TTM #28 FEELING ON PURPOSE
When we stop being at the effect of our lives, when we stop reacting to what emotions our brain is providing us with, and we start really managing our brain and telling it what to focus on, we can use our brain to create the emotion that we want to feel to generate the result that we want in our lives.
There are many types of emotions, some of them are energy-producing, some of them are energy-depleting. It's useful to know when you're deciding what emotions you want to generate in order to create the results you want in your life. All of our feelings come from our mind. We think thoughts and they create feelings. When we know that, it's very exciting because we realise that we can change how we are feeling.
Most of us want to feel peaceful, happy, content. Nothing wrong with that. Peace of mind is a great thing. Here's the thing. If you're in the middle of growing and working on your goals, peace is probably not going to be the best fuel for that creation. That's not the emotion that's going to generate the work that needs to happen to create that result. What emotions do you want to generate when you're trying to create the results you want? The only thing that can create an emotion is our thought.
The way that results work is not that we get the emotion after but we have the emotion ahead of time. If I want a result in my life, I want to create something, I need to feel inspired, motivated and confident before. I need those emotions to fuel that result. Your thoughts create your feelings which creates your actions which creates your results. Your results do not create your feelings, yet that's how most of us approach life. We try to get the result so we can then have the feeling. The truth is we need to generate the emotion ahead of time. Most of us do not know how to generate emotions ahead of time. So we are constantly trying to create the result without the emotion and then we try to get the emotion from the result that we are unable to create because we can't use the emotional fuel to create that result. Most of us quit because we get discouraged. Why do we get discouraged? because our results are not providing us with the emotion we want. We think the result is discouraging. But really, it's our thought about the result that is discouraging. When we are committed to feeling our emotions ahead of time, that is the number one indicator of the result we will create. If you're happy, if you're discouraged, if you're frustrated, you probably know what your results will be. If you are discouraged, you're going to create a result that isn't the result you want and then you will blame that discouragement on the result. But really you will have created it. If you're confident about the outcome that you will have, you will think that maybe the outcome is giving you the confidence, but really it's the confidence in that that's creating the outcome for you. If you want to know what your results will be, check with your emotions. If your emotions are energy-producing you will create that result in your life. If they are energy-depleting, you will not create that result. It doesn't feel that way. It doesn't seem that way. But that is how it works. The best predictor of your results is how you feel right now. Your thoughts create your results by generating or depleting the energy you need to create them. You don't just need to put something on a vision board and look at it. You need to put it on the vision board, look at it and make sure your emotion matches the getting of it. People who put something on a vision board and don't believe it and don't get it, it's because they didn't believe it would work. You have to go to work. Your thoughts create results by generating or depleting the energy that you need to create those results.
What emotions do you want to create? How do we create emotions? By what we think and believe. First, you need to decide what those emotions are. Those are some of the emotions that are energy-producing for me: motivated, disciplined, excited, inspired, fascinated intrigued, curious, amazed, focused, courageous, energetic, optimistic, active, reliable, stable, grounded. Thinking about energy-producing emotions that you want to feel on purpose, that you want to feel ahead of time that you want to generate within you in order to create the results you want.
When we stop being at the effects of our lives, when we stop reacting to whatever emotion our brain is providing us with, and we start really managing our brain and telling it what to focus on, we can use our brain to create the emotion that we want to feel to generate the result that we want in our lives. If you are not feeling the way that you know you need to feel in order to get the results you want, do not pretend that you're going to get better results anyway, because you won’t. You have to create the result with that energy. If you're not feeling that emotion that's on you. You can feel sorry for yourself or you can feel upset or you can blame yourself. None of those are useful.
The first step is being aware of what you're currently feeling. You do that by becoming aware of what's going on in your body and what's going on in your mind. What am I feeling? Why am I feeling that way? The reason I'm feeling that way is because of what I'm thinking. Be aware of that, listen to your body and experience what that vibration is before you can even access the thought causing it. Once you're able to do that, once you're able to feel your feelings even if they are very negative, then you can realise, are these feelings creating energy that can fuel my result or are they depleting my energy?
Sometimes emotions that seem negative can fuel results. You want to be careful with the result you're actively creating with your energy. If you are angry or irritated, those are energy-producing emotions. You want to make sure that you realise that those emotions will create a result in your life. If you feel them, They will create something that you may not want in your life. Also make sure that once you're aware of those energy-depleting emotions, you find the thought patterns of thinking that are creating them.
The reason you're depressed, the reason you're doubtful is not because of your results. It's not because of what's happening outside of you, it's because of what is happening inside of you. This is good news because you can change what you're thinking. You can change your pattern of thoughts in order to think in a way that generates the energy that you need to create the results you want. Think about what emotions you're trying to generate in order to get the result you want. So your current thinking is what's causing your feelings. You are feeling your thoughts.
So what are some useful emotions? Thoughts drive our actions. The fuel for all the actions that we have in our life comes from our emotions. Some of the useful emotions feel positive and some feel negative. And some of them are just not useful at all. A lot of times we think what we want to experience is peace and love and harmony. Usually, this is what we want to experience. But when we're in the process of creating something, when we're in the process of evolving into another version of ourselves, we don't want to just feel peaceful all the time. And maybe you do. That's just good to know.
And for some people, we want to use our emotions to help us create what we want in the world.
One of the useful emotions is courage. Courage doesn't feel good and yet it's very necessary.
Another emotion that is very useful is determination. Think about feeling determined. When you think about being determined, it feels a little bit like tension. It doesn't feel like peace. Feeling determined is very useful although it's not always very pleasurable to feel.
Another one of the useful emotions is discomfort, because growth is uncomfortable. Discomfort is the currency for success. Whatever it is that you want to create in your life, the path to it is not always going to be comfortable, discomfort and that willingness to be emotionally uncomfortable, and even physically uncomfortable as we are heading towards our dreams in our lives.
Another useful emotion is acceptance, acceptance of our circumstances that we can't control, acceptance of ourselves and our life, acceptance without judgement and trying to fix something or someone. What if we could just accept what's going on with our minds? We don't have to judge it in order to change it. In fact, we can't change it if we judge it. Acceptance sometimes doesn't feel great, acceptance that everybody is doing their best they can, acceptance that things are going to happen in our lives that we don't want to have happen, acceptance that other people are going to behave the way they want to behave and we can't control them. The more we are willing to accept it, the less resistance we will have. If you think about resistance, hate and frustration, that all comes from a lack of acceptance.
Now let's talk about useful emotions that feel good. Confidence. feeling confident. When you have practised that skill so many times that failure is not even an option. From confidence we will take the risks, we will do the things that are needed for us to show up in our lives.
I love the emotion of excitement, being excited about something and how fun it is to take action from that fuel. This is an emotion I generate very often in my life on purpose.
The emotion of motivation, feeling motivated to do something.
Another useful emotion that feels good is curiosity. Being curious and fascinated will serve us because it puts us in a place of being open to understanding instead of trying to shut everything down and trying to guess and being judgmental. Being curious and fascinated by everything we do, experience, and think without judging ourselves and others by the content of their mind.
Let's talk about some useless emotions. One of them is worry. Worry pretends to be necessary, but it is not. It's not needed. It's not useful. Whenever you notice yourself feeling worried, you can redirect to your brain. It is very powerful. You can just eliminate some emotions from your life if you choose to.
Doubt. doubting yourself, doubting other people is not useful.
Confusion, confused, unsure, feeling sorry for yourself. ‘I don't know.’ It's not useful and it blocks any wisdom that you have. ‘I don't know what I want to do with my life. I don't know what my purpose is. I don't know how I feel. I don't know what I think. I don't know.’ Anything, where you are the one with access to the wisdom, is where confusion is not useful. If you did know, what would the answer be? What if you didn't allow yourself to be confused by things? What if you told yourself ‘I know what I want to do and you believed it, how would your life be different?
Insecurity. Insecurity is a choice and insecurity is not useful.
Being offended. Why would you choose to be offended? You give your power away to something or someone else by blaming something outside of you for how you feel. Think about what emotions are the most useful to you when it comes to the goals you want in your life. Think about the results you want in your life and then think about what would be the best emotion to fuel that result. Think about what is the result, what is the action you're going to have to take to get that result and what feeling do you want to fuel that action?
What are the top three emotions you feel daily? Observe them and then remind yourself that those emotions are choices. When you look at the emotions that you're having in your life, are those the emotions that are going to give you the results you want? We have the opportunity to pick consciously and to decide consciously what we want to feel. We do create all of our emotions with our minds whether we do it intentionally or not. The more intentional we can be with the emotions we create, the closer our life will be to what we are guiding ourselves to create. And if we want to create something in our life, being happy and joyous and content all the time might not be useful.
What are your useful emotions? Think about the useful ones you want more of, positive or negative and what are not useful emotions you would like to eliminate.
So how do we create emotions on purpose? So many of us don't really think about being able to create an emotion, being able to manufacture an emotion. ‘I don't feel inspired. I don't feel motivated. I don't feel like I have an emotion I need in order to do the things I want to do. We don't have to manufacture emotions, but isn't it amazing to know that we can? Isn't it great to know that if you need an emotion, if you know that excitement or motivation or inspiration would really help in getting something done, isn't it nice to know that you can create it? Whatever it is you want to create in your life, you can do it with your mind. Important to remember that the goal of life is not to be happy all the time. Life isn't always supposed to be easy. When we feel entitled to have a life that is pure bliss all of the time, we get into a process of resisting emotions and when we resist emotions, we don't fully experience our emotional life. That means we don't fully experience our negative emotions, but we also don't fully experience our positive emotions. So first, we need to create the skill of feeling our feelings. It's important to remember that all of our feelings are part of the human experience. There is no feeling that you might experience that means that something has gone wrong in your life if you are feeling this emotion An emotion just means that you are thinking a thought causing it, and your brain is going to think many thoughts throughout its life. No thoughts are bad and no thoughts are good, thoughts just are. They either create positive emotion or negative emotion. And the truth is sometimes we want to feel negative emotions. Sometimes we want to be in the place of negative emotion because it creates the contrast of our life. If we came to this planet, and we only felt happy all of the time, we wouldn't even know what happy is. What makes happy great is sad. What makes excitement awesome is boredom. Go back to Episodes 13 and 14 for a deep dive on the process of feeling emotions.
The contrast is what makes the emotion so great. So without a negative emotion, we don't have a positive emotion. Without emotion that's pleasant and feels good and drives positive action, we can't have any of that without the negative emotion that is its contrast. It's good to know and it frees us up from so much resistance. If we accept the thoughts and emotions we have, this is where we have the power to then create the thoughts and emotions we want. So creating your emotions does not work without fully accepting all of the other emotions. Because we can't create an emotion from resistance and fear. When you allow the feeling and you experience it as a vibration and acknowledge it, you become at peace with the emotion that you are having. And this is where you can create any emotion. First we have to be aware of our emotions. We have to know what we are feeling, we have to be connected. Many of us do not know how to feel. Many of us do not know how to be with an emotion. Many of us know how to avoid, how to resist and how to react to an emotion but actually experiencing it is not the same.
When you feel angry and you yell at someone, it does not mean you're experiencing the emotion. That is a reaction to an emotion. When the emotion comes up and instead of just experiencing it as a vibration in your body, you are acting out the emotion. When we have an emotion, we can either avoid it or ignore it, resist or react and act it out. Experiencing an emotion is feeling it in your body as a vibration without reacting and without resisting. That is a practice and a skill worth developing. The worst thing that can happen is an emotion. If we are not afraid of experiencing any emotion, that is freedom. The reason I'm feeling XYZ right now is because of what I'm thinking. And I'm willing to be with that. And I can also believe something different and therefore feel a different emotion.
Think about a goal that you have. What result is it that you want to create?
Maybe you want to change your job. Maybe you want to move to a different country. Maybe it's writing a book, whatever it is for you. Think about the results you want to create. Maybe it's recording 100 episodes in my case. What are you going to have to do in order to create that result? What is the action you need to take? In my case it's preparing, recording and editing one episode a week. What is the feeling I need to have that will drive these actions? Commitment, determination, discipline, motivation, excitement. The action is a plan. Everything else is just a feeling. And you either are going to create a feeling that drives you to take the action or you're going to create a feeling that doesn't drive that action. That's all within your control. Think about your goal. When you see the action you have to take, what are the emotions that you're going to need to help drive that action. It does not mean that other emotions will not come up. But knowing what emotion you need to drive the action that will create the results you want is important to know so you can redirect your thoughts and generate those emotions on purpose. Becoming aware of the emotion. And the next step is asking yourself what is the thought that creates that emotion in me. Thoughts that create motivation, confidence, commitment, could be for example, ‘I can do this. I know that I can take action until I get the result I want. I believe in myself. I know that I'm capable. I have the wisdom inside of me. I have the desire inside of me. And I know that there's a need for what I have to offer. And I'm willing to figure it out until I get the result. I'm capable of learning what I need to know and trying what I need to try in order to get what I want.’
You can still take action from a negative emotion like self-doubt and insecurity. It's really just way more challenging and way less fun. If we are willing to practice thinking confidence-producing thoughts or motivation-producing thoughts or joy-producing thoughts that will consistently create our own confidence or motivation or joy, we will program our brain by repetition.
First step is to find thoughts that you truly believe, you truly believe that you are capable. You truly believe that if you continue to take action, you can get that result. You truly believe that you have the intelligence to do what you need to do. Make sure those are thoughts you truly believe in. Otherwise, you can't create the feeling and your brain will be confused. Then practice it. Think it, believe it, with repetition you create new pathways in your brain. The brain doesn't have a preference over what to think. It just wants to be efficient. You have to consciously choose to believe in a way, to think in a way that generates the emotion you want to create. So practice thinking those thoughts and consistently practice looking for evidence in your life that will prove those thoughts true.
If you are waiting for inspiration, and you're waiting for something exciting, you're waiting for something wonderful to happen in your life. You're waiting for your brain that is programmed to think and to create the opposite to provide you with that feeling. It's not your brain's job to reprogram itself. It is your job and your responsibility to programme your brain so it serves you. If it's programmed to create self-doubt, how is it going to create confidence without you actually putting in some work? This is how we can wait forever. To feel confident, to feel inspired, to feel motivated, to feel passionate. It is something we need to work on, to create on purpose. Thoughts are choices. The only reason you're not where you want to be and you don't have those results yet, is because you have some programming in your brain that's creating a different emotion than what you need in order to take the action you would need to take. What do you need to be thinking to be feeling in order to do what you want to do? And whose responsibility is that? To create those thoughts and those feelings, that responsibility is on you. You have to feed your brain with thoughts that will produce the feelings that you want. You have to think deliberately and on purpose to create the feelings that you want. Those feelings are available to you. They are always available to you because your feelings are choices and you choose your feelings by the thoughts you're committed to believing.
If you're looking at your life, and you're constantly saying negative thoughts that are creating negative emotions, the reason why you don't love your life, the reason why you aren't enjoying your life is because of the thoughts you're choosing. If you want to create excitement, the best way to do that is to create thoughts that you believe that produce excitement in you. The reason that you don't feel better, the reason you don't take more action from a place of really positive emotion is because you don't want to do the work of creating that emotion for yourself.
Most of us know the emotions we want to feel. We want to feel approved. We want to feel appreciated. We want to feel loved. We want to feel valued. What we do sometimes, we delegate the creation of those emotions to the people around us. We delegate those jobs to people that are not capable of producing emotions for us - our friends, partners, and colleagues, we attribute the lack of those emotions to other people. So if you want to feel loved and appreciated, create love and appreciation for yourself. Do not wait for someone else to behave in a certain way in order for you to feel that way. Because then we feel disappointed because nobody is able to provide those feelings for us. So we choose disappointment over love without even realising that we are the ones suffering because of it. It's not other people's job to create emotions for us.
Wouldn't it be nice to know that you could feel appreciated all of the time? You can. You can create that emotion for yourself. Does it take effort? Yes. Is that effort worth it? Yes. Do not expect your life to be good, so you feel good. Practice to feel good and then your life will be good.
So the steps to creating emotions, first become aware of what you are feeling and why you're feeling and own it. Second, decide how you want to feel to create what you want. Third, practice thinking and believing thoughts that will generate that emotion for you. The more you practice the thinking and the generating the emotion, the better you will get at that skill.
There is nothing more powerful than being able to generate the emotion that you want. You don't have to have a job to feel a certain way. You don't have to have a partner to feel a certain way. You don't have to change people to feel a certain way. You don't have to accomplish anything to feel a certain way. You can generate that feeling for yourself. You don't have to go get all of it to feel a certain way. But you probably will. If you start feeling that way.
What is the emotion that you want to feel in order to get what you want? And what are the thoughts that you believe and are willing to practice thinking over and over in order for you to create the feeling that you want to create, to get what you want?
Between you and whatever you want is a feeling. Between your thoughts and your result is a feeling. Whether that feeling is positive or negative, we are no longer taking responsibility for our own emotions or experiences when we believe that they are a result of anything other than our own choice.
