Seeing Another Perspective
How we feel can be very different from reality: we carry more light than we realize
Do you sometimes feel like your day isn’t going too well and wish whatever you’re going through could just be over? Here’s an exercise you can try on yourself so that you can see what’s going on more holistically.
About a week ago I felt a heaviness and sluggishness in my energy. A lot of turmoil had been going on in my family and the energy of my external environment brought down my mood. I became aware that I was ruminating over the same thoughts and moods. So I decided to release it all and lay it all out so that they could be seen clearly. I did an exercise where I mapped out all my heavy/negative AND light/positive emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in 3 areas of my life: career, relationships, personal life.
Here’s the outcome of my exercise within the career area.
The results were a bit of a surprise for me within the career category. I had written out:
10 heavy emotions vs 19 light emotions
10 heavy thought vs 19 light thoughts
2 negative/neutral behaviors vs 22 positive behaviors
This was not the first time that I realized how I feel can be very different from reality. Even though I was feeling incredibly heavy and down, the reality was that I was experiencing way more light and positive emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. But the few heavy ones were just way heavier and outweighed all the light ones. Like how many good things could be happening for you in a day but 1 bad thing somehow ruins it. That’s what was happening to me with my emotions.
Just doing this exercise helped my mood shift. Because it helped me see with clarity that I wasn’t actually swimming in a sea of negative emotions. My mind might have been more focused on the heavy emotions and thoughts but I was also experiencing and being held up by many positive emotions and thoughts. Seeing that I did feel these uplifting emotions, thoughts, and behaviors helped shift my attention to this end of the spectrum (positive end).
It wasn’t about forcing myself or telling myself to feel something positive just for the sake of negating all the heavy emotions. These positive feelings were already in me and I was already experiencing them. I just didn’t have as much awareness of it.
What felt most comforting to me after the exercise was that no matter how much confusion, doubt, and worry I was experiencing, it seemed that behaviorally I was doing all the right things. I still only acted with what felt most aligned and true for me. I had learned to not let my confusion, doubt, fear, and worry get in the way of how I lived my life.
At the end of your exercise, you might discover a little bit more about yourself than what you were aware of. In reality, there may be more happiness in your life and more things to be grateful for than what you had initially perceived or felt. We carry more light than we realize!
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