Let’s treat our thoughts and feelings like Nikolai Machulyak treated the polar bears!
Our feelings signal us to what’s important (Fear that bear! Love this baby! Rage at that injustice!). The problem is, our emotions frequently signal to us in overwhelming, painful, and confusing ways. Learning to decode our often conflicting feelings and acting wisely in response to their signals requires help from others, patience in the face of struggle, and a fair bit of practice. Those things stitch together the Parka of Feeling Wisely. Most people simply do not learn how to feel wisely. We’ve never had the time to practice responding rather than reacting in the face of fear, sadness, or anger.
I’m here to help my clients do that, to learn the tools needed to feel wisely. And what a difference it makes to work with someone who wants nothing more than to help you be your most loving, moral, and wise self. Being loving, moral, and curious sets us up to have compassionate, well bounderied, and joyous relationships.
When we practice feeling our feelings and thinking our thoughts without blinders and bad scripts for a while, we work out the bad habits and stuck feelings that hold us back. We also learn to how to be discerning without being judgmental. We learn to see ourselves and others in the round, being aware of the good, the bad, and the “I’m not sure what to think of that”’s. This openness to reality helps us live much happier, friendlier, and productive lives. We dig fewer holes and build better bridges.
After all, thinking doesn’t need to make us into robots and hard feelings don’t need to turn us into puddles (or tornados). When it is time to mourn a loss or to rage against unfairness, we create as much space and time for our feelings as they deserve without shutting us down too long from the rest of what life requires from us. And when we need to stay calm and carry on, we learn how to do that, too. There’s a time to cry, but that time might not be while feeding starving bears on the tundra (or while in the check-out line at Sobeys). Here, all emotions are welcome and no emotion or thought gets to put the blinders on or shut us down from compassion, reason, or reality. It’s like making sure that all the kids get fed, even though one kid needs more of our attention at lunch time than the others. Hard to explain, even harder to do! Eminently possible, though. After all, when diligent people sit down in good faith to solve their problems with an openness to growing, they usually do grow and they either solve their problems or learn how to be affected by them less.
How we respond to our emotions and our thoughts all depends on the needs of the situation. Me, personally, I like feeling the highs and I’ve grown from getting through (or learning how to live with) the lows. Highs and lows are a part of life. Mostly, though, chasing highs causes problems. So I want to help people find their joyous middle, to be centred, compassionate, and aware most of the time.
When you’re cold and scared, put on your parka, and embrace the elements. Feeling wisely helps us have the strength to face the hard times, better, and to support those who matter to us most.