tune into ‘what is’ in this moment…
‘Emotional Outlook’
by meditative - November 22nd, 2014.Filed under: Insights for Mindful Intelligence.
How do we perceive and relate to our emotions- our feeling or affective states of consciousness? How do they move us in one direction or another- positive or negative? How do they impact our outlook, our thinking style, our capacity to be happy and to ‘bounce back’ from adverse situations?
Fundamentally, our emotions are messengers that serve as a driving force behind our motivation to act- react or respond. They are ‘charged’ thoughts that have the inherent power to directly affect and transform our psychological (e.g. mood, disposition, etc.) & physiological (muscle tension, heart rate, etc.) states of being. On average, an emotion is quite transient in nature lasting only about 90-seconds, but yet many of us struggle with the lingering ‘aftershock’ of its ‘charge’ on our state of being. We tend to ‘feed’ and exasperate our emotion with highly conditioned (reactionary) patterns of response. We often can’t help but habitually get caught up in the continuous, self-limiting & self-perpetuating loop of aroused thinking & feeling… thinking & feeling, etc.
In mindfulness practice, we routinely observe our emotions with the intent of knowing (nonjudgmentally) what they may be ‘calling’ us to be, say, or do. We patiently learn to cultivate a balanced (‘equanimous’) and compassionate outlook toward our emotions- self-regulating without personally identifying with them, and using self-awareness as a tool to help sustain observational distance and prevent us from getting entangled and carried away by the arousal of our reactionary loops.
Emotions are simply passing ‘events’ in our realm of experience. They are messengers teaching us lessons about ourselves- the transient nature of who we are and who we are becoming…
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