Negative Emotions Can Be A Gift

In my last post, I stated: whether you’re a student of quantum physics, the law of attraction, Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill or any of the other hundreds of books written on the subject, the simple and irrefutable fact is that we are the creators of our experience. How it works is that we have thoughts, our thoughts create feelings and emotions, and those thoughts, fueled by the feelings and emotions, get planted in the fertile soil of creativity and ultimately manifest. 

I then concluded by saying that so many people spend their time complaining about and thereby focusing on what they don’t want and that’s the reason why they don’t have what they want.

So this week I’ve been wondering why this is true, if it is. Here’s something that occurred to me. Someone explained to me the difference between feelings and emotions, which is something I never thought much about. What they said is that feelings are the natural response we have in the moment about something that happens. Someone compliments you and you feel good and smile. You get an unexpected gift and you’re happy.

But emotions, on the other hand, are much deeper reactions that we have to events that happen. Someone cuts us off on the highway and we get really angry and want to retaliate. We don’t get the promotion we hoped for and we’re sad and frustrated for days. We don’t get the sale and we beat ourselves up all the way back to the office.

What might not be obvious from those examples is that emotions trigger within us something that happened in the past and, more importantly, something that happened in the past that never got “complete.”

I’ll give you a very practical example of what I’m talking about. To make a long story short, I grew up in a family where I received little or no acknowledgement and lots of criticism. It seemed like nothing I ever did was good enough. I have just gotten in touch with how angry that made me and, to make matters worse, I had no permission in my family to express my anger. If I spoke up inappropriately, I was even punished. Can you relate to that? Did something like that or similar occur for you?

I’ve done a lot of work to release that anger but I’m clear that some of it is still there. How do I know that? Because any time anyone expresses disapproval of me or criticizes me for something I’ve done, up comes that anger. The result of all of this is that we all carry within us unresolved emotions like guilt, shame, anger, frustration, regrets, resentments, etc.

How I think this all relates to the law of manifestation and creation and why so many don’t have what they want is this: most, if not all, of these unresolved emotions are negative; frustration, anger, guilt, shame, resentment, etc. If we’ve never released those emotions, they will keep coming up over and over again and cause us to create and manifest circumstances to produce more frustration, anger, guilt, shame, etc. What produces the things we want in our lives and our businesses are positive thoughts and positive emotions like joy, passion, excitement, happiness, etc. And, it’s tough to generate those positive emotions when we carry around all that negativity.

So here’s your action plan: don’t run away from those negative emotions. They’re a gift, designed to show you something you’re incomplete about.  Every time one comes up, use it to see if you can find the source. Dig deep into the experience and see if you can get to the bottom of it. If you can tap into the source and experience the emotion that was never expressed, you can ultimately free yourself of it.

There are many techniques to do this work and I suspect I’ve done all of them, from working with a therapist, attending emotion clearing workshops, working with an EFT practitioner and working with a coach. All of that work has been a real gift to myself. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of what’s available to you and if you want to discuss this with me, shoot me an email at scott@UnshackledLeadership.com and we can set up a time to talk.