Emotional Thinking.

Glorious morning!

Today let’s expand on a quote from Robert Kiyosaki.

“ Learn to use your emotions to think, not think with your emotions “.

I had to laugh at this one as I was reading it because it just sounds so simple, right? It is definitely one of the greatest things to master in my opinion, but one of the hardest. Because most of us did not grow up with fully awakened parents, we simply were not taught this very simple function. I, like most of the world, had to learn the hard way in this earth school of hard knocks. Before I started my journey into the ancient system of Tai Chi Gung, my emotions were large and in charge and because I am a woman, they can be a bit larger lol.

Women are socialized differently than men and have full permission by society to cry and let emotions out, whereas our poor guys are taught to stuff them away and not feel them. Both extremes are detrimental to our wellbeing. If we can look at our emotions while they are springing up inside of us, that is when we have the opportunity to either allow them to be our teacher and a sign that we need to stop and listen before we speak, or we allow the emotion to respond for us. When we allow emotions to be the leader of us , it usually turns things messy AND harder than it needs to be. I used to totally identify my emotions as who I was, and dammit if I was mad at something someone said because it triggered an old hurt inside of me, I made sure through the expression of my anger that you were fully aware of me.

Not only would I allow the anger to permeate throughout my body but I would fuel it and keep it alive by focusing on the injustice that was done to me. So in that exchange I was stressing out my body, stressing out my perceived offender and would make a problem out of it. When I was a young girl I would take money from my brother's room so I could get candy from the candy store down the block. I remember he was so angry and asked me if I took his money.

We had a bunch of other siblings so I was able to deny it with confidence. I could not see at the time how wrong it was to do that and did not feel sorry. About a year later I had hidden some money in my room and one day I went to retrieve it and it wasn't there. Well you would have thought the world was coming to an end. I was SO angry. I went around the house yelling, “ someone went in my room and took my money! “ All of my family looked at me like I was crazy and they were also baffled because none of them took it. After a good hour of me being super pissed, I had returned to my room and started straightening up and it was then I had found the money I had hidden. I changed my hiding spot but had forgotten.

Well……………I felt like an idiot. I also discovered how my brother felt when his money was really missing because of me. The lesson I learned that day was pretty profound. I learned two important things. One, stealing is not ok, not so much because you can get in trouble, but because getting things stolen feels horrible. And secondly, my emotional rage was not only depleting and abusive towards the family members that were receiving my anger but it wasn't even true. It was a complete waste of emotion. Because I was thinking with my emotions and didn't stop to use my emotions to think, I allowed the trigger to take me over and made a mess of things. I not only made a mess of things, the things I was making a mess didn't even exist. I am happy to report that because I have brought more balance in my spirit, mind and body, I now mostly listen to my emotions first and question them before I speak or act.

Do you struggle with letting your emotions run the show? Backpack therapy can identify your triggers and bring more awareness to them. Awareness, my friends, is everything. Make a free discovery call today. Peace be with you, Dawn

Discovery Call

Book Now