Choosing How You Feel with Clarity
Do you wish you were in control of how you feel? Well, let me let you in a little secret. You are. You see, nobody can make you feel anything. You and I actually choose how we feel. That alone should give you a sense of control. Yes, I'm charge here, but you need to know how. So in this video, I'm going to help you to understand how you can be the one who chooses how you feel.
In my last article, we talked about a new model for navigating your emotions in a healthy way. And I talked about emotional intelligence and social intelligence.
And I talked about the fact that how you navigate your own emotions is all personal agency. It's up to you, right? And it starts with having clarity around what the physical sensation actually is and what it truly means before then moving into the area of control, which is managing the response.
But today we just wanna talk about clarity. So clarity is knowing with certainty what's going on in inside emotionally and being able to label that accurately. You see, most of us have a handful of emotions that we might experience, or that we say that we're experiencing the way that we are feeling. You know, we're either happy or we're sad, or we're angry or we're frustrated, or whatever it is.
However, there are over 2000 words in the English language alone that can tell you, or that you can label how you are feeling in the moment. Now, I'm not suggesting that we've got a memorised 2000. What I'm wanting is to understand is that limited vocabulary that we're using now is a challenge because what it does, if you think you are feeling frustrated and therefore use a strategy to manage that, and you're not actually feeling frustrated, you're just feeling misunderstood, then the result that you get is not going to be the one that you want.
So how do you get this clarity? So, as you already know, I've said it so many times, it's not about managing the emotion, it's about managing the response and the emotion is that physiological cue, that clue, that sensation in the body that says, Hey, grant, something's going on for you internally right now, emotionally, and gets my attention as it does for you.
What you make that mean will determine how you respond, or in most cases, react. So the three things that you need to do to actually navigate or get to the point of navigating your emotion is firstly, you've got to notice it. So you've got to be able to give yourself space in your world, in your day to go, Hey, stop, pause.
What is that I'm sensing in my body and being deeply attuned and having emotional insight into what's going on. Then you've got to be able to give it a name, and you've got to be able to give it a name because then you're able to link in your brain a strategy that works for you when you are feeling this way.
So remember I said the physical sensation happens, you determine what that means, filtered through your belief, structure, your dialogue, et cetera, and you then choose how you're going to feel, right? So if you notice it and you go through that psychological thought process in a measured way, and give it the name that it actually is not the one that you think it could be, that's the bit that gives you the ability to choose how you feel.
All right? So let me just make that a little bit more understandable by giving you an example, because sometimes things I know what's going on in my head is just making sure that I get it across to you. So we notice it, we give it a name, and then we're able to navigate it. So let's say that I have a physical sensation in my body that my chest is getting really tight.
Now, if I make that mean that I'm having a heart attack, then I'm going to react in a total different way to being able to remain calm and think about what's actually going on and what else is going on and, and what I'm thinking and how that's dictating my reaction and pull that back and go, hang on a minute.
No, you're not having a heart attack. You're just stressed right now. You're just think you've been thinking about that situation and you're allowing that to stress you and that dialogue that's going on is not healthy. You know, the rumination that we have on a daily basis can bring us undone. So being able to take captive some of those thoughts, take captive some of those internal dialogue situations that are not serving you is the key to be able to choose how you feel.
Now the second thing that I need to do is challenge assumptions. So if I'm assuming, not just a physical sensation, but I'm assuming that I'm feeling, oh, I'm getting angry. Well, hang on a minute. Now, are you Grant? I challenge myself at a deeper level to go, is it really angry? So I could be in a meeting with someone and I could be putting some stuff down and I'm sensing they're not picking it back up exactly what I am saying, right. Now I could, over a period of time letting that go, I could get angry. However, I'm not angry to start with. Firstly, I am a little bit confused by what I'm getting back. I'm feeling a little bit misunderstood. If that continues, I could escalate to feeling a little bit frustrated, which could lead to annoyed, which could lead to angry or whatever it is, right?
So choosing how I feel back at the start is really, really important. And being able to go, oh, I'm feeling a little bit misunderstood at the moment. Let me just check in and say, Hey, I'm not sure if I'm actually communicating in a way that's allowing you to pick up what I'm putting down. What is it that you understand that I'm saying?
And then get rid of that confusion that might be there, that misunderstanding. And then I feel totally different. So choosing how you feel starts with getting that clarity around what's going on with that physical sensation, what's going on in your world, that dialogue and being able to accurately assess for yourself what's going on, and by building your personal power, by building up that inner self-worth, by retraining that internal dialogue, by letting go of things that are holding you back from your past, particularly in your emotional memory.
And we're going to keep working deeper on the competencies within that area of clarity over the coming weeks and months so that you can choose the way that you feel and enjoy navigating your emotions in a healthy way. I'll see you then.
