How emotional awareness will upgrade your happiness game.
"The only reason why you want what you want, is because you think you will be happier in the having of it." - Abraham Hicks.
I really love the opening quote of this article because it really puts things back into perspective. The main and I'd even say, the only reason why we want things, is not owning them. Them main reason, is the satisfaction and happiness that we will feel once they are achieved or owned. Simply put, happiness is the end game for everything we do. I love to believe that if happiness is the destination, then it also has to be the way.
I am not one to think that we have to be happy all the time. I am not sure either that it is a state that is sustainable as human beings. However, optimizing the amount of time that we spend in elevated emotions and minimizing how long we allow ourselves to be subjects to negative ones is definitely a behaviour that I believe in. One of the best ways to be able to achieve that is to sharpen our emotional awareness.
How emotional awareness will help you stay happy longer?
The question is really: how emotional awareness will help you reduce the amount of time you spend in a negative spiral. The answer is pretty straight forward. Emotional awareness plays the role of an alarm system that goes off every time your emotional state drops.
The whole point of being more emotionally aware is to heighten our sensitivity to our feelings. By doing that we get more conscious of our mood, we are more able to monitor our feelings and therefore, take appropriate action when our vibration sinks.
Once the alarm goes off, we can begin to tap in the arsenal of tools that we have to get into a better feeling ground (more about this in my next article). It is crucial to have that awareness very sharpened because it is easier to shift a negative emotional state at its early stages. When we get too invested in a negative spiral, the momentum generated keeps us in there longer than we need to. The less sensitive we are to our emotional standpoint, the more we risk spending our days in stress, sadness depression etc.
How to practice being more emotionally aware?
Just like in every learning process, the first step is grounding your intention on why you want to be more emotionally aware. The previous section does just that for you. Once the intention is clear, now it's time to get into the how.
To quote Dr. Joe Dispenza: "Thoughts are the language of the brain and emotions are the language of the body." With this in mind, in order to sharpen your emotional awareness, you need to integrate in your day practices that allow you to get out of your head and more into your body. Here are some daily activities that will allow you to do that even more:
Meditation. I can already hear many of you asking me what kind of meditation works the best for emotional awareness and my answer will be that I have yet to find one that doesn't. The whole point of any meditation is to end the chatter in your mind and that simple act connects you more to your emotional body.
Pay attention to your mood swings. You want to pay more attention to your mood shifts and also what triggered those shifts. Every time you find yourself in negative emotions, ask yourself what event caused you to react in that way. This gives you actionable targets to work on, in order to let go of the emotional trigger.
Journaling. This is another powerful tool that will support the previous point. Everyday take note of all the spectrum of emotions that you went through and again, with each emotion, connect the event or thought pattern that triggered it.
Connect to the present moment. You can do it through mindfulness exercises like yoga, walks in nature, deep and slow breathing etc. Every practice that will take you out of your head and into your body will help you connect more to how you feel now.
How will you know that you got really good at being aware of your emotions? The answer is when you are able to notice the eary changes in your mood and then reframe how you think in order to sustain elevated emotions longer. Remember, just like any other training in life, practice makes perfect. Therefore, do your best to integrate in your habits the practices that we just shared in order to master the skill.
Thank you for reading this far and if there is anything that resonated with you in the article, don’t hesitate to share it with your tribe. Stay alert for the part 2 of this article and join the Thrive Tribe below to be the first notified of new uplifting articles.
Thank you
- Xavier.
