Tuesday, March 2, 2021
One of the first things I ever did to improve my emotions was to discover new ones that I didn’t know existed. When I started journaling, years ago, my very first journal entry was a straight, vertical line, right down the center of the page. Above the column on the left side of the page I titled it, “How I feel.” At the time, I was at a low point in my life. When you’re at a low point, it’s easy to list negative feelings – destitute, pitiful, despairing, hopeless, unsuccessful, empty etc. But what helped me, was what I wrote on the other side of that vertical line. When I crossed the line, so to speak, I noticed a change in me that I was so desperately seeking.
Across the line, in the other column, I titled it “How I want to feel.” Listing desired emotions was something that ended up being fun, and interesting. Once I started Googling positive emotions, I discovered that there were thousands more. Recently, I came across a TedTalk, where the speaker mapped out over 34,000 human emotions (Dr. Alan Watkins, TedTalk, “Why You Feel What you Feel, Dec. 2015). Learning of new emotional possibilities helped me make room for them. When you give yourself a chance to imagine new, more helpful emotions, it creates a little daylight, a sliver of possibility. And within that sliver of possibility, you learn that you have a choice – a choice to have hope, confidence, and inner peace. If you can at least imagine new emotions, and create an image of how they might feel, they will end up becoming palpable in due time. When you expand your emotional vocabulary, you expand your emotional possibilities. If you’re not happy, expand your emotional vocabulary, and open the door for the possibility of new, more positive feelings.