Welcome! If you haven't already, you can read my short introductory post to learn about me and why I am writing in the personal development niche.
Basically I am trying to better my life and am writing about what I am doing to develop best life. I suffered emotionally and realize that emotional stability needs to be the bedrock for all self development work.
The best way I found to handle my emotions is in a book called The Sedona Method.
To know more about how The Sedona Method originated, just do a google search. I know you are hear to learn how to drop negative emotions, not necessarily a history of The Sedona Method.
The Sedona Method calms you mind very quickly. The outcomes are similar to a 1/2 hour of meditation.
I will paraphrase from The Sedona Method book and their main course. These techniques are not my own and I am letting you know most of the article is referencing these two sources. It would be hard to quote each idea.
I will write extensively on The Sedona Method and you will need to get the technique down in order to understand my future articles. I will however always provide a link back to this article.
Emotions have a huge impact on our life. Often times when we experience them for an extended period of time, we become numb. We carry around the baggage but we forget it is there.
In order to deal with our emotions we go to two unhealthy extremes. There is expression. Have you ever been mad at something from earlier in the day and someone says something a little off and you just chew them out even though they didn't deserve it?
That is expression. It feels good at the time but causes a lot of problems in your life.
Suppression is when you hold the emotions in and again it is like walking around with a 100 pound weight.
The Sedona Method offers a third, healthy alternative. You can just decide to let it go.
Before you say "yeah right" and move on. Just be open to the idea and experiment.
Have you ever been really mad at someone and later learned they didn't do what you thought they did? In a instant you let go of your anger.
Often times if a young child falls he will cry if an adult is around. However, if no adult is around they just get up and move on.
We do naturally let go of our emotions.
Pick up a pen and hold it in your hand. The pen represents you emotions. Twirl the pen around and realize it is not attached to the hand.
If you hold tight to the pen it will feel uncomfortable just like holding on to our emotions. Pretty soon the pen will feel like it is part of the hand.
However, you can just open your hand and drop the pen.
As I mentioned before I am paraphrasing what I learned from the book and the audio course. These are not my own ideas.
This exercise will be the backbone of my articles.
Step 1: Think about an issue in your life that you are unhappy with. Ask yourself what is the feeling you are experiencing about this issue?
Step 2: Welcome however you are feeling. Welcome, the thoughts in your mind etc... Sometime it helps to pretend that you have to describe how you are physically feeling to someone else.
A tightness in your chest, shortness of breath, a heaviness etc...
The more you can welcome and get in touch with how you are feeling the more positive the results.
Step 3: Ask yourself "Could I let this feeling go?" This just means are you able to do it. Yes or no are both acceptable. You still will release even if you say "no."
I sometimes find it helpful to ask "Could I let this feeling go as best I can, just for now?"
Step 4: Ask yourself "Would I let this feeling go?" In other words are you willing to?
Again you can phrase it "Would I let this feeling go, as best I can, just for now?"
Step 5: Ask yourself "When?" This is an invitation to let the feeling go "now."
Step 6: You should have felt a slight shift in consciousness. Repeat the steps over again as many times as it takes to release the negative feeling.
Tip: Make a fist if needed. Hold your fist tight like holding on to your emotions. When you decide to let the feeling go, open up your hand and release the feeling.
This is a skill to learn and it takes some practice. However, if you were able to let go even a little bit of a negative emotion you can see why it would be helpful to learn this technique.
Knowing this exercise is fundamental to be able to understand my future articles on the Sedona method. I will be discussing many ways to apply this technique such as goal setting, health, anxiety, relationships and many more.
So really practice this exercise to get the best of future articles.
If you liked this article, follow me so you get notified of future articles. Please comment below with any questions or just to let me know you enjoyed the article.
I hope this exercise will help you live a better life!
Take care,
John
