How to Use Your Feelings to Live More Freely

It’s in those moments when you feel like you’ve completely lost your mind that you discover a hidden part of yourself.

Emotions are a big part of our human experience.  We were built to feel things whether we like it or not.  Unfortunately being “emotional” is often frowned upon.  If someone gets emotionally triggered, it is seen as a weakness.  But let me just say, it is far from a weakness.  Getting emotionally triggered can actually become a wonderful asset in your life.  In this blog, we’ll be discussing how you can use your feelings to live life more freely, and start using your emotions to help you through life.

Throughout our whole lives, we have been gathering experiences, ideas, and ultimately beliefs about how the world works.  Through the formation of these beliefs, we create a “right vs wrong” system.  When we decide to believe things are a certain way, we automatically assume that anything that contradicts our belief is wrong.  Have you ever wondered why some things trigger you emotionally?  You get emotionally triggered when someone contradicts a belief you have.

Our beliefs get stronger the longer we hold them.  We start to develop an automated story that runs in our subconscious mind about how the world works, or how something is in life.  The longer this story plays, the stronger our beliefs get.  Ultimately, these automated stories create “hot buttons” or “triggers”.  When someone presses our hot buttons, we get emotionally triggered because someone has just contradicted the automated story that we have about something.  They have just challenged a belief we have.

There is a very specific pattern that occurs when we have these “emotional” moments.

Someone triggers a hot button, which leads to a belief we have, which launches an emotional response.

And that is the beauty of our emotions!  Let me explain.  Every time you get triggered emotionally, your response is directly pointing to a belief you have; a belief that’s usually hidden in your subconscious mind.  The way you feel in certain moments reveals your belief system.

If you find yourself getting emotionally triggered, there are two questions you can ask yourself to help you uncover the belief behind your reaction.

1. What is causing me to feel this way right now?
2. What am I assuming about this situation/person?

The first question, “What is causing me to feel this way right now?”, will help you go a level deeper in understanding your own reaction.  Getting to they why about something helps us get to a neutral, objective state of mind.  By asking this question, you will probably uncover an old emotional wound from the past.  You will get to the root of what is causing you to react the way you did.

The second question, “What am I assuming about this person/situation?”, will help you further explore the belief(s) that have gotten triggered.  Beliefs are sometimes disguised as assumptions, so it’s essential to look at that automatic story that is playing.  By inspecting your assumptions, you have the opportunity to see if what you are basing your reaction off of is actually true or not.

Next time you are feeling triggered, use it as an opportunity to ask these two questions and see what you find.  This is mindfulness is action, and it can be quite fun once you start doing it; humorous even.

The good news is, once you realize that your unpleasant emotional responses are uncovering important pieces of your belief system, you have the power to inspect those beliefs.  It is up to you to decide if the belief is serving you or not; whether you find it limiting or empowering.  Not all beliefs are bad.  They are essential to our human experience.  The thing that makes them undesirable is when they limit us into limited thinking.  We live in an unlimited Universe, so if you find a belief keeps you from experiencing your life to the fullest, it might be time to reframe it.

To reframe a belief, simply think of something that is more empowering to take it’s place, or let it go all together.  If you decide to go with the first option, you are going to have to reprogram that autopilot story that has been playing in your subconscious mind.  Science says that if you think of something 20 times, you create a new neuropathway in your brain.  Creating an affirmation for your new belief is an easy way to start reprogramming your subconscious stories.  Repeat your affirmation whenever you think of it, and you’ll be well on your way to creating a new belief.

If you go for the second option of letting the belief go all together, simply make the conscious choice to no longer believe it to be true.  It might take some willpower and self-discipline to override the subconscious program that plays on repeat, but with some time, your limiting belief will start to vanish.

Who knew being “emotional” could be such an empowering thing??  No matter what triggers you in life, know that you always have a choice to respond differently in the future.  Reprogramming those automated beliefs doesn’t hurt in helping you do that.  My wish to you is that you realize your unlimited potential, and use your feelings to help you do that.