Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) Aug/Sept 2016 Aspire Mag Full Issue | Page 37
The key to understanding emotions is to
accept them as they are. Contrary to what
most of us have been taught, they are not to
be suppressed or denied.
That’s because there really are only three
emotions – feeling good, feeling bad or
feeling neutral (acceptance) – although we
give them a lot of other names.
Once you’re able to read your emotional
guidance system, it can guide you to think
different thoughts and take different actions
in order to find balance, understanding, and
gratitude. Now you really want to learn how
this works, don’t you?
And here’s the thing you absolutely have to
know: An emotion is always preceded by a
thought – and it’s the thought that triggers
the emotion.
Of course, it often doesn’t feel like a thought
caused the feeling. It almost always feels
like a circumstance, something outside of
ourselves, triggered the feeling – but that’s
only because we haven’t trained ourselves
to be aware of our thoughts.
The good news is that you can learn to be
more aware of your thoughts by tuning into
your emotions and working back from there.
Learning to “read” and trust your emotional
guidance system will allow you to “reach” for
better-feeling thoughts than the ones you’re
currently thinking (that is, the ones causing
distress).
Your guidance system can offer “real-time”
feedback, information about where your
emotions are, where they’re likely to lead,
and how to “turn around” if necessary.
Okay, so when you “reach for the betterfeeling thought,” what are you reaching
for, exactly? Well, Esther and Jerry Hicks
compiled a very handy list of emotions and
arranged them into an Emotional Guidance
Scale—one-word descriptions of all the
shades of emotion between despair and joy.
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WISDOM & SELF-GROWTH
Once you’re able to read your emotional guidance
system, it can guide you to think different thoughts
and take different actions in order to find balance,
understanding, and gratitude.