It’s easy to view our emotions as a source of unalienable truth. They’re embedded through millennia of evolution, a beacon guiding us toward survival. The reality is that they’re more indicator than anything else, and oftentimes bad ones at that.
Fear, for instance, evolved as a way to help us get and stay out of life threatening situations. Think through your life- how many times have you felt fear, and in how many instances was your life actually threatened? I’m willing to bet there’s a low correlation between the two. Fear may have been evolutionarily useful, but our environment has changed. Evolution takes time to catch up.
If we understand and accept this to be true, we can see that our emotions are not necessarily an accurate indicator of how we actually are. You might feel fear, but that doesn’t mean you ought to be fearful. It doesn’t mean that there’s something worth being afraid about.
Try this: the next time you find yourself feeling a negative emotion, substitute the world “am” for “feel” in your internal dialogue. Rather than “I am sad”, try “I feel sad”. Rather than “I am afraid”, try “I feel afraid”. One makes you a slave to your emotions, while the other acknowledges that they’re just an indicator- perhaps a false one.
One Comment
Very nice. 🙂