Choosing How You Want to Feel

Stay with me here.

Some of the work that we do with feelings is learning how to notice the feelings and care for ourselves during the difficult ones. And if you are having some difficult feelings today, right now, it’s ok to close this email and come back to it another time.

What I’m talking about today is when you’re in a neutral space, looking ahead at what the day or the next hour, or the next week, month etc on the schedule, and setting some intentions for how you want to feel. It’s pretty damn hard to try and do that though if you are IN your big feelings right now.

So again, this is something for when you are in neutral emotional territory, but anticipating something. And in particular, maybe anticipating something that you are worried about. You hope it will go well, but there is some kind of consequence, for you or for others, if it doesn’t go well.

• A big meeting
• A busy clinic day
• A weekend away with your partner
• A visit from your mother-in-law

Before the event starts, practice sitting for a few minutes, and asking yourself, “what do I want to feel during this time?” Many of us may have the experience of anticipating outcomes, or heard of athletes visualizing success during the game, and this is similar. But instead of the results, here we are focusing on what emotions are we wanting?

When a busy day looms, we may worry that we will feel overwhelmed, frustrated, exhausted, because we have had that experience before. And we may hope that things will be different today, hope for no-shows, hope that no one “oh-by-the-ways” you as you have your hand on the door handle. But hope is not a strategy, and it doesn’t produce what we want. To be honest, its an avoidance strategy, because we aren’t accepting the possibility that a busy day could be anything but awful.

Not helpful.

Instead, what if you want to feel in flow? What if you want to feel that you are busy, but you move from room to room with purpose and ease. What would that take?

• It takes coordination with your team, helping them focus on the most important tasks, and stay in flow
• It takes boundaries; setting limits on what things can and can’t be addressed today
• It takes self-compassion, understanding that what happens on a busy day is different 

If you went into a busy day in this way, accepting that you don’t control much of what happens, but you are going to be thoughtful and intentional about what you do control, and how you want to feel, what would that produce?

Try it. And let me know how it goes.