Feelings and Emotions: Signals for Personal Growth

Did you know that paying conscious attention to your feelings and emotions is one of the most effective ways of achieving Personal growth? Emotional health is an important aspect of life which deserves more focus and attention than most of us normally consider.

 Happiness Quotient

Feeling happy or sad about any given situation is a personal choice and different individuals can plot themselves at different positions on the continuum that exists between happiness and sadness.

The way you feel has a strong impact on your health so taking care of your feelings and emotions is as much a responsibility as taking care of your body is. What makes you happy, what makes you sad, what makes you fearful, what causes you worry and anxiety . . . write a journal about the different emotions you experience throughout most days and what causes them.

Feelings do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don’t know, but it’s a world where there’s no time, so space, no frontiers. ~ Paulo Coelho (Tweet this)

To have a good time on your journey of life, increase the time you spend on doing the things that make you happy and counsel yourself about the things that make you sad or cause you anxiety.

Work towards making the not-so-perfect aspects of life better but don’t spend all your time and energy only them, taking the positive things for granted and not enjoying them.

Self-Counselling

Just as you counsel others who may come to you in times of trouble, counsel yourself whenever you feel troubled by a negative feelings and emotions. If you realize that you experience the emotion of fear when interacting with persons in positions of authority, counsel yourself internally so you can get rid of the negative emotion.

The next time you are about to interact with a person in a position of authority and again experience the same emotion of fear, counsel yourself and overcome the fear before the interaction. If this self-counselling is done a number of times, one can completely rid oneself of fear and instead experience stability during the interaction.

Needless to say, the interaction too will proceed in a much better manner than it would have otherwise. The same process can be done if one experiences fear for any other irrational reason which hampers one’s life experience.

Catch them Young!

Like actions, our thought patterns also become habits very easily. Changing old habits is not everyone’s cup of tea so it is better to recognize and remove bad habits as early as possible and instil good ones instead. There are huge benefits associated with removing negative emotions from our lives. We don’t just benefit ourselves but also the significant others in our world.

One lamp burning bright spreads light in a considerable amount of area. Knowingly or unknowingly, we pass on our habits to our young ones and they too suffer or enjoy their consequences.

A basketball team from a small town went to play a tournament and got qualified for the finals. The finals were scheduled to be held in one of the biggest cities in the country and the small town team felt flabbergasted and out of place when they saw the size of the stadium that was to seat tens of thousands of viewers.

Sensing his team members’ emotions by observing their expressions and defensive body language, the team’s coach asked them to get a measuring tape. The team members were clueless about what the coach wanted them to do but they obeyed nevertheless.

The coach asked them to measure the dimensions of the court. When they returned with the answer, he asked them the dimensions of the court they played in back home.

The dimensions were exactly the same, as the coach had expected. Smiling, the coach asked the team members not to focus on the stadium, the spectators or the big city they were in, but on the game.

The team members felt relieved of the negative feeling they were experiencing and became comfortable on the court once again.

Had the coach not had such insight and had he neglected the team members’ emotions, they would have gotten distracted from their game and might have even lost the tournament (which they otherwise went on to win).

Conclusion – Feelings and Emotions

Happiness, Confidence . . . they are yours for the asking. They are ever-present inside your mind and you only need to tap into the positive energy.

The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it. ~ Nicholas Sparks (Tweet this)

Be wary of falling into the trap of negative emotions and spend time counselling yourself out of them. Pay close attention to your feelings and emotions a few times every day so you remain a master of your mind instead of becoming its slave.