Delightful Work

A wise coach once said. “Everything in our lives, we either create, promote or allow.” Everything. Wow, do you find that line as inspiring as I do. That means we are at choice about everything in our lives. For everything, we make it up, advance it further or permit its presence.

“Everything” includes even the feelings we feel. We can choose to create them - like when we get fired up for something. For example, I had to find some fire to write this post. I know that I always feel better about myself when I complete a task. But when I sat down to write, I was feeling surly and certainly not delightful. But I decided to tap my inner warrior and honor a greater energy and willingness than I had at the outset.

We are that powerful and just this far into this post, now I want to write it. I want to write the best blog post I possibly can on how to feel your feelings. It shouldn’t be that difficult because I’m an excellent feeler of my feelings. Can you say that about yourself?

I wasn’t always a championship feeler. Well, I was for my first 11 years. And then… well let me tell you my story.

Flash back 46 years. I was eleven years old and relaxing on a fall afternoon. I heard a loud insistent knock at the back door and, upon opening it, I saw my neighbor, Little Larry, all out of breath and crying. A hunter mistakenly shot his dog Lobo, and Lobo was suffering.

This was in the country, in 1961, and people just didn’t spend money on veterinarians for pets. Larry knew my dad had a shotgun, and he knew that the merciful thing to do was to end Lobo’s suffering. I agreed, but my dad wasn’t home. Then something clicked in my eleven-year-old mind. I saw this as an opportunity to take the advice of my Dad, uncles, coaches and male teachers. I needed to suck it up and be a man.

Up until that time, I wore my emotions on my sleeve. If you hurt, me I cried. If something scared me, I cried. If I was embarrassed or ashamed about something, I cried. Back then, when the emotions arose, I felt them naturally and then felt better. But these guys were adults and they all said I needed to suck it up and be a man. Translation, swallow those tears and become stone-faced tough. But I wanted to be a man.

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. I got the shotgun and a shell out of the closet and walked down over the hill with Larry. It was hard looking at Lobo and knowing that I was ending his life. I’d played with Lobo many times.

So I did it. And I can remember walking back up the hill to my house as clear as it was yesterday. A tearful feeling started in my chest, and just when it was at throat level and about to explode, I stopped it.

I swallowed my feelings and locked them up in some dark well. I sucked it up. I was a man. I didn’t shed another tear for 38 years and I hated it. I was meaner, more miserable and more afraid than when I freely cried.

If you’re a guy that’s buying that same bull, or if you know a guy (or gal) who is, please take this message to heart. Feel, my friend, feel!

How? First understand the benefits of feeling fully. That understanding will help you to want to feel. Then you need a process that will work for you. There is none better than John Gray’s process in his book, How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have.

I’ve recommended it dozens of times in my life coaching practice and it almost always gets my clients feeling once again. It’s effective because it gives us a powerful way to first feel what’s there. Then after feeling it, we can choose something that feels better.

In Chapter 11, you’ll find a list of 12 negative emotions that are expertly listed in a special order such that even if you don’t immediately, correctly identify which emotion you’re feeling, the process will correct your course in mid-stream.

This process uses journaling, which is a very effective method for feeling and releasing negative emotions. I’ve personally found it to be wonderful and it’s what got me unstuck from the lingering affects of a major life wound.

This process works really well for sadness, shame, embarrassment, disappointment and all really gripping, negative emotions. It works because the journaling helps you to dig out why you’ve attached these emotions to naturally occurring vibrations. Hey, tough stuff happens to all of us and it needs to be felt. But you don’t have to let the suffering linger for days and days.

You’ll find the power to let it go within Gray’s process because of its ability to let you identify what you think the emotion is that you’re feeling right now and verify that. Often the process takes you to another connecting emotion that you weren’t aware of and your real opportunity to feel better is within that deeper emotion. By feeling right where you need to feel complete, relief happens much more quickly.

Personally, I’ve found this process to be the best for every emotion except anger. For me, anger has always required physical action to release. Hitting punching bags and pillows works well. My personal favorite is breaking dead tree trunks until I’m physically spent. One of my clients took out lots of relationship anger by purchasing garage sale plates. She’d take them to the nearest railroad track and satisfyingly smash them while expressing her anger out loud.

Anger requires a physical release, so you might as well enjoy it. Start there. Who or what pisses you off so much that you need to feel it and release it? Express yourself, have some fun and be angry no more. Remember, you’ve got to feel and release and then feel the way you want to feel. Don’t stay in the anger. Choose a light and empowering feeling of freedom. In fact, if you do a good job of releasing, that’s how you’ll naturally feel.