There is an art to feeling your emotions. It’s important to separate your emotions from your identity—who you are—by saying, “A part of me feels sad” vs. “I’m sad.” “A part of me feels angry” vs. “I am angry.”
We usually hold multiple parts of ourselves at the same time.
For instance, “A part of me feels scared and a part of me feels excited. A part of me feels brave and a part of me feels alive!” This is personally one of my favorite combinations of emotions. It means I’m about to do something that’s going to allow me to grow beyond the person I thought I was in the best possible way. It means I’m about to push through contraction into another level of expansion! If it’s been a while since I’ve felt this combination, then I know it’s time to switch things up and find a new, inspiring challenge. Remember, inspiring challenges stretch and grow you in the direction of what matters most to you. Can you connect your challenges back to your values and mission? No matter what, you’ll face challenges in life, so you may as well choose inspiring ones, which allow you to be ener- gized by what you do.
Here are more examples:
“A part of me feels disappointed and a part of me is grateful that you told me.”
“A part of me feels guilty and a part of me knows that I was doing the very best I knew how at the time.”
“A part of me feels angry, a part of me feels sad, and a part of me feels scared.” “A part of me is happy for you and a part of me is worried.” “A part of me is excited and a part of me is nervous.”
The first step is to acknowledge these parts. You are large. You contain multitudes! The more expanded you are, the more you can hold all these seemingly contradictory parts. You are multidimen- sional, unlike the 94.7 radio station. Empathy starts with your ability to acknowledge your own parts.
The key to expansion is learning to fully accept all these parts: the parts that are scared, the parts that are brave, the parts you celebrate, the parts you hide, the parts that follow through, the parts that don’t, the parts that are angry, the parts that are joyful, the parts that are sad, the parts that play small, the parts that play big—all your parts. Notice what parts you’ve made good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, what parts hold shame vs. blame. Integrate all of your parts.
Once you stop showing yourself conditional acceptance and relax the “I have to _____ or else I’ll judge myself as _______,” and instead operate from “I am enough as is,” watch how much faster you can move, and the greater impact you can make. Say to yourself, “If you don’t make this happen, I still accept/love/value you.” “Even if you don’t succeed at _______, you’ll be okay.” Watch how much more successful you’ll be when you come from here. Once you see your- self as worthy and whole without your achievements, you’ll become unstoppable. You’ll be going after all your dreams from expansion with supernatural abilities and access to infinite possibilities and probabilities. Only you can give yourself this freedom, not a parent, partner, mentor, lover, or friend. As you accept your feelings of contraction, they dissolve. Only you can set yourself free.
Jing Gao, founder of Fly by Jing Inc., discovered this when she joined a group leadership program I held during the first COVID quarantine. At that time, she called herself Jenny, the name she had gone by for over 25 years. At the start of her journey, she identified places of contraction and began feeling her emotions: her grief, her anger, her fear, all of it. On our first call, I took her through a process of feeling the raw energy behind these emotions—the sensations in her body—tracking and releasing contraction to relax her nervous system. She noticed tightness in her chest and then she realized she didn’t feel safe in her body. Tears came. She felt disconnected from herself as if she had been hiding behind a shield. The emotions she experienced were scared, confused, and sad. She was used to repressing these scared, confused, sad parts of herself. Emotion by emotion, sensation by sensation, she felt everything that arose fully, until the contraction dissipated.
With her nervous system unraveled and expanded, she was struck with this insight: “I have been hiding behind Jenny to fit in my whole life when the real me, Jing, feels too raw and real.” In that moment, she decided to reclaim her name. When she hung up the phone, she changed her name with her friends, across all her social media channels, email, everywhere. During the quarantine, she hit record sales. In April, she increased revenue 360 percent over March and by November 2020 her company had grown 1,000 percent over the previous year. Jing made a quantum leap the moment she released the bound-up energy pattern held in hiding behind Jenny all those years. She turned lead into gold the moment she released contrac- tion by fully feeling it.
What is a current situation or circumstance you’d like to change in your life? What do you believe to be true about yourself and what belief system do you have in place that’s creating this circumstance? What are you doing, saying or not doing or not saying that is perpetuating this situation? Nothing is happening to you. Let yourself feel what this circumstance stirs up. After feeling it fully, what is the insight? In what direction is this experience asking you to grow?
Your external reality is a direct reflection of your internal state: thoughts, emotions, beliefs, your sense of identity, and your world- view. Once you shift your internal state, everything around you will transform to match. What does your external world show is going on for you internally? If you don’t like your external reality, feel the contraction completely so you can move through it into expansion and watch how everything that lights you up multiplies.
Excerpt from Bending Reality: How to Make the Impossible Probable by Victoria Song. Copyright © 2021. Reprinted with permission.
Victoria Song is the Leadership Advisor to successful founders and CEOs of the world’s fastest growing technology companies and celebrities with power, platform and influence. She is the author of Bending Reality: How to Make the Impossible Probable. For more information, please visit, www.victoriasong.me.
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