Benefits:
The second point in the Mind realm is to start developing a deeper insight into what’s going on for you mentally and emotionally. The purpose of this tool is to create some space to acknowledge any lingering emotional issues that may have accumulated in your life, process them, and then change how you think about that topic in your life to minimise challenging emotional responses in the future.
Modern life is busy and most people’s emotional awareness is effected by this pace of life. Lots of things will happen in the average person’s day that will cause them some annoyance or resentment, which often they don’t get an opportunity to process or express. Or they may be experiencing fear, which they haven’t stopped to acknowledge, around things that might happen (or not happen). Yet more emotional baggage could be being carried around as unprocessed sadness/grief.
Action:
At least 2 x per week, Journal x 20+ mins
1) How are you feeling? (10-20 secs):
Ask yourself “How are you feeling out of 10?”. 10 is Awesome, 1 is Terrible. Don’t overthink it, this is just a general gut feeling. You’re not allowed a 7 (everyone goes for a 7). If you’re inclined to go for 7, you have to choose 6.5 or 7.5
2) Quick overview (3 minutes):
Start by writing some bullet points of events/themes of that day or days since the last journal. Consult your diary/calendar. Where have you been, who have you seen, what has happened? Don’t get into any detail. This is just to remind you of events. Also write down any other bigger themes that are going on for you that aren’t specific to those days. Don’t forget to record any things that have made you feel happy as well as the challenges (these might be useful for your Gratitude List). Leave a space under each point for the next step.
3) What emotions are you feeling? (2 minutes):
For each of the events/themes, write which emotion/s it is bringing up for you. Here is a basic list to work with:
- Fear (concern, cautiousness, fright, panic)
- Anger (annoyance, frustration, fury, rage)
- Sadness (disappointment, hurt, grief, despair)
- Embarrassment (Guilt, Shame)
- Disgust
- Surprise
- Relief
- Pride
- Happiness (satisfaction, joy, elation, ecstasy)
- Love
4) Write down the story (5 minutes):
Pick one of the items from the list to work on today. I would suggest prioritising the one that is bothering you most currently. You will spot the stories that keep on appearing on your step 2 list and need addressing the more you do this process.
Write out the story around the event/theme you’ve chosen. Write it conversationally, just as if you were telling someone the story. It may be a paragraph or two or may be a whole page of writing.
5) Read and process it (2 minutes):
Read it slowly (preferably 30% slower than normal speaking pace), with a short pause after each sentence.
As you read it you may have emotion come up. If so, honour the emotion and allow yourself to feel it fully – Where are you feeling it in your body? Does it have a shape and/or colour? Give it a number out of 10 (1 is low, 10 is high).
If you know it is there but you’re struggling to really feel it, a part of you may be sub-consciously keeping it at bay. Thank that part of you for protecting you, ask it if it will take a small step back in your mind to allow you to feel the emotion, then see what happens. A visualisation that’s worked for me in the past is to imagine a flood gate or a large door that is holding back the feeling. Open it and allow the feeling to wash over you. Try to let go of any judgement of the feeling as “good” or “bad”. Just accept its presence. Give yourself permission to scream (into a pillow if necessary), cry, laugh or really be in the fear for a little while.
This processing stage can be even more powerful if you read it out loud to someone else you trust, as the vulnerability of sharing the story can deepen the releasing process.
6) Do the Equation of Emotion Review (4 minutes):
Once you’ve given yourself the permission to really feel these emotions (rather than trying to avoid feeling them or changing them with some kind of distraction), you’re in a much better position to switch to the logical part of your mind and understand the causes.
All emotions are the results of 2 things:
- Your Expectation/Preference about something – there will be an idea you have that something should be a certain way or that you’re attached to having a particular outcome about. That something will be connected to your internal idea of self (any person, place, thing or idea that you are attached to). To find what that is, you could ask yourself “What is the idea in my mind that is being attacked, threatened or devalued in some way?”
- Your Perception about that same something – there will be a way that you’re seeing things, an appraisal of what is going on now, a version of reality that you brain is perceiving, that is threatening that self-idea in some way. To find that, you could ask yourself “what was the perception that triggered the emotion I experienced?”
If you’re struggling to identify these, one of the best ways is to focus on the crux sentences from the story that really get the emotion going and try to find them in that. This step can take some practise and a willingness to be unusually honest with yourself.
At the point the brain has both your Expectation/Preference (EP) about something and a Perception (P) about that same thing, it can compare those two variables against each other and decide if an emotion should be generated, and whether that emotion should be positive or negative.
Equation of Emotion: Expectation/Preference + Perception = Emotional Reaction
You might decide that you’re perfectly happy with this emotional response to the circumstances and that this has just been a good opportunity to fully express the emotion, understand how the emotion was created and let it pass. However, if this is a familiar pattern that you experience regularly or is a rare occurrence but one that you don’t want again, you can choose to work on changing one or both of the above.
7) Create a new Expectation/Preference, or Perception, or both. (2 mins):
Write these down so they can be made into Affirmations for your Gratitude & Affirmation time (the 3rd Point in the Mind realm).
- New Expectation/Preference – Does the thing you’re attached to need to be so important to you? Can you re-write the Expectation/Preference in a way that lessens your attachment to it? Often, our expectations/preferences can be unrealistic and set us up for failure. Is there a more realistic way of expressing the Expectation/Preference?
- New Perception – Often these will be more forgiving/understanding and less judgemental of yourself or others. Thinking about what the most generous way of perceiving the example could be, is a good way to get to this.
With regular repetition, your reticular activating system will look for evidence to support these new ways of seeing the world and neuro-plasticity will mean you will form new pathways, so your mind starts thinking those ways as a habit.
Example Journal:
Brief story – A driver pulled into my lane in front of me and made me slam on my brakes. It made me rageful.
Expectation – that drivers should be respectful, always allow me braking distance and not pull in front of me erratically.
Perception – they must have been an arrogant driver, who thought they had more right to the lane than me and didn’t care about me.
New Expectation – I could change it to something more realistic, like “at some point, drivers are going to pull into my lane”, so that when it does happen, it’s not a surprise.
New Perception – I could work on changing to something like “I wonder whether they have an emergency they’re trying to get to?”, or “maybe they’re really stressed/struggling at the moment and are making bad choices because of that”, or “maybe they just made a mistake and misjudged it”
Going deeper:
You might find that some things keep appearing in your journal regularly that you are getting stuck on. If you find that following the process above (raising your awareness of your feelings, allowing yourself to feel them fully, creating new ways of thinking about them and then using them as affirmations) still doesn’t seem to be shifting things, you might want to look at other practises that help you make deeper internal shifts. Here are some examples that I’ve had personal experience with and would recommend looking at:
- Internal Family Systems therapy – a transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy. It involves recognising different parts of yourself, developing a deeper understanding and relationship with them and then allowing your core Self to heal. A great book to learn about this is “No Bad Parts” by the creator, Richard Schwartz. Or look for a local therapist.
- Shadow Work or Emotional Processing Work – a powerful type of Jungian based archetypal therapy, designed to help you uncover your emotional wounds and learn to live with them from a place of wholeness. Speak to Andrew (qualified as a facilitator) or search online for a practitioner.
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy – a structured therapy that encourages the patient to briefly focus on a trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories.
- Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
- Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)
- Hypnotherapy
There are many more and some will suit you better than others, so do some personal investigation to find what’s right for you. Personal growth is a lifetime journey and I hope that this will be a starting point for you if you haven’t done any of this kind of work for yourself before.
