EMPOWERMENT

You’re now prepared to journey through the seven areas of your life. In this first leg, you will explore that which gives color, texture, and shading to your experience of being human—your emotions. The more in touch you are with what you are feeling, the more in touch you are with your life. Since emotions pulsate through all the areas of your life, that’s the perfect place to begin.

For some of us, emotions are allies and friends and we use them to connect more deeply with the currents coursing through our lives. Fear tells us something is wrong. Joy reminds us to be grateful for the miracle of life. Sorrow, love, empathy, compassion, resentment, guilt, and reverence each tell us something about what’s going on inside. We listen to what we’re feeling and respond accordingly. We are skillful in working with our emotions.

For others, emotions are a part of life in which we don’t display much understanding or skill. We are uncomfortable with feelings. There are different reasons for this discomfort. Perhaps we live primarily in our intellect and don’t know how to connect with what we’re feeling. Perhaps our emotions are all locked up inside and we can’t express what we’re feeling. Perhaps, when we communicate what we’re feeling, it comes out in destructive ways. Obviously, none of these ways of dealing with emotions is life-enhancing.

Emotion is energy in motion: e + motion. If we have difficulty in this area of life, we have not learned how to work adeptly with our energy in motion. To work with emotions skillfully requires us to be able to do three things:

• Feel what we’re feeling, and express it in a healthy way— emotional expression.

• Let go of negative emotions we have been carrying from the past—mental clearing.

Optimum emotional well-being requires a partnership among all three. We’ll begin by looking at emotional expression.

Our emotions are natural responses to the process of living. To be awake as a human being, each of us must learn how to listen to what we are feeling. When we’re feeling sad, we need to allow ourselves to cry; when we’re feeling angry, we need to allow ourselves to vent; when we’re feeling joy, we need to allow ourselves to exude our jubilance. We also need to find creative ways of expressing these feelings that are not harmful to anyone else.

When a feeling comes up, it’s very much like water boiling inside a kettle, it requires expression. If it has an opening, it will blow off the steam harmlessly; if it doesn’t have an outlet, it will blow its top or burst at the seams. It’s up to us to find healthy outlets for the energy in motion that builds up inside us, so we neither have to blow our tops nor wear away our insides.

There are a myriad of healthy ways to express what you’re feeling. Which way you choose depends on the emotion and your personal style. Each of us needs to experiment to discover what works best. We’ll share with you some of the ways people we’ve worked with learned to express their different emotions.

Judith has a special pillow, which she has fondly designated the “anger pillow.” When she is upset, she lays into that pillow with a vengeance! She punches it, yells at it, and curses it. When she’s done, there’s no anger left—it has all been vented harmlessly into her pillow. This allows her, at a later time, to communicate with the person she’s angry with in a calm way. Her only expense is the cost of a few pillows each year.

Bill uses a large conga drum to release any kind of emotional upset. He beats his drum until he’s physically and emotionally spent.

When Jack is really frustrated by work or family life, he goes on a long run, and this always seems to give him fresh perspective.

Nancy uses dance the same way that Jack uses running. When she feels really anxious about something, she puts on her favorite dance music and boogies out.

Sometimes Edward feels as if he could burst with joy. For him, there’s only one way to express this feeling—improvising at the piano. He goes at it until all his joy is expressed.

When June is feeling great, she loves to sing. She composes her own songs and belts them out.

Vivian knows that when she’s feeling sad or depressed she needs to sit with a trusted friend or therapist to help her talk it out. She finds the sounding board of another person essential for her emotional health.

Arthur uses a different kind of sounding board: He writes what he is feeling in his journal.

These are only some of the many diverse and creative ways we can express and release our emotions. Some methods are physical, some are artistic, and others are verbal. No one method of expression is better than another. What’s important is that you find a mode or several modes of expression that suit your emotional temperament. Experiment until you find what works best for you.

One cautionary note: As you become more skillful in expressing your emotions, be careful that you don’t slip into indulging them. There is a fine line between a healthy, cathartic emotional expression that is healing and a release that happens too often, goes on too long, or is expressed uncontrollably. Express what you’re feeling, and then let the feeling go.

As valuable as emotional expression is, it does not bring about any fundamental change in what causes us to get upset. To do this, we must go to the root of the upset—what we believe. This is the second part of the three-way partnership of emotional well-being. It is our beliefs that are the cause of all the emotions we feel. If we want to change the pattern that causes us to get emotionally upset, we must change our underlying beliefs.

We feel guilty because we believe we did something wrong. We feel afraid because we believe something bad will happen. How many times have you felt upset about something, but afterward found out that you didn’t have all the facts, and realized how silly it was to get so upset? What you believed about the situation caused you to become upset. When you believed something new about the situation, the upset vanished. In both cases, it was the belief that was at the root of the emotion. To understand your emotional responses, you must understand your beliefs. To change your emotional responses, you must change your beliefs.

Frances, who took our Empowerment Workshop, wrote to us several months later with this story:

Recently I experienced a long, difficult depression, unlike any other I’ve known. First, it was a surprise. I’d been pretty continuously happy for four months running, then I became quite ill—fever, kidney trouble, bedridden—and when I came out of it, I found myself disoriented. Soon I found myself in the midst of a deep depression.

So I tried “staying with it,” tracing it to the root belief causing me to be depressed. In this exploration I recognized a lot of colorful, multifaceted gems in my depression/grief/anger.

The key one concerned my belief that my work wasn’t valid or could even be called work unless it was hard. You know—“work” has to be tedious and painful. Once I realized what was bothering me, I let go of that silly belief and accepted that it was my right to enjoy my work.

For the first time in my life I have become happy at my work and I still can’t think of it as work! The depression has lifted, leaving me in awe of it and myself. I am sturdier and wiser for the experience.

Frances held a deep belief that her work should not be fun, and since it was, she afflicted herself with depression to compensate for that. Only by unraveling her beliefs was Frances able to heal her depression.

The process of identifying and changing beliefs that are causing you emotional turmoil far out of proportion to outside circumstance is deep inner work and requires a real commitment. Because any belief that causes a painful and inappropriate emotional response has been reinforced so many times, your mind plays that response over and over again continuously. When the button gets pushed, before you know it that same old tune starts playing, and once again you go through your emotional upset. You seem to have no control over your emotional state; you feel powerless.

This pattern is not inevitable. You can replace the old tune with a new one. You can replace the old unconscious response with a new conscious response.

1. Identify the undesired emotional responses that have persisted for some time. Be aware of the anger, sadness, sharpness, irritation that always seems to come up when your mother/father/spouse/child/boss/employee says or does a certain thing—that is, when one of them pushes your “hot button.” Your hot button is that sensitive spot in your psyche that has been pushed so often that it is on a hair trigger. You react immediately, unthinkingly, and strongly every time someone touches you there.

For example, you could have sensitivity to a particular tone of voice your spouse adopts. When you hear that tone of voice, you erupt. You might, for instance, hate receiving phone calls while at work from your brother because you know he will waste your valuable time and distract you, yet you cannot refuse to accept his calls.

2. Use that emotional upset as a way to identify the belief that occurs when your button is pushed. This is an excellent way to bring to the surface the unconscious belief underlying the emotional response. For example:

In the case of your brother, you might find that you have an underlying belief that you cannot say “no” to family members, no matter how outrageous their demands. Going deeper, you might find that you feel a need to always prove yourself to others, that your self-worth depends on whether your actions meet with their approval. The energy generated in your interactions with your brother can be used to prompt you to look more deeply within to discover the real causes of your reaction. Your underlying belief could thus be stated as follows: I don’t believe in myself without others’ approval.

3. Once you have identified the old belief that needs to be changed, create a new one in the form of an affirmation and visualization to play whenever your hot button gets pushed. The new belief replaces the former belief. For example:

Create the affirmation and visualization of yourself responding in the exact way you would like to. If you would like to be calmer, see yourself calm. If you would like to be more tolerant, see yourself patient. If you would like to be more forthright in stating what’s on your mind, see yourself clearly saying what you need to say. If you would like to have a sense of humor in the heat of the moment, see yourself telling a joke. In the case of your brother, your affirmation might be, “I lovingly and clearly tell my brother what I feel.” And your visualization might be standing up with the phone in your hand. “Taking a stand,” for yourself, if you will, and issuing a reminder to yourself to keep the call short.

4. Now create a pause function. This is a way of giving yourself time to change songs when your button gets pushed. Some good pause devices include three deep breaths, visualizing a red stop sign, or literally walking away from the situation for a few moments. If you do this every time you receive a call from your brother at work, you have the opportunity to repeat your affirmation and visualization and gain perspective on the situation before you plunge in. In this case, you are in control of your responses, not your hot button. One couple used the words “chopped liver” whenever either of them had their button pushed by the other. This lightened up the situation fast and gave both of them time to pause and play their new songs.

5. Mentally rehearse your new techniques. See yourself in the situation. Picture your hot button getting pushed. See yourself at that critical moment of choice—pausing. Imagine yourself putting on your new song. This rehearsal will allow you to be ready when your difficult emotional situation arises. After a while, the new song will be the most popular one in your collection and you won’t need to do any more rehearsing.

This technique requires a serious commitment to staying conscious and aware in a variety of tough situations. It requires an attentive look at the habitual emotional responses in your life. Once you have become aware of the change you want to create, you need to be vigilant when you’re in the thick of things. We each have a choice in every moment as to how we’re going to respond. With this technique, you’ll be able to respond in a life-enhancing way.

EXERCISE | HOT BUTTONS

Take some time and think about any people or situations that cause you to get upset. Then use this five-step process to change the pattern. Space has been left for you do to this exercise in case your journal is not handy. By the way, examine one hot button at a time—most of us have several!

1. What is my hot button (a recurring situation that causes you to be emotionally upset)?

2 What is my habitual response when this button is pushed?

3. What is the belief underlying that response?

4. How would I like to react? What new song would you like to create? Create this as an affirmation and visualization.

5. What is a pause device that will prevent me from becoming emotionally caught up in the same old pattern? In your mind, revisit the scene that pushes your hot button. When you get to the point where your hot button gets pushed, visualize yourself putting on your pause device.

6. Now visualize putting on your new song and playing that instead. Rehearse the whole sequence of events in your mind: the button, the response, the pause, the new song (affirmation and visualization). Rehearse it until the new song is the only song that immediately springs to mind—at which point you’ll find you won’t need a song at all.

The final part of creating a healthy emotional life is to let go of the deep hurts that you have been holding on to from the past. In order to be free and have peace of mind, we have to learn to release the anger, resentment, or bitterness we may feel toward someone who has deeply hurt us or the guilt we may feel about a past mistake.

Perhaps you gave your love to someone and he left you—your heart is broken. Perhaps someone you placed a lot of trust in took advantage of you—you feel betrayed. Maybe your parents mistreated you as you were growing up—you resent them. Perhaps you did something that proved to be a major life mistake or that hurt someone very deeply—you feel guilty.

Emotional pain is part of the human curriculum. It’s not good or bad; it’s just the way things are. We can’t avoid it, but we don’t have to spend our lives staying emotionally wounded.

Yet it’s not always easy to let go of past hurts. They have become quite familiar to us. And for some of us a large part of our identity has been created out of our wounds. In the name of self-righteous indignation we have spent a lot of our precious life energy feeling angry or resentful or bitter toward someone from our past.

Unfortunately, we are the losers. We have emotionally handcuffed ourselves to those people, dragging them with us wherever we go. They are free of us, but we are bound to them. Just think of the freedom you would have if you let go and released them from your life. And if the person who needs to be released for something done in the past is you, all the more incentive to step forward into emotional freedom.

Here’s how one Empowerment Workshop participant experienced the letting go process.

I wanted so badly to let go. But although intellectually I wanted it to happen, it just wasn’t happening. I woke up this morning and, as I was madly writing in my journal, it finally hit me why I was hanging on to that baggage; it’s all wrapped up in my sense that I have no future. I live very much day-to-day and there is a lot of question about my future. I want to hang on to the past because that’s the only thing I have. Then the whole idea of mental clearing came to me, of finally being able to let it all go, and create a new future free of my emotional baggage.

So how exactly do we let go? Releasing our resentment, anger, or bitterness does not mean that we condone what happened. It simply means that we’re releasing the emotional hurt from our life and that we value peace of mind more than being right. Only we can make the choice to let go of old emotional baggage. Letting go is a choice we make, just as staying hurt is a choice we make. It’s up to us.

Our minds like to hold on to the past. It’s comfortable, safe, and familiar. To let go of the past and step into a new way of being requires inner strength and courage. By letting go, we’re saying, “I’m done with this experience in my life. I’m ready and willing to move on. I now choose to be free.”

The hurts we’ve suffered in the past can be released forever at any moment. They are stuck energy. If you wholeheartedly want to release a hurt, you can. The purpose of life is not to continually heal past wounds. As soon as we let go of the past, we can use this unstuck energy to create our future.

If you’re unwilling to release a past hurt completely, release as much of it as you can. We worked with one man who had just gone through a painful divorce and didn’t feel ready to let go of the anger he felt toward his ex-wife. But he also knew he didn’t want to be burdened with constant emotional pain. He felt stuck.

He was a real estate entrepreneur and liked to make deals. We suggested that he cut a deal with himself and decide how much of the anger he wanted to hold on to and how much he would be willing to release. He cut a deal: He held on to 95 percent of his anger and released 5 percent. Subsequently we received two letters from him. The first said, “I’ve renegotiated—60 percent for me, 40 percent I let go.” The next letter said, “I’ve cut the best deal of my life: I’m letting go of all of it.”

If you’ve let go of a hurt and you start thinking about it again, just notice it and gently let it go again. Your mind has become used to holding on to this hurt and may periodically re-create it out of habit.

EXERCISE | GUIDED VISUALIZATION: LETTING GO

It’s now time to let go of some old baggage. Before you begin this exercise, take a few minutes to reflect on these questions:

• Are you angry, resentful, or bitter toward your parents for anything?

• Do you hold childhood memories of being hurt by anybody that you still carry with you?

• Are there any past lovers or friends who hurt you and toward whom you still feel resentful?

• Do you feel angry or bitter toward a former boss, business associate, or authority figure in your life?

• Do you harbor feelings of guilt for something you did in the past? Your work in this exercise is to identify the deep hurts from the past that you are still holding on to and release them. Allow thirty minutes. You will not need your journal. Find a quiet place where you will be undisturbed, sit in a comfortable chair, and put on some quiet music. The guided visualization is divided into different parts; when you have completed one part go on to the next.

1. Imagine a long tunnel that represents your life. Experience this as a healing tunnel and yourself as courageous and ready to be free. Notice that the tunnel starts from the present time and goes all the way back to when you were born. Close your eyes and view the tunnel of your life.

2. In your imagination take a step back into this tunnel, a step that represents the last five years of your life. In this recent past, are there any people, including yourself, toward whom you hold resentment, anger, bitterness, or guilt? Close your eyes and identify the people, deceased or alive, if there are any.

3. If there is more than one person, start with one and picture her in the healing tunnel with you. Gently begin to relate and communicate your thoughts and feelings to her. Tell her why you felt hurt. Share your feelings as fully and honestly as you can. Close your eyes and begin your communication. Let it last as long as necessary to achieve a thorough understanding.

4. Now listen as this person communicates back to you. Allow yourself to fully hear her truth. Take a deep breath and for a few moments consider both truths—hers and yours. Close your eyes and listen to her carefully.

5. Gently begin to let go of the burden of your resentment toward her or yourself. Feel your inner strength and courage. Take a deep breath and, in whatever way feels good to you, release this stuck emotional energy. As you release any bitterness or anger you are holding, notice how freeing it is and how light it makes you feel. Close your eyes and experience the release.

6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for each person from the last five years of your life toward whom you harbor unresolved negative feelings.

7. Go back through your life tunnel at five-year intervals and repeat steps 2 through 6.

If you did this exercise wholeheartedly, you are likely to feel lighter and emotionally open. Spend some time with this feeling before you move on. Allow yourself the gift of savoring a tender moment with yourself.