I shouldn’t be feeling this…
And other emotional red flags
The biggest emotional red flag is when we think to ourselves:
I shouldn’t be feeling this.
It’s the absence of true acceptance. Refusing to give ourselves permission to value our real desires.
Like a child holding his breath as a physical tool of denial for reality.
The goal is to hold ourselves in a more gentle, kind and compassionate way. Which that means we have to abandon expectations about how we’re supposed to feel. We have to accept that our feelings aren’t good or bad, right or wrong, positive or negative, healthy and unhealthy.
Binaries like that only add stress to our lives.
Truth is, only our actions can be wrong, not our thoughts and feelings.
And so, we shouldn’t be afraid to give weight to our negative feelings about another person for fear of throwing them under the bus. We should feel the feelings and let them fade, without guilting or judging or punishing ourselves for the morose movies playing inside of our heads.
Because it’s not about punishing another person, it’s about not punishing myself.
Freud, on the other hand, believed that human beings should never be allowed to truly express themselves because it was too dangerous to the powers that be. The very idea of examining and analyzing our inner feelings was a threat to society’s absolute control over us.
No wonder we’ve morphed into a society of fugitives from our own feelings. There’s a century’s worth of barriers in all of our minds that prevents our hidden and unwelcome impulses from the unconscious from emerging.
A set of fundamental beliefs that are so ingrained in our society that we hardly know they exist, much less examine them.
And so, the path to safety and belonging and compatibility with the world is to say:
I’m sorry, here is this feeling that is inside of me, this thing that I’m not allowed to have an appetite for, can you please help me get rid of it?
Enough. The time has come for us to own our emotional realities, no matter how it feels or what its societal implications may be.
To advocate for the people we truly are, as opposed to the one we think we’re supposed to be.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
When was the last time you told yourself that you shouldn’t be feeling something?
LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!
* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
scott@hellomynameisscott.com
Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.
Now booking for 2017–2018.
Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of
The Nametag Guy in action here!
