Honor Your Feelings

Optimism | 1.13.20 | By Shilo Zeller, BSc.

It’s easy to honor our feelings when they are positive: joy, acceptance, empowered. It’s a bit harder to work through negative feelings and accept those as well. It’s also important to understand that negative emotions aren’t “bad”; rather, they elicit the opposite feeling of positive emotions. 

Managing negative feelings doesn’t mean avoiding them or quickly “getting over it”. It’s the practice of embracing that we are feeling bad, acknowledging what’s causing these feelings, and learning from the experience to grow and move forward. While positive emotions are good, being in a constant state of positivity can have negative effects on our health. For example, excessive optimism that goes unchecked may lead to unnecessary risk-taking or create unrealistic expectations. 

Having negative feelings has actually been shown to benefit us. It allows us to assess situations and decide if we need to change our surroundings. This can be helpful when assessing toxic friendships/relationships, mitigating conflicts, and making productive changes to our daily routines. 

Some useful tools for working through negative emotions:

• Accept yourself and your feelings and focus on the changes that could come from these emotional “warning signs”

• Reframe the negative emotions and understand what hazards/worries are causing them

• Mindfully approach problems in your life with an open heart and an open mind

• Visualize your best possible self and try to embody that being whenever you are feeling negative