Why is it that some days everything seems so bright, sunny, wonderful and perfect, and then others days, everything seems to be completely stormy, all screwed up and every single little thing seems to ignite total irritation and frustration?
Is it the things in your day, the situations and the people that come your way, that cause your irritation and frustration?
Sometimes, just taking an objective, internal look at yourself when you first wake up, can allow you to open up to one of the most powerful tools you never knew you had.
How can just being aware of my internal mood help me when I deal with other people and situations?
A man with a broken foot can only walk or limp so far and in good spirits before he needs to either lie down or take a break. His ability to deal with the surrounding world, plants and animals on his walk, is greatly hindered due to the pain and distraction of his disabled foot. The pain and the limp distract him so much so he doesn’t see a sticker bush. If he steps on a sticker bush with that broken foot, it’s gonna hurt maybe 10 times more than it would have, had his foot been healthy and normal. His weakness caused him to be more vulnerable and less prepared and less capable of handling the challenge.
Now that same man on a different day, with 2 perfectly healthy feet can walk or maybe even run miles before needing any type of break. And with a clear and focused mind, he stays actively open and aware of the whole world around him… so much so that he sees the sticker bush from a mile away, and prances right by it. Let’s say even if he ends up stepping on it, the pain of the prick will be not nearly half as bad on his fine and healthy foot.
It would be easy to understand this physical scenario. But it’s much harder to see when the ailments are all internal. It’s interesting to consider: what if our negative moods and emotions are like actual deficits in the consciousness? What if they have the ability to keep us weak and vulnerable? What if we are conditioned to respond while feeling this deficit within, with a limited awareness, an already bothered consciousness, and by over exaggerating the normal day to day things that really aren’t all that bad?
Could it be that our emotions are linked to our physical bodies much more than we realize? Affecting everything we do, and each step we take?
Negative moods we don’t want are deficits, just like a broken foot
In our social emotional research, we have discovered that the goal is not to judge those negative moods or hate on them, because that doesn’t prove to help us make a positive change. The goal is simply to start to become aware of the specific internal ailments that might be happening under the surface and to utilize the awareness of that deficit, to then make a plan for how to respond to anything that might come our way that day due to our current condition. This way, it is like cleaning and safely bandaging up our broken foot in the morning and making a wise plan to walk slowly, or maybe change the activity for the day and stay home instead of taking a walk, so we can find the individual harmony that we need to maintain our balance based on the current emotional deficit we are dealing with in that moment. This way, we will be able to explore and benefit from our day with as much balance as humanly possible, because we first began it by looking inside, acknowledging the deficit, and taking responsibility over it from the beginning.
If we had just woken up, gone to work like a normal day, ignored the broken foot, not even looked at it, and tried to run a marathon, we would be most likely having a very rough and emotionally tumultuous experience, possibly lashing out at people and situations around us, as if they were to blame for our broken foot, when really, they have nothing at all to do with it.
We have discovered that it is not the situations or people that come our way that has the power to cause us our frustration or irritation. We realize that our negative emotional moods and responses that we do not like, are like physical deficits within ourselves, and no one else is to blame, and we feel this is absolutely great news. Why? Because it means, that we have the power to do something about it.
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