Feelings are meant to be felt
When you’re overeating, over-drinking, overspending, overworking, over - anything you are “buffering”.
The definition of buffering is to lessen or moderate the impact (of something)
Buffering is when we use external things to change how we feel emotionally.
It’s a way we pad ourselves from discomfort and negative emotions.
It’s kind of like going through our lives wearing one of those sumo suits. We don’t feel the pain of the blows.
Some common ways we buffer are:
overeating
over-drinking
drugs
distraction through social media or TV
overworking
overspending (retail therapy)
You see, our primal brain wants to seek pleasure all the time. And we are conditioned to believe that the goal of life is the pursuit of happiness - is it not?
The problem with that line of thinking is that life is not and can never be sunshine and roses all the time. We can’t know happiness without sadness. We don’t know what excitement feels like without experiencing boredom. Life is designed to be 50/50 - half good, half not so good.
But when we’re in the “shitty fifty”, we think something has gone wrong. We either think something is wrong in our current circumstance, or something is wrong with us. This creates a negative feeling that we want to avoid, so we buffer if away. We try to create happiness by indulging in things that create temporary pleasure...but negative consequences.
What if we didn’t make negative and uncomfortable feelings such a problem? What if we could learn to sit with the discomfort, be with our impulse to run away from it and OBSERVE.
All feelings are meant to be felt.
Boredom is not a problem.
Disappointment is not a problem.
Self doubt is not a problem.
Deprivation is not a problem.
Uneasiness is not a problem.
None of these feelings are a problem on their own. They BECOME a problem when we avoid, numb, resist and react to them with self-sabotaging behaviors.
They BECOME a problem when we spin a story about what they mean about our lives and about the kind of person we are.
Feeling like an imposter doesn’t mean you should stay small
Feelings like a failure doesn’t mean you’re incapable of success.
Feeling lonely doesn’t mean you’re incapable of intimate connection.
Becoming a keen observer of your mind is one of the most powerful skills you can learn. It’s the key to ending the cycle of self-sabotage and negative actions.
The only way you will reach your goals is to be willing to feel all the negative feelings along the way. All it takes is self-awareness and courage.
Want to lose weight? Be willing to feel cravings and urges (without giving into them).
Want to grow your business? Be willing to feel rejection.
Want to find love? Be willing to feel rejection.
The skill I teach in Align and Thrive is to be able to process your feelings without resisting them.
What you resist, persists.
What you allow loses its death grip on you.
What you learn to process can be transformed into the raw material of your success.
I’ll finish with a quote that I recently posted on Instagram:
If you want to feel better in your body, learn to feel your body better. - Diane Jacobs