“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”  ―Oscar Wilde

We live each moment of our life through the ebb and flow of emotions. It’s almost as if each beat of our heart, and every breath we take, move us in one direction or another. We are a bundle of conditioned emotions that are primed to respond to the momentary assessment of whether our needs have been met or not.

When you feel depressed, lonely, anxious, or lost the natural reaction to that kind of emotional pain is to pull back, to run from it, hide from it, or push it away.

And we can pretty much do that with everything that comes at us in our life. Yet, if we spend our lives dodging every uncomfortable emotion that bubbles up, we stay in the same constricted place. Never moving forward. Never growing. 

To live a bold, rich, growth-filled and ever-evolving life, you need to acknowledge and accept the thorns in life just as we celebrate the beauty in it. Even when you feel depressed, you can start the gentle process of sitting with your emotions as they arise. 

Allow yourself to truly feel and experience life – the good and the bad!

A rookie mistake for so many Spiritual Warriors on the path to one-ness is the desire to only want to see sunshine and rainbows – but in the process they deny their growth, they deny their humanity, they deny their potential. When you feel depressed, lonely, anxious, or lost, that is actually valuable information on where you have unmet needs. 

The moment we restrict ourselves to only “good news” or only “pleasant” experiences is the moment we stop living. 

To understand that in our brokenness and sadness, we embrace our wholeness… and the wholeness of life, is one of the most important lessons we as human beings can learn. When you feel depressed or lonely, this is part of the human experience. When you joyful and fulfilled, this is also part of the human experience.

When you feel depressed and you suppress that emotion, you’re likely to express it inadvertently in other avenues by being snide, sarcastic, snarky, retaliatory, biting, harsh, or downright mean to people who had nothing to do with your initial frustration.

Suppressing feelings is now scientifically proven to lead to poor memory, relationship challenges, and deeper health issues as our body is influenced so strongly by our subjective conscious experiences.

We can rise above the constriction by heightening our emotional intelligence, by learning to sit with our emotions and working toward “owning” these four capabilities:

1. Identify how you are feeling in a given moment. Label your emotion. 
2. Notice what thoughts are producing certain emotions or feelings inside of you.
3. Express the emotion as you remain present with it. Let the emotion to be seen, heard, and felt. Express the emotion in the way it is asking to be expressed. 
4. Release the emotion once it has been fully expressed. 

If you don’t know how you feel or why you feel a certain way, you will experience emotional overwhelm or confusion and won’t be able to communicate effectively, meet your needs, or resolve disagreements.

But if you can master your emotional intelligence, you will flow with less stress and make better decisions even when you feel depressed. And, the more successful you are at heightening these core skill sets, the happier and more fulfilled you will be.

Before I ever shared these teachings with others, I studied emotional healing for a decade under Dr. David Simon, & attended the Hoffman Institute, where I was taught to deconstruct my emotional blue print.

I then spent five years, reconstructing it, so could help others move through the same process. I began integrating these powerful teachings into my workshops, immersions, retreats, and Teacher Trainings where thousands have experienced emotional breakthroughs & stepped into their power.

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Sending you expansive love, personal growth, and health. Be well.

Namaste. -davidji & Peaches the Buddha Princess