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Hi Friend You're receiving this message because you signed up for the Emotional Healing Quick Start Guide. To unsubscribe, simply click on the link at the bottom of the page. Today I'd like to continue on the theme of last week's issue, specifically... What's Good About Bad Emotions? Clearly, many emotions make you feel bad. Fear, grief, loneliness, depression, anger, hopelessness, despair - the list goes on and on and on. How can these painful emotions have any value at all? How can they be anything more than a curse? How can they be anything more than a pest - to be eliminated with some sort of 'pesticide'? First of all, if you spend all your time fighting one or a few emotions - that's not good. Constantly struggling; endlessly battling; with *any* emotion - day after day, month after month, year after year, obviously holds little or no value. Where’s the ‘bad’? There are no 'bad' emotions - but there are plenty of bad interactions with emotions. That's the difference. Just like motor oil is not bad; in fact it's become essential for much of society. But put a drop or two in your drinking water, and ... It's not the emotion that's bad - it's getting stuck with it that's bad. A business alliance is not bad, but letting those business associates move into your house; allowing those associates to tag along every time you run to the store for a gallon of milk... inviting those associates to take a shower with you, well... They'd start to seem bad pretty quickly. Especially if this went on year after year after year. And they never clean up after themselves! That's bad. So the first point to understand - emotional houseguests aren't necessarily bad until they overstay their welcome. Of course, some emotions you'd just as soon meet at the door, and politely but firmly demand they leave. You might accept their sales literature but you're just not buying what they're selling. It's our reaction *to* these 'bad' emotions that creates the problems, and not the emotions themselves. Emotions become bad when they refuse to leave. When they tyrannize us, that's bad. The tyranny is bad, not the emotion. If the salesman who knocks on your door leaves when asked, that's not bad. If the salesman sticks his foot in the door and then elbows his way into your house against your protests, that is bad. Emotions become bad when we let them into our house, either actively or passively, and then lock them in the closet or hide them in the basement rather than showing them the door. It's not the emotions themselves that are bad - it's simply our reaction or lack of reaction that creates the problems. Your garbage isn't necessarily bad. Hey - you took what you wanted and discarded the rest. Deal with it. Handle it properly and your life runs smoothly. Let it pile up on the side of the house, however... Handle your emotions properly, and they become much less of a problem. But where's the good? Okay, maybe you can accept that touching, experiencing, expressing, and then releasing emotions isn't so bad. But what makes them GOOD? Where's the value of fear, for example? What's good about anger? What useful purpose could loneliness possibly serve? And self pity? Good grief! While each of these emotions and many others deserve a lengthy explanation, for now let's look at some of the general characteristics of these 'no-good' emotions. Constrictive emotions contain a message. Emotions let you know if your life is working or not. They're a feedback mechanism. At the very least they serve as a warning light - a road sign - to let you know that something's wrong. Maybe you need to make a U turn. Maybe you need to take a detour. Maybe you need to stop and regroup. It could be any number of things, but the message IS there. Constrictive emotions add to our complexity. A diamond in the rough doesn't look that special. It's just a little chunk of... what... Is it glass? Is it a rock? You can't really tell. But start cutting the faces - and that diamond takes on a whole new meaning. It starts to shine. It begins to dazzle. Learn to handle that excess fear, for example - and you've just cut a new facet on that diamond. Learn to handle that fear, and you become more of who you really are. You add a whole new facet to your life. Constrictive emotions provide an outlet of expression - like a light bulb expresses electrical energy. Sometimes things just happen that make us angry. Sometimes we get hurt. Given the uncertainty of life and the countless scenarios that could happen, sometimes we need those unpleasant emotions as a channel, a vehicle, a container, to put the energy. We need a place to put that energy that's released in the living of life. If someone cuts you off in traffic, what are you *supposed* to feel - gratitude?! When a loved one dies - what are you going to do with the raw energy that emanates from that event? How could you not grieve? You're not a robot; you're a human being. Life demands our attention. Sometimes the most appropriate response is rage. Sometimes you need to be outraged. But if you lock that rage in a closet... watch out! Just like the forgotten potato salad in the back of the fridge, it WILL go bad. Emotions are a package deal. Like nerve cells that bring us the full spectrum of pleasure and pain, so emotions bring us a full spectrum as well. As humans, we're “loved enough” to have been given the whole range of emotions. We've been gifted with *all* the emotions - to explore and choose for ourselves what we want to feel. Maybe part of the challenge of being human is to find the good in those 'bad' emotions. Next time, lets take a look at anger - and see if we can find the good in the anger you feel. For more information on working with emotions, grab your copy of the e-book, "How To Create Your Own Reality". Just click on the link below. http://www.join-the-fun.com/bookletter.html Brought to you by Mark Ivar Myhre
The Emotional Healing Wizard
fiercely slaying your emotional dragons!