Your “emotional guidance system” is a great tool to use whenever you’re having a negative feeling in reaction to some circumstance.
Consider it an internal GPS that will never lead you astray. It’s designed to help you “course-correct” and get where you want to go – to a better-feeling place – if you let it.
The key to understanding emotions is to accept them as they are. Contrary to what most of us have been taught, they are not to be suppressed or denied.
Once you’re able to read your emotional guidance system, it can guide you to think different thoughts and take different actions in order to find balance, understanding, and gratitude. Now you really want to learn how this works, don’t you?
Your guidance system can offer “real-time” feedback, information about where your emotions are, where they’re likely to lead, and how to “turn around” if necessary.
That’s because there really are only three emotions – feeling good, feeling bad or feeling neutral (acceptance) – although we give them a lot of other names.
And here’s the thing you absolutely have to know: An emotion is always preceded by a thought – and it’s the thought that triggers the emotion.
Of course, it often doesn’t feel like a thought caused the feeling. It almost always feels like a circumstance, something outside of ourselves, triggered the feeling – but that’s only because we haven’t trained ourselves to be aware of our thoughts.
The good news is that you can learn to be more aware of your thoughts by tuning into your emotions and working back from there.
Learning to “read” and trust your emotional guidance system will allow you to “reach” for better-feeling thoughts than the ones you’re currently thinking (that is, the ones causing distress).
Okay, so when you “reach for the better-feeling thought,” what are you reaching for, exactly? Well, Esther and Jerry Hicks compiled a very handy list of emotions and arranged them into an Emotional Guidance Scale—one-word descriptions of all the shades of emotion between despair and joy. With this list in hand, all you have to do is identify the emotion you’re currently feeling and “reach for” the one that brings you one step (or as many steps as you honestly think you can move) closer to joy.
Here’s the numbered Scale:
- Joy/Knowledge/Empowered/Freedom/Love/Appreciation
- Passion
- Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
- Positive Expectation/Belief
- Optimism
- Hopefulness
- Contentment
[Here I would add a “7.5” to this list, a feeling I would describe as “Acceptance.”]
- Boredom
- Pessimism
- Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
- Overwhelm
- Disappointment
- Doubt
- Worry
- Blame
- Discouragement
- Anger
- Revenge
- Hatred/Rage
- Jealousy
- Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
- Fear/Grief/Depression/Despair/Powerlessness
(You can download this list—arranged to make it easier to imagine moving between emotions—as a pretty PDF of the Emotional Guidance Scale, perfect for printing up and keeping handy as a reference. It’s available as my gift to you by clicking here (link to http://staceycurnow.com/downloads/EmotionalGuidanceScale.pdf).)
You can start to get better at moving your way up the list today, simply by paying attention to your emotions as you go through it.
I recommend that you set a timer on your phone to go off every hour – or more or less (whatever feels good to you). When that alarm goes off, check in with how you feel. If you don’t feel good, ask yourself what thought is underlying the feeling.
It may be something like, “I’m frustrated that I haven’t gotten anything done today.”
Or “I’m overwhelmed by everything I have to do…I’m going to eat some more chips.”
Or “I’m so angry that she said that!” (Those are just a few of the thoughts that caused me to feel bad earlier today!)
Then choose better-feeling thoughts like, “I may not have done the things at the top of my to-do list, but I taped the voice over for the fundraising video and it feels good to have that done.” (I moved from frustration to acceptance – which I think should be 7 ½ on the scale, between boredom and contentment).
Or “Yes, I’m annoyed that I went overboard with the chips, but I will do a 3-Minute Miracle Meditation and get more grounded now.” (I moved from overwhelm to irritation to acceptance.)
Or “Yeah, I was initially angry that my boss said I still have more work to do on this project, but I really feel more discouraged that I have more work to do when I thought I was done.” (I moved from anger to discouragement.)
Once you’ve found a better-feeling thought – and you’ll know you’ve found it because you’ll feel some relief – take some action that will move you even further “up” the scale along to feeling good.
Here’s what I did: I went back to my to-do list and I knocked out the item at the top of my list right then and there. I practiced 3 minutes of meditation. I carved out time in my calendar to finish the project that I had hoped to finish that day.
After taking those actions I felt so much better.
Hey! How about right now you create a list of actions that you can usually count on to provide you with some relief, like going outside, taking a walk, meditating, doing yoga, watching a funny YouTube video, writing in your journal (challenge yourself to list 5 things you appreciate), connecting with a friend, etc.
Having a list handy will give you quick go-to options the next time you feel stuck in a negative emotion and get you feeling better super fast.
It’s important to understand that it’s not realistic to go quickly from feeling bad to feeling good, but at any moment you have the ability to feel some measure of relief and feel better, which will lead you to doing better. Maybe you can’t move from 21 (feeling unworthy) to 7 (contentment) in one go, but chances are good that you can move from 21 to 16 (discouragement), especially if you can quickly identify activities that will help you feel better.
One more caveat: The most common misunderstanding that prevents people from getting control of a situation and gaining their personal balance is the belief that some emotions are not okay to feel – I’m thinking particularly about hatred/rage.
Our culture especially conditions women not to express rage, and to avoid all anger at the cost of their wellbeing. So it’s no wonder that so many women retreat through the thoughts that lead through insecurity, guilt and unworthiness and then sink into the mire of depression and helplessness!
My friend confirmed this was her experience and when I reassured her that if she would just allow herself to reach for a better-feeling thought (like the rage/revenge fantasy of taking her husband’s kneecaps out with his golf club), she would move through the rage very quickly.
When I asked her which feels better – rage/revenge/anger or depression/despair/powerlessness – the answer was clearly the former.
To be clear, no matter where you are on the scale, you have the ability to create an upward spiral of positivity, rather than a downward spiral of negativity – and once you get the hang of it, you’ll never get stuck in a negative loop again.
Remember, it’s not “the arriving” at your goal that’s interesting – it’s who you become on the journey. That’s why you want to make sure that you’re choosing good thoughts and feeling good about yourself all along the way.
