Looking for practical advice on how you can deal with your emotions more effectively? Then read on…..
We all have times when things happen to us and we feel upset, hurt or angry; we are all human after all. The big question is this
What do you do with those emotions?
Do you left them sit inside of you creating bad feelings and negative thoughts? Or, do you do something about them?
Of course we would all like to do the latter rather than the former but how do we do this when the emotions we are feeling are so strong?
Meditation doesn’t always work during these moments because your emotions are working far too hard for you to shut down and relax for a while. Luckily there is another solution available to you.
Exercise and Your Emotional Wellbeing
Exercise is well known for helping you to look and feel better. Like it or not, it is a fact. Exercising helps us to get out some of our emotional build up and it also releases serotonin naturally. Serotonin is our happy drug that our brains produce. Most anti-depressants help by putting more serotonin into the system and stops your reuptake inhibitors from working so there is more serotonin available to you than normal.
Exercise will help you to do this naturally without having to take drugs on a regular basis. Yet there is one more aspect to the exercise that I will reveal to you very soon.
The Benefits of Talking About your Problems
Talking about your problems is another way of letting go of some of the pent up emotion that is stored inside of your body. We all know how we can feel much better after talking things through with our friends about what he did or what she said. Well it can help if you do these things.
- You agree with your friend that you are going to talk for a while about your issue and they are going to listen and only speak of they feel they need some understanding on something. that is the only thing they can speak about while you are venting.
- After you have finished getting everything off of your chest they then give you an impartial view on what they believe has happened and give you some insights into why the other person might have done what they did.
- Between you both, you work out a way in which you can either make different choices in the future, protect yourself in a healthy way or work out some strategies for coping in the future
Now be honest with yourself here. How often do you really have a conversation that works like that?
Rarely if ever!
What tends to happen is that you complain to your friend and then you both get into a conversation about how all men/women are this, that or the other and talk about how life is just rubbish and it will always be this way. You might think that it’s helped because you’ve got someone else agreeing with you that everything in life is just rubbish and it will never get any better but believe me that isn’t going to do any good for either of you in the long run.
So what does work then?
Exercising Your Emotions
When I say that, what do I mean by it?
What I mean is that you are exercising in a way that will allow you to outpour your emotions so that the pent up feelings that you have inside of you are gone. What you need is a type of exercise that will allow you to be able to let your frustrations out in a safe and controlled way. First I will tell you what I use then I will suggest an alternative for you in case you are new to this. Remember. Safety is paramount.
When I have something happening in my world that I am not happy about and my emotional state is high, I slip on my bag gloves and go on the punchbag. Now when I’m doing this, I’m not just hitting the bag. No, instead I’m also talking to it. I’m imagining that it is the soul energy of the person that I feel has done me wrong and I am telling it all of the things that they have done to me and also, most importantly, how they made/make me feel. It is really important that you tell the bag exactly how you are feeling inside as a result of what has happened to you. While you are hitting that bag, you are getting out of you all of the feelings that are preventing you from being happy. It is the emotions that are the key thing to let go of here.
While you are doing this you also need to be aware of something.
At any point do your emotions become more in control of you than you are of them?
How will you know? Every time that you miss. Every time that you hit the bag wrong and you feel it in your wrist. If these things happen your emotions have become in control of you.
What you need to do at this point is just have a second or two and focus your emotions back into your hands and direct them at the bag again. This way you are channeling your emotions rather than being controlled by them.
If you have never done any boxing at all then I really wouldn’t advise you to go straight onto a heavy bag on your own. You can partner up with someone and use some focus pads. They are much softer and you can learn by starting off really light and very gradually increasing the effort that you put into it. Make sure that you keep your wrists straight and you keep your thumb wrapped over the top of your fingers. You will get feedback if you aren’t doing it right. You can also take a few lessons at the local boxing club on how to use them properly.
Here is the main benefit of having a pad partner to work with
They can keep pushing you and saying things to you to draw those emotions up from within you. When you are trying to hold on to that last little bit of anger of hurt, they can remind you of the reason why you are doing this exercise. There will come a point though when there is nothing left inside of you and that is the point that you are looking to find and then move through.
Here’s how I structured mine this week
- 1 warm up set
- 5 x 3 minute rounds with 1 minute rest
- First 2 rounds letting the emotion out
- 3rd round in silence
- 4th round I found myself saying “I forgive you” regularly
- 5th round I just felt so FREE!
Have a go with this yourself, with a friend or get in touch with me to do a session with you. You’ll feel the benefits from doing this massively!
Feel free to comment and share this with someone you want to partner up with or someone that you feel could benefit from it.
