Do you have certain emotions labeled as negative or positive? I think we all do! What if we were to remove the labels, and use ALL our emotions to our advantage?
Join me, and lets dive into this mini-sode and unpack this together.
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Follow Stefanie on Instagram
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Do you have certain emotions labeled as negative or positive? I think we all do! What if we were to remove the labels, and use ALL our emotions to our advantage?
Join me, and lets dive into this mini-sode and unpack this together.
Fun links…
Follow Stefanie on Instagram
Get the Strength Discovered Newsletter & Freebies
Join the Strength Discovered Community
Download Your Neuroplasticity Roadmap
Follow Stefanie on Instagram and TikTok
0:00
Welcome back, it is your girl, Stefanie here, and today is going to be a minisode all about emotions. And they get a bad rap, let's be real emotions get a bad rap, we label them as positive or negative. And then we get attached to the positive ones, and then we avoid the negative ones. So this sets us up for fear and attachment. So we begin chasing the emotions that we've labeled as positive and become a very elusive. And the emotions that are we have labeled as negative, we begin to avoid them, we have a fear of feeling them. And this view of having emotions labeled as positive and negative is very disempowering. It creates a deep resistance to feeling what is actually present in this moment. And I want to maybe help us think about it in a different way, because I am not immune from this. It's something that I think, is so ingrained in us this positive and negative labels of emotions, that it's easy to get sucked in without realizing that we have.
1:14
So if we were to take away the positive and negative labels of emotion, and really see them as guidance, to help us see what's going on internally, as information or indicator lights to see what's going on. And if we do it this way, if there's no positive or negative labels, it's just an emotion, and we're using it as guidance. It means all emotions are now allowed. And it decreases the fear of them. And this is a process, right. But if you're able to remove the labels, then all emotions become allowed. And they're safer to see because they're getting giving us information about what maybe isn't serving us.
1:57
And if you've been following along with these episodes that I've been pushing out, you'll know that I love framing things for myself in ways that feel empowering. Because if I have something in my mind framed in a way that's disempowering, then it does create this fear and resistance to it. So I would encourage not only myself, but you as well to do this with me to ditch the labels. Fuck the labels, forget the labels of positive and negative emotions. What's present? Start with that, allow it and see what it's trying to get your attention for? Is it a thought? Is it another emotion? Is it a belief is an attitude? Is it an old program that's not serving you? Is it a past memory that keeps surfacing with trauma? Is it stories that you've created in your mind and attached meanings to?
2:49
If we use our emotions, in this way, it becomes our guidance for healing. It becomes our guidance for being our authentic and true selves, because it leads us back to things that aren't serving us. And when we do that, we get to change those things, so that we can move forward in a better way.
3:10
So if we were to think about this in a big picture view... so a little bit of background information, our emotions are born from our thoughts or our perceptions, our beliefs. Okay? So we have, I'm gonna say thoughts for simplicity. So our thoughts, create our emotions, our emotions then inspire our actions, then our actions lead us to results. And then we tell ourselves stories about those results, that more than likely come back and confirm the original thought to be true. So it ends up being a cycle, a self fulfilling loop that we can get stuck in.
3:48
I would encourage you to use this loop that we generally have as a guidance system. So it interrupts the pattern. So instead of having the emotion automatically inspire an action, especially if it's not going to serve you, use that emotion, to backtrack to the beliefs, the thoughts, the programs, the memories, that created the emotion to begin with. So one of the first places that I started using this, removing the label idea, around emotions, was when I would have a feeling of depression start to surface. I would get curious about the feeling. I wouldn't judge that it was there. And then ask myself, "Okay, I'm feeling low. I'm feeling like there's a cycle of depression coming on. What's really going on? What is this trying to show me? Is it that asking me to change something in my life? Is asking me to evaluate my thinking patterns that I'm having right now, that could have created the cycle of depression to begin again?
4:48
And when we do it this way, it really becomes so incredibly empowering, because we begin to use our emotions to serve our highest good They're not negative, they're not positive, they just become the guidance system to understand what's really going on so that we can shift it, so we can change it. So if you're a person who likes to have visuals to understand a concept, I like to think of it like the ocean. Like the ocean represents all the emotions, they're all there, they're all present. They don't all come crashing up on the beach in a form of a wave, they take their turn, it's maybe it's anger, maybe it's sadness, maybe it's joy, maybe it's pleasure, whatever those waves are. When we label them positive or negative, it creates this attachment. And this fear of feeling.
5:47
I want you to get curious this week about other labels. Like right now, I'm talking about labeling emotions as positive or negative. But what other labels are we putting on ourselves that are creating a sense of disempowerment or aren't serving us, and these are sneaky, these can be really deep and hidden. And they might not, you might have some that are on the surface that you are aware of, like, you might label yourself as not good enough or not smart enough. Whatever you are dealing with right now, get curious about that label and question it, see what's really going on.
6:28
So this idea of removing the labels has been on my mind for a few weeks at this point. And it's funny, because I was just reading a book yesterday by Eckhart Tolle about, well, actually, it's "A New Earth". And in there, he speaks about labels and how they can get in the way. So it came really full circle for me, because this has been on my mind. And then there was a section of the book that just was beautiful. And he's talking about labels here, and I'm going to quote from the book: "The fact is, you don't know what it is, you have only covered up the mystery with a label."
7:08
So let's uncover the mystery. Together. Let's remove the labels that we have on our emotions, that we have on ourselves, and really see what's possible. There is power in removing the labels that we've placed on ourselves, especially with our emotions, labeling them as positive or negative. If we were to take that away, blank slate and all emotions were allowed. How would that change your perception of what you feel? What would be different? How could you move forward in a more empowered way? How can you use your emotions as a guidance system to create more of what you want, instead of being stuck in what you don't want?
7:54
Thanks for joining me today. And remember, you've got this!