Fall Feelings: How to be Aware of Your Emotions

By: Jennifer Ballou

This is the first article in a (two part)series that will provide you with the golden ticket to emotional wellbeing. The six factors that influence your well being are: emotional, spiritual, mental, physical, social and environmental. Anytime you are not performing your best, more than likely at least one of the influencers is holding you back.

In this article, we will explore emotional influencers and how mood and feelings have an effect on wellbeing. Important factors in this process include: learn how to understand what influences your energy, determine what factors affect you and explore ways to remove barriers.

Your wellbeing can significantly decrease when you experience overwhelming stress or lack of active engagement. Therefore, it is beneficial to understand emotional influencers and how they impact wellness. Most people misunderstand emotions. Reacting to and living at the effect of emotions dismisses their purpose. Avoiding what feels bad instead of trying to listen and use emotions to identify what they are saying is extremely common. Does this resonate with you?

Learning to be aware of, understand, express and create emotions that fuel your wellbeing is key to creating the anabolic or constructive energy needed to perform well and ultimately master your life. But how do you become aware of your emotions?

It can be as simple as asking yourself questions such as, “What am I feeling? Physically? What emotion am I experiencing?” . Or perhaps asking, “What thoughts am I having that created this emotional response?” . You can think of emotions as clues to get you to pay attention to what is happening.

You can think of emotions as clues to get you to pay attention to what is happening. You may also consider keeping an emotions journal for a few days to help you begin to understand your emotions and recognize patterns in your life.

Another way to become aware of your emotions is to discover their triggers. For example, if you are nervous, it might be helpful to understand what came before that emotion in order to learn what triggers nervousness for you.

When you do, you have the ability to prevent that trigger from having an effect on you.

Everything we experience has a purpose. For example, the purpose of physical pain is to take action. Emotions are not good or bad but simply signals to be aware of and act upon.

When you listen to your emotions, they can help you fine tune your actions in a way that best serves you.

This can also be helpful in understanding other people’s emotions and oftentimes results in being less judgmental and the ability to focus more on your individual wellbeing goals.

You can listen to your emotions by asking questions such as, “What can I learn from this emotion? What information can I get?” Or maybe by asking, “What is the purpose of my emotion?” . There are four emotional FLAGS that are meant to get your attention. FLAGS stands for fear, love, anger, guilt and sadness (or grief). Think about a time you experienced one of the four and take a few moments to describe what you think your emotions were trying to tell you.

The goal is to understand which emotions help you and which ones don’t. Having the ability to create emotions that help can be extremely powerful, as long as you understand and believe that the emotions are your choice.

I invite you to spend the next 30 days (until the October Freedom Sisters magazine comes out) practicing becoming aware of your emotions and identifying what triggers them. Next month, I will be layering onto this information and focusing on emotional expression, which includes understanding your beliefs about expressing emotions and responding instead of reacting.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or are interested in working together to build your wellbeing formula, feel free to schedule a complimentary 30-minute discovery session with me. Email is jennifer@jenniferballou.com