It’s all about joy!

On Monday, I wrote about a big ah-ha I had regarding my inability to process emotional upsets in a healthy and productive way. It was brought to light as I struggled to cope with feelings of loneliness last weekend. In the midst of feeling low-spirited for two days, and during a meditative reprieve, I realized that as a child I learned to repress negative emotions. Rather than cry, for instance, I taught myself to use things like food, sleep and other distractions to take my mind off of what I was feeling.

As an adult who’s seeking to live a more authentic, joyful life, emotional repression only serves to hinder me. So, beginning this past weekend, I decided to figure out a new way to process such feelings.

Something else that struck me while I was having my initial ah-ha is how the law of attraction plays into repressed emotions. By repressing emotions, I’m holding on to them. Whatever I hold on to, I attract more of. Therefore, when I repress feelings of loneliness and don’t deal with them directly, I’m attracting more loneliness into my life.

Yikes!

So to counteract that, and as part of re-learning how to process negative emotions, I am going to:

• Acknowledge the negative emotions (but not fear them).
• Detach myself from them once I know what purpose they serve and then simply let them go.

Mindfulness will allow me to be more aware of exactly what I’m feeling when I’m feeling it (as opposed to drifting along unconsciously and letting myself be distracted by my monkey mind). Being more mindful (which meditation greatly spurs along) will grant me an open doorway to the acknowledgment part of this process. Beyond simply acknowledging a bad feeling, though (and perhaps its cause) and then letting it go, I think I’ll go one step further. I will choose to shift my attention to all of the circumstances and experiences that contradict that bad feeling. Gratitude has the ability to be a saving grace, since giving thanks shifts the energy in life and brings more of what we’re grateful for to fruition.

While I don’t expect to be mindful 100% of the time, nor do I expect to be hitting homeruns with this process every time I’m up at bat, I do think that little by little, I can begin to change how I deal with negative emotions. No more repressing for me! Instead, I’m going to let those feelings be and when I’m through examining them, set them free.