Emotional Recalibration

Hey there folks!

 

So I have been sitting around today trying to think about what I was going to write. I had yet another writing prompt that did not really suit a blog entry. As my mind wandered over things I began thinking about conversations my cousin and I have had, most of which seem to revolve around personal emotions.

 

One question that I always come back to when thinking about such things is, why do moments of happiness seem to be so fleeting while negative emotions always seem to linger. This unfortunate truth seems to lead to toxic thinking because it drags us down into a pessimistic point of view. Being someone who values positive thinking and self actualization this has been a regular struggle for me.

 

Then the other day I was speaking to my cousin about the importance of allowing yourself to feel your emotions. If you do not give your emotions their time and space they will slowly eat away at you. It is not possible to run away from your emotions or to shove them out of the way. One way or another what you are feeling is going to come out, and if you do not choose to let them out then they will come out at an inconvenient time.

 

A day or to later I was thinking over the conversation and finally connected some dots. You see when you allow yourself to embrace your emotions and give them their space and free yourself from them. Naturally, when we are caught up in positive emotions such as happiness it is very easy to embrace that experience. We wrap ourselves in the moment like a warm blanket. Meanwhile, when bad things happen to us we tend to shy away from them and hide them in the corner.

 

However, what if we think of these emotions as finite entities? When you wrap yourself up inside of your happiness you are using up the emotion. So by this line of logic, perhaps happiness and other positive emotions feel so fleeting because we are so quick to use them up. Whereas, negative emotions seem to hang around forever because we are unwilling to embrace them.

 

Now what is there to take from all of this observation? I am reminded of being a child eating a pudding cup. For all of my life I have enjoyed pudding. Often times when I was allowed one of those snack pack cups I would devour it quickly and ask for another. My mother invariably said no because there was only so much to go around and my father and brother also enjoyed the treats. As a result I learned to prolong the experience by eating slower, and we can treat happiness in much the same way. In the same manner of thinking if you allow yourself to be sad when sad feelings come about you can try to hasten yourself through it in order to get to the next positive moment.

 

Above all else I think the most important thing to take away is remembering to make yourself available to your emotions. Live right now in the present moment, both happiness and depression will come and go. If you are still capable of feeling them then at the very least you are alive.