mean is that you can start to have more and
more of the sorts of feelings you want to have. I know that
whatever you are wanting to do in life, you'll be wanting to
punctuate your life with more and more good feelings, am I
right?
So, enjoy your day today and make sure that you are
spreading some good feelings into your life.
About the Author
To receive Adam's amazing bi-monthly ezine, packed with modern, innovative, psychological tips, techniques and information visit http://www.adam-eason.com You'll also receive a free instantly downloadable hypnosis session to enjoy at home.
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