We are feeling creatures

"We are feeling creatures; we are meant to experience, not deny, our emotions."  Jen Sincero

Life must be exhausting for people focused on denying rather than acknowledging & fully experiencing their emotions.  I do understand the pressure to suppress deny repress feelings.  But it's NOT natural.  Consider a baby & how they breathe, with the whole of their body - you can practically see their tiny toes & fingernails sucking in air.  But then they grow up, are taught how to sit properly on chairs, the importance of taking inconspicuous breaths, of doing the unnatural as naturally as we can.  And, above all, keep a lid on our emotions.

I have no idea why all those lessons never fully stuck with me.  Oh, the ones about using the right chair & taking well-modulated yet unobtrusive breath - - enough to keep me from keeling over in a dead faint but not even close to filling my oxygen-starved lungs - - took hold, but the ones about disconnecting from gnarly emotions?  Nah.  

Back many moons ago, when I had my dream job of teaching middle school, there were days I'd leap into the classroom with the sheer joy of doing what I was blessed to do.  When I was shown the door from teaching (too unstandard), the principal asked me to suppress the truth that I'd been given the boot  "for the sake of the school."  My response was a definite, "Don't think so."  No way I was going to slap on a smiley face when my heart was breaking.  Suppression was never part of my original operating instructions.  I was a feeling person & let myself be seen as feeling dejected disheartened destroyed - 'cause it was true.

I've had people practically sneer, "You like everyone."  I do  see a lot of good in a lot of people.  And in each case, I can point out exactly what it is about that person that sets him or her apart in my opinion.  

It wasn't a winner in love, either.  A long-ago significant other told me his friends didn't trust me because I was too effusive, too sunny & bright.  

Business taught me that people who are buttoned down, practically emotional zombies, are trusted while those who show their feelings are considered unprofessional.  Repression seemed WAY more likely to nab a corner office than being emotionally literate.

Accepting myself as a feeling creature doesn't mean being all happy sappy & shelving any sad mad bummed-out emotions.  It's having the freedom & emotional intelligence to experience every emotion that arises - feeling it come up, inform, pass through.  

Per Jen, "If we all just spent our days focusing on strengthening our love muscles, lawd the changes we'd see.  For you, dear soon-to-be-rich person, practice viewing everything in your world, and I mean everything, even your backed-up septic tank, with love & appreciation and behold where it gets you.  Fall madly in love with your purpose for making money & you will be unstoppable."

Team up my natural emotional intelligence with the once unthinkable - money - and wrap positive emotions around it, including affection & love.  Knit mittens for Jackson, Grant & Franklin with gloriously colored skeins of constructively creative emotions.  

I've let money know that the only emotions I feel toward it have smiley faces all over them!

"If you want to change your life, you must be more available for the ridiculous than your reality."    Jen Sincero