Emotions often feel abstract until they don’t.
It doesn’t matter where on the spectrum of the human experience the emotion falls. I can witness someone else in the midst of an emotion and logically understand it, but not register when I’ve felt the same. It’s a sneaky and absolutely necessary coping mechanism. Without it, I might be frozen by the weight of possible emotions that surround me everyday.
Because of this cute quirk, it takes me a while to process emotions when they happen within me.
One of my classic mix ups is Nervous and Excited. I got to know Nervous very well as a kid. It would pop up every single morning on the way to 4th grade. I’d squirm in the passenger seat, the butterflies bouncing back and forth in my torso. My chauffeur, aka my Dad, noticed this and started saying, are you nervous or excited?
At the time, it was definitely nerves. 4th grade is brutal!
But this question has stood the test of time. It’s become more than a Dadism, it’s an opportunity to check in and see if I’m practicing emotional awareness. If my Emotion ID System™️ is on autopilot, I know that I will label my emotional experience with more severity. Chalk it up to the heavy handed strain of guilt that courses through my Irish Catholic and Jewish blood. Or perhaps all of our autopilots are a little skewed to the gloomy side of things.
This tendency became clear to me back in 2019, when I quit my restaurant job to make more space for the freelance projects that were filling up my calendar. Up until that point, I had always worked a steady job and choosing an uncertain stream of income was a leap of faith. I chose to hold onto my other part time job as a baker (one that I kept until October 2020), to ease my fears of going completely broke.
The change was felt in my body immediately after submitting my notice. I’d wake up in the morning with my heart racing right when I opened my eyes. I’d stare at the ceiling and feel like it was impossible to start the day if I was too jittery to get out of bed. This feeling was unsustainable, but the reasons for its appearance weren’t going away. So I started to ask myself, am I nervous or am I excited? Was it possible to reframe this feeling to motivate rather than debilitate?
I wasn’t able to switch gears into entirely feeling excited for a while. First I embraced the feeling as a reminder that I was alive. I’d start my meditation practice in the morning by acknowledging my heart beat, sending gratitude towards it. Soon I understood that I was experiencing this reaction because for the first time in a long time, I felt exhilarated by my choices. I wasn’t in a steady position, but I certainly wasn’t stagnant.
Maybe, the best way to describe this emotion is not as a negative (nerves) or a positive (excitement) but as fuel.
Fuel by definition is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy to be used for work.
This weekend I was tired and lay down in the middle of the day. I closed my eyes and felt my heart racing. Instead of gravitating toward panic, I received it as a familiar presence and a sweet reminder that I’m in the midst of a growth period. Rather than attaching to the feeling and getting knocked off my axis, I’m choosing to forge ahead with another round of blind faith.
Whether or not we’re aware of it, our power lies in our reactions to things when they come. Whatever we choose to do influences what comes our way next. It’s a moment-to-moment decision, one that requires us to switch off autopilot and really be there for what we’re feeling. Flipping the switch is the scariest part. Once you can move past the impulse to judge, it might even be a pleasant surprise when you can actually process emotions as the fuel they are, rather than perceiving them as a detriment.
That’s all for today.
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with love from my racing heart,
James