This is a guest post by Melissa at Mindful Construct. Follow her on Twitter.
Feelings are for the present moment... It is by being fully present now that we reach the fullness of tomorrow. ~Melody Beattie
Emotions are like the current of a river. They’re in constant flow. Sometimes they’re turbulent.
But emotions can slow down too. They can take on the serenity of a calm lake tucked away in a meadow.
It’s the serenity that you strive for, because serenity means that your mind is clear and connected to your heart. Serenity means that you can be present in your life, mindful of each precious moment that is yours to experience.
But how do emotions go from being turbulent and fast-changing to calm and serene? It seems that most of the time, the negative emotions cause more harm than good. They interrupt your life, cloud your thinking, and some of them are really painful.
Well, the answer is so simple it might surprise you.
Emotional serenity comes from letting your emotions run their course, because once they do and you respond to them mindfully, serenity and clarity will naturally result.
It’s natural for emotions to go from turbulence to serenity, as long as you are willing to let them unravel naturally and respond to them constructively.
Let your emotions run their course
Letting your emotions freely run their course seems like a daunting task. If negative emotions run their course, won’t they wreak havoc in your life?
Won’t anger become destructive, jealousy turn to hatred, fear lead to failure, and grief sink into despair? These negative emotions only intensify and become difficult to manage when you do not attend to them and let them run their course.
When negative emotions unravel freely, they don’t draw out for years and years, remaining unresolved and harmful to your health, and toxic to your relationships. Instead, they intensify for a time, and once they are genuinely and fully expressed, they pass — just as the waters in a river are in constant flow.
For emotions to run their course, all you need to do is follow these three simple steps:
- 1) Accept that all of your emotions have value, meaning that they signal important information to you about your thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and your environment.
- 2) Express your emotions in safe and appropriate ways. It may need to be in private with a pen and journal, or maybe a foam bat and pillow. Or it may need to be in the company of someone you trust, like a good friend or a therapist.
- The key to this step is not to censor, rationalize away, or negatively judge what you are really feeling. You may feel like a two-year throwing a tantrum. That’s okay — the fit will pass. In order for the emotion to reach resolution, it must be clearly heard, felt, and later on, understood, for that is the path to serenity.
- 3) Remember that your emotions are simply your reactions to your internal (e.g., thoughts) and external (e.g., relationships) environments, and it is by uncovering them that you learn more about yourself and what you need in order to be happy, healthy, and successful in life. Remembering this will motivate you to stay focused on mindfully accepting all of your emotions as valuable to your self-growth.
There are many ways to follow the three steps above, and you’re bound to find that certain methods work better than others. The important thing is that you actively seek those ways that work best for you, because throughout your life, you’re going to experience many emotions that need a safe outlet to be expressed and listened to.
Following the three steps will also help you stay focused on the present, find solutions to problems once you are aware (thanks to your emotions) that they exist, and increase your understanding in order to make your future the best that it can be.
Respond mindfully to your emotions
When you let your emotions run their course, then something beautiful happens.
You already know how valuable it is to let your joy, happiness, optimism, wonder, and gratitude grace your life.
But when you let your anger, fear, jealousy, or even disgust run their course… they lead you to the truth behind their origination. All of a sudden it’s clear why you were so angry, fearful, jealous, or disgusted. You can see the thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and environmental triggers that brought the negative emotions into play.
And then you can quickly identify the real problems that need to be fixed, whether they are internal (e.g., a dysfunctional belief), or external (e.g., a dysfunctional relationship).
Reap the rewards
This means that letting your emotions run their course allows you to be more logical than you ever could before expressing the emotions. Because your understanding of the situation that gave cause for the emotions, and your understanding of yourself, will have significantly expanded.
It is from that expanded awareness that you can use your negative emotions constructively. You no longer have to lash out or fight your feelings or distract yourself from the pain… because you know what needs to be done to take care of your needs and fix real problems.
That expanded awareness helps you discover the best way to respond to the situation that gave cause for the emotional reaction. Part of discovering the best way to respond is by using the important information about your life and your place in it — that only your emotions could deliver to you in an immediate, significant, personally-relevant way.
Emotional serenity
Emotions are like the current of a river. They’re in constant flow. Sometimes they’re turbulent.
But it’s their turbulence that contains a message, about you and for you. So that you may respond to life in healthy ways, from a place of serenity and self-awareness.
Emotions can slow down too, become like a calm lake tucked away in a meadow. These emotions take on the form of inner-peace, tranquility, self-love, confidence, gratitude, and compassion.
It’s only after you allow your more turbulent emotions to flow with the strong current of a river that they transform into what they were meant to be: vital signals about your life, that you listen to — that you need to listen to in order to experience more longer-lasting, serene emotional states that nurture your heart, mind, spirit, and being.
Try incorporating these keys to emotional serenity today, and feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.
About the Author: Melissa Karnaze writes about the intelligence of emotions on Mindful Construct and Twitter.
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Amazing article, and very inspiring. I want to learn more about letting go emotions, so thanks for writing this.
Oscar – freestyle mind´s last blog ..Story About The Swine Flu And The Vaccine
Hi Oscar, yes, it seems that many people are looking for the easiest way to let go of the emotions that are more difficult to deal with it. It’s only natural as societies are evolving.
It’s counter intuitive that holding on to emotions *really tightly* at first, does the the trick — or at least jump starts the natural process — but psychology studies are showing that you can’t really “let go” of negative emotions or make them “vanish.”
What you can do though is be mindful of them, accept them, and then when the time is right, reframe your thoughts and beliefs about the situation in healthy ways.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
Thanks for this post Melissa. I really needed it since I find myself stressed and uptight during the times I myself under pressure. Our emotions can teach us a lot about our soul and I believe that the more conscious we are about our emotions, the easier it will be to relax, let go, and live our lives in a more peaceful manner.
Tristan Lee´s last blog ..How to Conquer Fear
Well said Tristan. I’m glad to hear that the article came at the right time for you.
Like you said, it’s our self-awareness that unlocks the keys to what we need in life to be happy and create peace, and to discover how we really want to succeed. And one of the best ways to increase that self-awareness is by cultivating emotional awareness, which requires that we accept our feelings.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
I think the idea of letting emotions run their course is a very good start to emotional serenity. For me, doing this means you don’t feed your negative emotions with negative thoughts and more negative emotions, but instead just let them flow.
Eduard
Eduard, you bring up a really good point. How many times do we find ourselves amidst feeling pain… thinking: “I can’t believe I am in so much pain! There *must* be something wrong with me!”
And then, we compile the original pain with feelings of guilt and shame. Which makes it even harder to let the emotions run their natural course and heal.
Not letting the negative thoughts compound the negative emotions is so hard to do because it takes a lot reprogramming of dysfunctional beliefs society has taught us. And in *certain* situations it’s even a natural part of the healing. But most of the time, I think we just need to put our left brain on hold, and teach it mindfulness while the right brain does her thing.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
Hi, Melissa, Hi Miche, great article! It’s so true that we can learn to handle our emotions responsibly instead of repressing them or worse, acting on them and hurting ourselves and others in the process. Thank you for providing a simple and helpful blueprint to managing our negative emotions so that we can get to (or return to) a much more desired space of tranquility.
Hi Belinda, thanks for your comment! I think that one big reason why it has been intimidating to let negative emotions run their course is that they have a bad rep of leading to destructive behavior — because they’re aren’t worked with constructively.
It’s an understandable reaction, but I do believe that as a society we are re-learning how to feel, and use negative emotions to get back to our natural and desired states, as you describe it.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
Hi Melissa.
You’ve got a point here. Sometimes I try to prevent my emotions from running their course, and it doesn’t seem to work. They have a certain allotment of time that they need to be processed in, and my attempts to rush them through faster can be documented on FailBlog. Maybe next time I will be more mindful of them, letting them process while I work on something else, but not resisting them so much.
That’s hilarious because I went back to read more of your article and saw your next headline “Respond mindfully to your emotions”. I guess we are completely on the same page then. Point well taken.
I will look to reap the rewards from this way of responding. Thanks for these 3 keys.
Armen Shirvanian´s last blog ..Your Presence Means You Have A Fighting Opportunity
Armen, that’s cool that we are on the same page!
It’s such a fine balance figuring how long each emotion needs to run its course, and that’s why I think it’s so important for everyone to discover their own process and what works best for them.
For me, journaling does wonders, knowing that I always have a safe outlet to express myself. But I also work well talking to someone I trust, and just expressing my emotions in private.
Of course, what works best for you may be totally different! That’s what makes the process so exciting to me, that we each have our unique ways of experiencing our emotions and processing them.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
Emotions are a reflection of thought in the body. When we can see this we can easily let emotions go, and when we can let them go, we are not longer afraid of them, and when are no longer afraid, we welcome the full spectrum of emotions. They are just feeling-messages then.
Kaushik´s last blog ..Getting into the flow of Awakening
Hi Kaushik, I’ve written before how emotion = thought + meaning (expressed as feeling). It is easier to accept our emotions and let them run their course when we understand that they are rooted in thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
Melissa,
I appreciate your insights into the emotional life. So often people can allow their emotions to control their lives. You make an important point: we must learn to receive and reflect on the emotions and listen to what they’re telling us. Once we “see” the emotion for what it is, then we can decide what to do with it.
A while back I posted about emotions and the spiritual life: http://liveholiness.com/2009/09/05/emotions-and-the-spiritual-life/
Thanks again for your insights!
Fr. Michael´s last blog ..And a Little Child Led Me
Fr. Michael, thank you for sharing your thoughts and your article. I agree that it is important for us to not just base our decisions upon our feelings, but to pursue the meaning behind our feelings so that we can actually *make* our decisions from a mindful space.
Earlier this month I came across a Q&A on a new book called, “Why Did God Give Us Emotions?” http://bit.ly/1LpzTv It makes some great points that I’ve noticed are increasingly prominent in psychology literature.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
“It’s natural for emotions to go from turbulence to serenity, as long as you are willing to let them unravel naturally and respond to them constructively.” Since I don’t like turbulence, in the past I would do anything to avoid it, resist it, stop it. But I’m learning to just feel it, sit back and let it ride it’s course because as in nature, calm follows the storm. Once I allow myself to feel turbulence it’s almost not quite as destructive, because I’m not as afraid to face it.
Hi Joy, thanks for sharing your experience, I really like that analogy! It’s counter-intuitive to *embrace* turbulence, but the turbulence brings with it such potential for healing and self-empowerment. I think it just takes practice to realize that the storm will eventually pass.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
This is so good…and it’s ironic that I let myself be very, very sad this morning. It’s been a while. (I lost my wife 3 months ago this very day…) This helps me understand that I’m on the right path. Thanks!
Andy Koehn´s last blog ..Loss, Open Doors, and Stuff…
Andy, thank you for sharing. I am deeply sorry for your loss. I watched your recent video and it brought me to tears. You have a beautiful family.
Two years ago I lost someone too. Last year I wrote about grief, and how it is through accepting it, letting it run its course, that we can eventually “move on.” Maybe it can remind you that’s it’s okay to let yourself be very, very sad at times, because it is only natural.
http://mindfulconstruct.com/2008/12/11/moving-on-from-loss-through-grief/
Thank you again for your comment Andy. You and your family will be in my thoughts.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Use Your Emotion Toolkit Like a Man
That’s a very good point. Sometimes we get so caught up in the whirlwind of negative emotion that we tend to ignore everything else that going well for us
This article reminds me of a book I am ready ‘The Art of Possibility’
Great stuff! Thanks!
thanks for the great post, really helps a lot.
the only thing I like to add to what you said is that emotions are based on past and they can’t reveal more about you than a can of peaches does. I really Love your idea about letting go
wish you peace and love
Trainerpack, yes, this article is very much about finding possibility and transformation in what we might normally think of as something bad, unhealthy, destructive, or toxic: negative emotions.
Florin, the reason I did not add that to the article is because emotions do tell us volumes about not only who we were, but who we are, and who we are becoming. Sometimes emotions from the past remain, and when that happens, it’s not to be overlooked. It usually means that we have not resolved whatever gave cause for that emotion in the first place, and that we are likely continuing the same exact patterns, that will only perpetuate the emotion.
The only way to stop the cycle, so to speak, is to let the emotions *really* run their course, so that we can finally pay attention to them, finally notice them. And then take the next steps. In my opinion, that’s really the only way to successfully “let go” in the long-term, though it’s more specifically transforming one experience into another, so that nothing is really lost or let go of, but rather gained.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Face Procrastination in the Mirror
Dear Melissa, this is utterly FANTASTIC!! I was reading along and I thought I wonder if she is going to say that people have to bring their tempestuous or tumultuous emotions under control and bring them as quickly as possible into serene balance… LOL!
And THEN: you said: “Emotional serenity comes from letting your emotions run their course,”
And I literally shouted out loud YES!!!!! You are brilliant and this post is so in keeping with my dear friend Miche. She is, like you, total liberation!! LOL! I love her and now I love you!! I must check out your site and will add you on twitter and to my RSS. I am so so so proud of you. This is a wonderful article and keeps the soul intact and allows for humanity and deep exploration of who and what we are. Good…for…YOU!! Thank you a thousand times. Hugs, Robin
Robin Easton´s last blog ..Lifting the Lid on Age and Death
Robin, it’s so great to hear your positive feedback. This article would not have been written if it weren’t for the wonderful Serenity Hacker community, as well as Miche’s graciousness and support!
It has been very inspiring for me to see readers really appreciate the gift that emotions have to offer, by as you say, keeping the soul intact and allowing for “humanity and deep exploration of who and what we are.” Thank you so much for sharing.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Want More Mindful Construct Goodness?
Thanks for this article, it is one of the best ‘advice’ / ’self-help’ blog posts I have read, really struck a chord.
I came to the same conclusion myself recently, where I felt a lot of negative emotion, but decided I needed to let it run its course, and I felt so good when it had passed and discovered some really important realisations… as you say, the calm after the storm.
This is actually a new thing for me, a new way to try to handle the ‘negative’ emotions. You express it very well and I’m glad I read your post – it really re-inforces my own recent discovery of this and my motivation to keep riding it through, rather than to try to distract myself from the ‘undesirable’ emotions.
All we do when we do that, is maintain our levels of turmoil, rather than free ourselves to the calm that you describe.
Thanks for the post – it’s an eye-opener.
Anton, thanks for sharing with us. I’m really glad it reinforced what you’ve been experiencing already. Keep on riding it through! Sometimes it gets easier, sometimes it gets harder. But when worked with, it always leads to greater peace and clarity, and ultimately, the longer-lasting calm.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..Want More Mindful Construct Goodness?
and now, via the medium of song…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvsGzPZP_2g
lol Anton! What a funny music video! I really like this verse:
“Do you know what it’s like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out ’til you got no more
Hey man now you’re really living”
So true, so true that it makes the sun rise over the hill give one so much more of a thrill! Thanks for sharing.
Melissa Karnaze´s last blog ..The Robot Guide to Emotion
As a poet my emotions are a major tool to inform my art. I mine them for the precious gems they can be when polished and effectively placed. I ride them into visonary adventure, follow the guideposts they leave in perfumed wisps. We are all able to be artists of our lives, enjoying and employing emotional content.
libramoon´s last blog ..Peaceful Co-Creating Emerging Visions #16 October 2009