REVEAL HOW YOU FEEL
True nourishment and self-care requires emotional facility—honoring, naming, expressing, resolving, and completing your feelings. In the last several weeks, you have been deepening your relationship with your emotions—and yourself. You began with learning to be more accepting of feelings, and then you learned to identify them. You have been preparing for this next step by learning how to comfort, soothe, and encourage yourself, to turn toward your feelings, and to heed their information. Now you work on expressing your feelings more freely.
Ultimately, the goal is to get to the natural state of your feelings—where they flow and can be completed, leaving you ready for the next experience.
Think about a time when you finally gave in and had a good cry, or perhaps you have been angry and expressed it until you became clear what changes you wanted to make in your life and determined to make them. When we numb or stuff our feelings, we keep ourselves from benefiting from their natural function of leading us to more pleasure and avoiding unnecessary pain. We miss the satisfaction of completion of emotions, the wisdom they offer, and the resolution and peace that follows their expression.
Many of us think that we need to keep our emotions in check to be rational, thinking beings. But neuroscience research shows that it is quite the opposite. When we suppress our feelings, we limit our cognitive functioning. Not only does suppressing our emotions keep us from flowing and limiting our intimacy, creativity, congruence, and authenticity, but the energy we use to suppress our feelings also lowers our cognitive functioning. Suppressing emotions drains our cognitive resources, degrades our ability to recall information and experiences, and makes us less capable of productive action. We lose the ability to learn, make distinctions for decision-making, recall memories, or direct our attention appropriately— because these functions require the powers of emotions.
Our emotions are essential for rational thought, learning, decision-making, and productivity—as demonstrated by noted researcher and professor of neuroscience at USC, Antonio Damasio.
There are skills you need to develop in order to live with emotional intelligence. First, you must accept and honor your feelings. Second, you need to be in touch with your bodily sensations and your often unconscious, reflexive responses to your emotions to be conscious of what feelings you are having. Third is the critical skill of learning to identify your feelings. You may not always know what you’re feeling, but it’s important to learn to name them to tame them and use their power and information for right action. Neuroscience studies show that labeling your feelings decreases activity in our emotional centers and helps tame your amygdala, bringing your higher-level functioning back online, thus allowing you to deal more effectively with your emotions.
After accepting and identifying your emotions, the next skill is to express your feelings fully and responsibly. Expressing your feelings out loud activates your speech centers as well as your frontal lobe, which gives you more facility to deal with your emotions. You learn to match what is going on inside you with genuine expression so that it’s congruent and can be understood and seen by another person. For example, if you are angry, but you are crying, that could send a mixed signal. When you’re fully expressing your feelings, you learn how to have true emotional honesty—where your expression of the feeling matches the depth of the feeling itself. You learn to express the feeling at the level of your experiencing.
Think about a baby…they cry at the top of their lungs, then coo the next minute, then giggle.
Think about a baby. Babies move from feeling to feeling as each emotion rolls through them. They cry at the top of their lungs, then coo the next minute, then giggle. You may have experienced this after a big cry—once the pain is expressed, you often feel peaceful and you are ready for the next experience. Through expressing, you’re beginning to integrate and encode the emotional experience in your neural net.
You then might even start laughing. Or you might get angry. We all have the potential to be more like babies again, and as adults we can learn to restore the natural process of emotions within acceptable social limitations. On this journey of developing your emotional facility, you learn to allow your feelings to flow, be expressed fully, and move on. It may seem daunting, but it’s not only possible—it is freeing.
You are learning the skills of emotional intelligence. But, like building any kind of capacity, don’t expect to instantly have mastery of emotional fluency! It is like learning a new language—difficult in the beginning. But as you learn more skills, practice, interact with others, and are coached by those who have more facility than you, you eventually become more fluent and are able to express nuances and deeper truths as your skill develops. Get ready for the lifelong journey of deepening your relationship with your emotions. In the Advanced Emotional Intelligence Lab, you have numerous assignments and experiences that facilitate the flow and expression of your emotions, surrounded and encouraged by others on the journey with you.
A Vision of Living the Way of the Heart— True Emotional Intelligence
As you continue to dive into your emotional life, expect to reap many benefits. As you read this vision of true emotional intelligence, imagine yourself living this way of the heart. Let these words inform your redemptive narrative, a vision of your future self. Imagine this for yourself:
Now you are beginning to know what is going on inside you, tapping into the emotional reservoir that runs within you. No longer skating on the surface, you can dive into the depths of your being. Your creativity is flowing more freely. You are developing more compassion for yourself and others as you are more aware of your feelings and more accepting of your emotions. You can understand others more fully.
Because you have opened yourself to the beauty of your pain, you live a heartfelt life. You can access joy in all its forms. You feel your pain, fear and anger, and love, joy, and bliss—and see those states in others. You connect more deeply, touch and are touched, and dance with life in joy and celebration.
You are learning to speak the universal language of all humanity—feelings, the language of the heart. Understanding others, you find the common bond in your humanity. You know that on the inside, we’re the same. We all feel fear, hope, love, joy, anger, sadness, pain. You don’t have to speak the same language or have the same religious or political beliefs or be the same color, because you can connect heart-to-heart.
When your heart is open, you are a part of the universal family—brothers and sisters with every other person in the world who has ever been and ever will be.
Where you once saw strangers or even enemies, you see your sisters and brothers—and sense your shared humanity. You share the universal language of the human heart—the language of emotions.
You have become aware of and nurtured your feelings, and now you are ready to express them more fully. During this week, experiment with expressing your feelings in many ways, surprising yourself with your growing capacity for expression.
Experiment with Expressing Your Emotions
Main Assignment
This week, experiment with expressing your emotions as a step toward living your vision of true emotional facility, the Way of the Heart. The purpose of this week’s assignment is to experiment with the expression of your emotions and to reveal how you feel—both to yourself and to others.
This is the week to cry your tears, quake with fear, laugh out loud, share your love fully, raise your voice when you are angry, bubble with enthusiasm... Let your guard down and let yourself feel and express the emotion! Let it show on your face.
Let your expression match the emotion you are feeling. To the best of your ability, try to be genuine and congruent in your expression—don’t smile when you are angry or fly into a rage when you are scared. Experiment. Your Very-Able Exercises will help you find ways to express your feelings this week. Use your discoveries to update your journal. And be ready to share what strikes you about experimenting with your feelings.
Don’t worry about doing it right—if you do that, you won’t express. This is the week to FEEL and let it go. Enjoy the journey of expressing your feelings more freely and fully.
Very-Able Assignments
Emotion an Hour…
Set a timer to chime once every hour and every time it rings, complete the following sentence for at least one emotion:
“I am feeling (sad, hurt, afraid, angry, happy) about .
Use the worksheet to record and express your emotions every hour. Say them out loud as often as you can.
Emotional Expression
At the end of each day, complete the sentences on the worksheet about your primary emotions.
I feel afraid of
I feel hurt by
I feel angry about
I feel sad about
I feel happy (joyful) about
It doesn’t have to be one thing—keep writing and writing and let yourself express. Let the tears come up as you write––or the anger or fear or… Remember, this is one of the most loving acts you can provide for yourself —allowing your feelings to be expressed.
Play the “Feelings Game” with Your Family or Friends
At the dinner table with your family or when talking with your friends, or even on a date, play the Feelings Game. Review your day and share a time/situation/person/condition where you had each of the five primary feelings: fear, hurt, anger, sadness, and joy. Invite each person to report. You can do each feeling in turn or have each person name all five feelings when it’s their turn: “Today, I was____ about/when ___”. It’s a great way to process your day and connect with each other. Many families have made this a dinner ritual!
Express What You Wouldn’t Have Expressed Before
Take a risk in the expression of your emotions. Many of us reveal some feelings more easily but consistently hide others. The purpose of this experience is to express an emotion that you wouldn’t have expressed previously. If it has been difficult for you to express anger, let it rip this week. If sadness is tough for you, let a tear shine in the corner of your eye (or sob it out in a big snot-filled cry!). If you usually hide your fear, share it. If you are self-conscious laughing or sharing your joy, let it out this week. Let yourself giggle, chuckle, guffaw, whoop, and even snort. If you usually don’t show your love, let it shine upon your face.
Hurt Alert—Saying Ow
Literally say “ow” or “ouch” when you are hurt— whether it was because you stubbed your toe, someone hurt your feelings, you received a tough piece of feedback, the people at work asked everyone out to lunch except you...Or, someone didn't return your heartfelt text or your request for help, answer your email, or call you back... or they complimented someone else on the project you worked on... Let yourself admit that you arehurt and express it. Say Ow!
Movies to Feel by—Tear-Jerkers, Nail-Biters, Scary Flicks...
Go see a movie that will evoke feelings, whether tear jerkers, nail-biters, horror films, etc. Use the movie to help you express your feelings. Shake with fear, cry your eyes out, get openly mad at the injustice or maltreatment someone receives... Let yourself feel.
Invite Others to Join You on the Journey
This week, express your emotions with others and share the importance of emotional intelligence. It’s the new buzzword in corporate circles and people are starting to wake up to the power of emotional and social intelligence for everyone—from young children to top leaders—to develop effective relationships and enhance their performance and success. You are on the cutting edge of the field, so be proud and invite others to share in what you’re learning.
Develop More Nourishing Contact: Share Your Feelings and How Important Emotions Are with Others
This week, be more willing to engage with emotions as you greet and interact with others. Experiment with ways to include expressing your feelings with people as you interact. Comment to others (yes, even strangers) about what you notice about their feelings: “Looks like you’re happy/having a good time!” or “You seem a little down.” Or comment on an experience like someone cutting in front of a stranger in line, i.e., “Doesn't that tick you off?”. When someone asks you, “How are you?” don't just automatically say, “Fine.” Answer them by saying how you are really feeling—and that you are learning about the power of emotional intelligence and how important it is to know what you are feeling... and you can go from there. If someone says, “What’s up?” or “What’s happening?” include a feeling in your answer, and/or tell them you are excited about what you are learning about the power of emotions...
Emotions Every Hour
Use the chart below as your guide to record what you are feeling each hour: sad, hurt, afraid, angry, happy.
End of Day Emotions
Use the chart below as your to record your primary emotions at the end of each day.
