Refocusing Our Emotions

I get caught up in "what if" scenarios sometimes. I build up whole trains of thought based upon "what if?" Usually it has me upset with what others might be thinking and doing that I may not agree with, or with what others are actually doing. Either way, I really do not have any control over what others think or do or say. The only thing I have control over is my reaction to said situations. So when I received this in my email, I thought I would pass it along. It seems timely with all that is happening in the world, and all that is happening on an energetic level in most people's lives. Stress seems a part of the world right now, especially in personal relationships. It also reminded me of Eckhart Tolle's advice to step into the void when you feel yourself careening out of control. From the Institute of Heart Math:

The Power of Neutral - A Tool to Refocus Your Emotions

An important first step in transforming emotional stress is cleaning up strong, negative emotions and judgements as they come up. As soon as you start to feel your energy going sideways, you can use Neutral to refocus within yourself and go back to the heart. This will clear your emotions as you go and start building your empowerment to clear even more.

Once your emotions become disturbed, your mind will tend to jump in with judgements toward yourself or others. The mind, like a computer, starts a process of analyzing why, calculating next steps, and bringing up memories of what happened when you felt like that before. The Power of Neutral tool helps  put this mental momentum on pause so you can neutralize your reactions and thoughts. The Power of Neutral allows the guidance of your heart, your heart intelligence, to come in and stop the energy drain.

Judging yourself or others causes energy to back up in your system and feels bad. It doesn't bring helpful solutions. It only makes us feel disappointed in ourselves, which drains more energy. We can stop this in its tracks by using The Power of Neutral.

Practicing The Power of Neutral helps bring your mind, emotions and physiology to a state of neutral. Think of neutral as a "time-out zone" where you can step back, neutralize your emotions and see more options with objective clarity.

The Power of Neutral Tool

1. Take a time out. Breathe slow and deeply. Imagine the air entering and leaving through your heart area in the center of your chest.
2. Try to disengage from your stressful thoughts and feelings as you continue breathing.
3. Continue until you have chilled out and neutralized the emotional charge.

Use Step 1 as soon as you feel your emotions starting to amp up. First take a time out by choosing to step back from your emotions. The heart breathing in Step 1 will help you draw the energy out of your head, where negative thoughts and feelings get amplified. Breathe slowly and deeply in a casual way as you pretend the breath is going in and out through your heart area.

In Step 2, disengage from your stressful thoughts and feelings as you continue to breathe. Just having the intent to disengage can help you release a lot of the emotional energy.

In Step 3, you continue the process until you have chilled out and neutralized the emotional charge. This doesn't mean irritability, anxiety, or other stressful feelings will have totally evaporated. It merely means the charged energy has been taken out and you have stopped accumulating stress. Even if you can't totally neutralize a reaction in the moment, simply making the effort to shift into neutral will stop the accumulation of anxiety or stress about it. It will give you a change to regroup your energies and refocus.

One of the things that can help you get to neutral is asking yourself, "Do I really want to keep draining energy and stressing about the situation or how bad I feel?" For example, right before a situation that normally makes you anxious or stressed, you may start negatively projecting the idea you will blow it or be judged by others. This is the perfect time to use The Power of Neutral. Otherwise, your emotional reaction will kick in and drain you. And even if you don't get completely calm, going to Neutral still reduces a lot of stress and helps you refocus.

As you build your ability to use this tool, you will acquire a new type of emotional energy maintenance. This translates into more energy to do the things you really want to do.

Habits

One of the things that I've come to realize over the last several years, starting with Katrina, is that we can no longer look to the government to protect us. I guess I had been living in a bubble, but I thought that in an emergency the federal government would be there to solve the problem, if the need was great. Like some giant bird swooping down to fix whatever was wrong. (Too many movies, I think.) But I no longer have faith in its capability to handle huge problems. New Orleans, banking deregulation, the two wars we should not be in, MMS's non-oversight of mining and the Gulf oil spill, Congress's inability to do anything at all, have made me realize that we just have each other in the long run.

I could whine and cry about this realization, I guess, but like so many of you, I'm tired of that. Instead, I've decided to take a hands-on approach. If I see a need, and I have the ability to help in some way, then that is what I'm going to do. It may be a simple blog post, or a donation, or putting change in the jars sitting on the grocery counter, but whatever it is, I'm going to jump in with both feet. It's easy to donate all of your used household items to a good cause, it's easy to pass on information on our blogs, it's easy to pull in and let teenagers wash your car to raise money for a school project, it's easy to buy a box of cookies from the Girl Scouts, it's easy to tip an extra dollar to the waitress bringing you your breakfast.

I think we need to take a grass-roots approach to helping each other. If everyone did one little thing, each time they could, think of the overall impact. Today I donated the comments money from Lori's fundraiser for the Gulf animals covered in oil. Tomorrow I will make it a point to not look the other way when I see a need, but make a sincere effort to help in some way. I'm going to do this until it becomes habit - just like brushing my teeth. I'm going to do it until I don't even notice I'm doing it anymore.