By Shoval Aloni
Translated from the Hebrew by DeAnna L’am .jpg)
Do you think your emotions influence your daily performance?
Lets recall how it is when we feel powerful and act from inner strength. Everything flows easily, and people responded enthusiastically. You may feel the joy of clear thinking, abundance and success.
And how is it when you feel angry or humiliated, and act out of rage or shame? What happens then? Do you shout or speak harshly, which only escalates things? Maybe you even regret hurting another, or the near breaking of the door as you slam it?
We can understand that often our emotions define our function in the world, and influence the results we wish to achieve – whether it be good relationships with our children or spouse, joy and success at work, the courage to start a new business, to succeed in a diet, to get ready for an important test, and even enjoy getting there.
Belief System
Now it’s time to have a look at your belief system. For example, what you think your spouse is supposed to do for you, how your children should behave, and what does it mean to be a good or spiritual person. It is important to look at how your beliefs make you feel better.
Your beliefs are the screen through which you experience the world, and through which the world responds to you.
Our beliefs reflect both our past experiences, and our interpretations of those experiences. Our belief systems dictate how we act in order to achieve what we want. For instance you may be the type of person that in order to get attention you complain.
Accompanying our beliefs are the emotions that we suppress or ignore, and the artificial emotions we often adopt.
Children Know Best
Have you ever seen a child stumble down, and looks at its parent to see if there is a reason for concern? If no one saw it, the child typically gets up and acts as if nothing happened. In similar circumstances, the same child, identifying an opportunity for getting attention, will burst into tears, run into Mom’s or Dad’s arms, and even take advantage of the opportunity to get a lollipop.
Have you ever seen a child get angry with its play mate, or one of its parents, and says something like: “I hate you and I’ll never talk with you again,” and only a few minutes later s/he feels and acts as if nothing ever happened?
You can certainly see that children do this, naturally, all the time. And as we become adults we lose that natural ability to let go of our negative feelings immediately.
And maybe each time we were told off as children or criticized, we learnt to suppress our natural feelings or express them in a way that is incongruent with what is actually happening.
And furthermore, as adults, we are often trying to live up to other people’s expectations instead of looking after our own needs and our emotional well-being.
Emotions In A Pot
Imagine a pressure cooker that has been on the stove for a long time. What happens inside? It is the same with us, every natural emotion that was suppressed is boiling inside and tries to express and release itself. Our goal in letting go is both opening the valve to let the steam out safely, and turning the heat off so no more steam is created.
Isn’t it true that if we had an open safety valve, our emotions/steam would have gone out at a steady natural flow instead of accumulating inside and boiling to the point of explosion? So what is it we do with our emotions that closes the valve and doesn’t allow them out?
Each time we ignore and suppress our emotions we in fact preserve the emotion inside us by locking it in. And then the explosion is only a matter of time.
There are many ways to let go, and each can choose their own out of the abundance of treatments and workshops.