In these blog posts, I like to document, share and unravel my own personal journey working with the very same material I have you work on.
 
This week I’m examining the emotion upset- the upside and downside.
 
Just yesterday I experienced upset. We have two dogs; Betty is really old and Josie is seven years old. Betty likes to eat Josie’s food, if she can get away with it. Problem is that every time Betty eats Josie’s food, she gets sick and my husband and I have to clean up the mess. Yesterday, Betty ate a bunch of Josie’s food. For an old dog, she’s lightning fast, and I couldn’t stop Betty in time. I got really upset.
 
As I got upset, I kind of became the observer of my upset: why was I so upset? What really triggered this upset? How can I bounce back from this upset? How can I stop it from happening again? As I look at upset, I discover more and more that it’s about an underlying sadness that I’m trying to pacify or quench. What’s that all about, I ask myself often. The deeper I look at my upset and the underlying sadness, the more I realize my upset is as a result of me trying to control situations in my life- if only I could control Betty and get her to not eat Josie’s food! If only this, if only that…. Where does that get me? Nowhere except to a lot of upset that gets harder and harder to rebound from in life as my world gets more and more full. What’s the result? An ugly brand that I don’t want because that is not who I choose to be.
 
What’s the solution? I haven’t figured it all out yet. I do know the first and most important thing I can do is to stay self-aware, as I always tell my audience to do.
 

What does this mean for you? Stop and consider:

1. When was the last time you had an emotion that made you feel out of control? Even consider happy emotions in this category.

2. Why did these emotions occur in your life?

3. What are you going to do about it and why?

 

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