THOUGHT, EXPRESSION AND EXPERIENCE.
Emotion and logic are two words that are often not used together. What happens when we combine emotion and logic? We become more capable of connection - the cure for personal, professional, and social limitations that prevent us from living the most dynamic lives we can create. Our emotional expressions are essential as we build more connective experiences.
Defining the logical ways to understand our emotions will allow us to know ourselves and each other more accurately, appropriately, and authentically.
Emotion and logic are opportunities to convert the truth we understand of who we can be to the experiences that will allow us to know who we are.
Feelings and emotions are often challenging to uncouple. Sorting our feelings into emotional destinations can make logical sense from complex concepts, making our emotions more accessible and available. The endless combinations of thoughts and experiences that lead to how we feel can be organized into emotional expressions.
Connective emotional dynamics is understanding what each emotion is expressing and the questions they ask that allow us to be more expressive, perceptive, and receptive to emotional connection. Using scientific principles, we can see a logical path to connection.
Even before we can identify and describe each emotion, they ask us questions and guide our experience.
The emotions are asking us eight questions:
What do we want more of?
What gives us release?
What gives us worth?
What do we reflect on?
What have we had enough of?
What gives us control?
What gives us value?
And what do we deflect from?
Answering these questions are defining who we are.
We want more of the release of our worth as we reflect on what we have had enough of and take control over what gives us value, deflecting from that which does not define us.
We define every element of our lives, what we believe politically, spiritually, romantically, and geographically. What we do, what we prefer to eat, and where we choose to go are all defined. Yet, we hesitate to define the essential elements of who we are. How we define ourselves and how we connect - also known as thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
How are we to arrive at the experience of our creation without a clearly delineated path?
We often get lost in our feelings while not being able to define our emotions.
Many researchers, philosophers, and therapists have been defining emotions for millennia. The understanding that thoughts and emotions are distinctly different is typically not questioned. However, the exact definition of emotions varies from being purely biological to being a cognitive construct.
For some, the differentiation between feelings and emotions is, at its worst arbitrary and, at its best, semantics. But a clear definition of the parameters by which we define the terms we are using becomes fundamental in our ability to accurately and clearly communicate who we are.
Many have asked the question - Is my life happening to me or am I creating it? The answer is you choose.
As most of us live now, we feel our emotions and express our thoughts, which leaves us reactive, defending our thoughts while not expressing our emotions.
By learning to feel our thoughts and experience the emotions that we express, we can respond more than we react. Our life becomes an opportunity with a choice rather than obligation with consequences.
When our life is experienced as an emotional reaction, we feel out of control. When we direct our life from a place of awareness, intention, and knowing, we are able to respond.
What does this mean and why does it matter?
As we begin to move beyond simple recognition, meaning, and description, we move from understanding to knowing. From communicating to connecting. From reacting to responding. From simply existing to evolving.
We can only have in the moment of now, and life is the occasion for change.
Copyright © 2023 Keith Johnson M.D. - All Rights Reserved.
Cover photo by Jon parlangeli
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