Transforming negative emotions.

William Michael Forbes




Unchecked anger has destroyed nations. wmf

A Well Known Fact:

Anger in nature is used to establish healthy social order when used in short bursts...in the human realm anger is an emotion to be outgrown like a cocoon.

Okay, you’ve slept in by fourteen minutes and you open your eyes to this fact and a part of your mind says things you wouldn’t utter to your child, your mother or your grandmother. Never mind that thought as you leap out of bed stubbing your toe on that darn night-table that shouldn’t be where you put it....and you keep going right into a quick shower forgetting to wash the soap from certain places, jump back in the shower rinse those places...semi-dry, dress and fly out the door. Meanwhile in the back of your mind a little voice has been getting slowly louder and it comes into your conscious mind with one sentence...

”Oh no, I’m going to be late!” That sentence gets a moment of your attention as you fly out the door and remember your laptop as you run back into the house to retrieve it. In less than ninety seconds you are in your car and pull onto the road...a right and a left and...a line-up of cars as construction crews have just arrived to begin a road repair...that voice in your head has exited your mouth and a part of you goes;

“Who the hell was that?”and although you know it’s you in temporary insanity...you begin to search for ways around the traffic...because you’re going to be late...unless...

We’ve all been through this process often making ourselves late by trying so hard to avoid it....or we create a conflict with another, trying to avoid the conflict...all the while the focus is on the problem and not the solution and so our energy is being directed to produce results that we don’t want...and this process is automatic unless we choose to interrupt the pattern of thought and emotion, which is what today’s How to be happy in fifteen minutes or less is about.

Okay so you now realize that you are in the throes of anger and you want to stop it...with today’s activity I won’t have you stop it as this only creates repression, I want you to transform it. As I’ve said before emotion is your personal energy in motion. It can be set into motion by ourselves, others or events that happen in the environment and once set in motion it will govern our behaviour in precise accord with the nature and quality of the emotion that is active in our mind at any given time. Once an emotion is in motion, it cannot be stopped, it can be suppressed, repressed and changed from one state to another through an act of will coupled with internal interaction with the emotion, which I’ve had you do on other occasions. Today’s activity will take one or two minutes of your time each hour and can be used during moments when you detect negative emotions entering your mind and governing your behaviour.

Okay now you’ve discovered you’re feeling a negative emotion and you want to change it...the first step is already taken...you are aware of the emotion. The second step is to take a slow deep breath and exhale releasing tension from your muscles and relaxing your body...some of the tension begins to shift. Take another deep breath and let all the thoughts from your mind go for a short period, then feel the emotion that you are going change and notice where it is in your body and place your hands over that place and feel the feeling and let that feeling know that you appreciate what it is trying to do for you, in a tone of voice that sounds like you really mean it, then notice any changes in the feeling and repeat the process, if your tone of voice is sincere you will feel the emotion change immediately in response to your voice tone. Repeat the process several times for no more that two minutes and...

Have a great day!

William
Copyright © 2010 by William Michael Forbes. All rights reserved.