Small children have this amazingly pure and direct connection with their emotions and inner selves. They also have far fewer filters. You immediately know how children are feeling. They display happiness by laughing, running, and yelling. On the flip-side crying and tantrums are the undeniable indicator of their unhappiness and discontent.
As young adults we’re taught early on to “behave”, to suppress or mask our feelings, and to try our best to please others around us. In school we’re rewarded for suppressing feelings and emotions, by being labeled “well-behaved”. This is a label we often earn at the detriment of our own wellbeing.
By the time we’re adults we’ve been taught to be much more complex. We’ve been conditioned to believe it’s perfectly normal to put up with a fair amount of bullshit from others, especially those we deem “superiors”. In the process of all this education and social refinement we sever that direct connection with our inner selves. We lose the ability to recognize and process important signals our emotions are trying to send.
This can make it very difficult to successfully navigate the adult world because we don't know ourselves. This makes us very easily manipulated by others. It’s one reason so many adults end up emotionally adrift and in in a string of dysfunctional relationships. Our feelings and emotions are often like a canary in the coal mine. They warn us when we’re headed down the wrong path towards toxic or abusive people and situations.
Luckily, all of this conditioning can be unlearned and we can become reacquainted with ourselves. It’s not difficult to begin to get back in touch with our emotions and intuition by re-establishing this important relationship with our inner selves. A great first step is to consciously start paying attention to our emotional state as we’re going about our day-to-day lives.
I’ll warn you, what I’m about to tell you sounds corny as hell and may register as a five or maybe even six out of ten on the Woo-Woo Meter. But I’ll share it anyway simply because it works.
The first step in re-establishing that connection with our true selves is evaluating things by what I call the “smile factor”.
Have you ever suddenly noticed your face was hurting only to realize it was because you were smiling and didn’t know it? This kind of effortless smile is usually triggered by people or things that take you out of your head, make you live in the moment, fill you with confidence and/or absolute joy. These are activities or social situations where you feel like you’re in synch with your surroundings and everything just seems to flow. This is the epitome, things that fall into this category have a smile factor of ten (SF 10).
On the opposite end of the spectrum we have the lowly smile factor of one (SF 1). These are certain situations or people that fill you with negative feelings like dread, anger, anxiety, and self-doubt. When you find yourself in this realm you have to consciously force yourself to smile. In the company of these people or in these situations you are constantly in your head, double thinking everything from the words you say to actions you do.
Each day life presents us with an endless string of people and situations that can fall anywhere on this smile factor scale of 1-to-10. If we want to maximize our life experience we must learn to evaluate precisely why these things make us feel the way we do. Being conscious of this smile factor isn’t the ultimate answer but is a great place to begin your journey of introspection.
After nearly a quarter of a century of meditation I believe that this life is a schoolhouse and the main subject we’re here to learn about is ourselves. Life tends to put us in very similar situations or relationships time and time again until we fully understand them. There are a great many valuable lessons to be learned just by simply being more mindful and by vowing not to blindly exist like a robot in autonomous mode. Life is meant to be lived deeply, in broad strokes, and we’re meant to become masters of ourselves. If you make it a priority self-mastery can be achieved and it costs nothing but our time and attention. The end result, a happy and fulfilling life, is more than worth the effort.
Thank you for reading,
Eric
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com)
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