Emotional Balance

The emotions that will stabilize and balance our minds and bodies are focused on the present. Emotions such as joy, happiness, empathy, generosity and gratitude allow us to focus on our well-being. They put us into a state that makes it easier to invest in ourselves, and when we begin to invest in ourselves, we begin to tackle the weight problem. This is what we call being in a state of emotional balance.

When we feel overwhelmed it is normally because of the quantity of decisions we feel responsible for in our life. For example, saying “yes” to too many people or taking on too many things. When we become emotionally overwhelmed, I have discovered that what relieves us from our own suffering is to ask ourselves, “why?” That’s it. Once we do this, our minds begin to focus on the question we have asked and it will work on it until we have the answer we have been longing for.

Everyone has what I call the anti-self or the negative inner voice that lies within us. Yet, some of my clients vocalize their negative comments directed against themselves and I find that when they begin to communicate these words, they have an even more damaging effect on their self-esteem. While I was coaching a small group of clients, I observed Kaya talking negatively about herself almost every opportunity she had to speak. Each time that I pointed out one of her successes, she immediately countered my compliment with a critical remark about herself. After this happened a few times, I simply asked her why was she was so critical about herself and why she wouldn’t accept compliments from others. This shocked Kaya because she wasn’t expecting me to ask her this question, but the second I did she began to ask herself the question and this immediately stopped her critical thinking pattern. I knew if even for a moment, if I could interrupt the pattern of her negative self-talk, that she would have the opportunity to question as to why she was being so hard on herself. This was a wake-up call for Kaya and she began to call herself out whenever she had feelings of doubt that came out as either sarcastic or self-demeaning.

When we ask ourselves “why,” quite often we don’t have the answer right away, but in most cases we will find it in time. The point of this exercise is to interrupt the negative emotion pattern that has been ingrained into your brain through hundreds if not thousands of repeats. The groove is so deep it’s no wonder our brains fall into these patterns of thinking. It really is the path of least resistance, but when you put an obstacle in the grove, your brain has no choice but to run another course. Similar to water, it always seems to find a new path.

Sometimes it might be obvious, if your partner has just told you that they do not love you anymore and they are leaving you there won’t be any questioning as “why” you feel a tidal wave of emotions as you did not anticipate for them to end the relationship. There are other times that it is not as obvious, for example, when you feel anger and resentment toward your partner, but on the surface level, they have not done anything to provoke such feelings within you. So why do you feel a certain way? Why do you feel nervous? Why do you feel frustrated? Why do you feel guilty? Why do you feel powerless? Try asking yourself “why” you are feeling a certain emotion when you first feel it come on and practice being honest, open and willing while you’re answering it. The trick is to catch the feeling when it first pops up in your head otherwise you might not be able to capture and contain it in the future.

Having emotional balance is a challenging quest that requires diligence 24/7 and 365 days of the year but the pay off is peace of mind which is priceless.

Inspire to Aspire,

Kris J. Simpson