Observation—A One-Step Technique To Soften Tough Emotions

A few days ago I spiraled into feelings of abandonment, anger, and despair while someone was “leaving me hanging” for two days, They were supposed to get an answer to me about something important, but instead they were “icing” me—forcing me to suffer. The arrogance! The cruelty! Oh–the humanity!

Oops. Yesterday I found out that this person had indeed sent me a message in regards to the matter. The message simply slipped past me.

So, my total freak-out was an alternative reality that I constructed in my mind. A complete dream state. And of course I experienced a miraculous recovery and emotional lift yesterday from finding out that I'm going to get what I want.

Call it Mechanicalness. Programs. Macros. Scripts. Chains of reactivity. "Good" things happen to me and then I'm happy. "Bad" things happen and then I'm sad.

I don’t want to live like a dead leaf being blown around by the slightest breeze.

The antidote is observation.

Over and over, thousands of times perhaps—I simply notice what's happening in my body. The rest takes care of itself.

Here’s cool technique that takes observation a step further: Instead of saying to myself: “this is what overwhelm feels like", etc, I can say "Joe is experiencing overwhelm. He is feeling tightness in his chest, etc".

I'm so grateful for how far I have come with Observation. I am actually learning how to sit with the tough feelings. Actually, that's not even accurate. A long time ago I learned how to sit with tough feelings in about 3 minutes. The real accomplishment has been actually doing it- over and over, hundreds and hundreds of times. I swear–lately there have been times when I'm doing some random activity and I will notice that a rumination is growing in my mind and body and I'm spiraling downward. I have actually stopped what I am doing to allow that thought to run its course through my body.

A Yogi's recent quote says it all for me: "Water the roots and the branches bloom."

Do you have a “branch” in your life that is sickly and unable to flower? Try this my friend: This time, instead of trying to fix the problem at the branch level, just sit with those difficult emotions. Put a hand on your body where the pain is most intense. Say “this is what (emotion) feels like.”

Observe. Honor the pain. Name it and become friends with it. A warning though: emotions are fickled friends. Once you get to know them they tend to go away.

Love,
Joe