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Empathy.
I have a colleague that made a big mistake. Because of our roles and responsibilities within the company, I had to pick up the pieces of his fall-out. And I. was. pissed. about it. 😤 His poor judgment caused me additional stress and hours more of work. I made damn sure he knew all that I had to do to cover his ass. If I had to swoop in and rescue him, he was going to learn a lesson out of it. Now, he’s normally pretty up-to-snuff. After the dust settled a bit, I asked him how he was doing. Turns out, he took his mistake pretty hard. He felt terrible about it, guilty, and embarrassed. Additionally, he was going through a…
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Happiness.
Philosophers caution against focusing on happiness as the ultimate good in life, and I tend to agree. Happiness is subjective; it’s not a constant. I think we’ve put happiness on this unobtainable pedestal. It’s something that we haven’t actually defined for ourselves as individuals, and we strive for an unrealistic, curated ideal (however it is we perceive that ideal). Basically, we really don’t even know what we are searching for. What we talk about in our culture as happiness is really kind of a revved-up version of happiness. It’s a high-energy [state] — scientists call it a high-arousal positive affect. It’s a feeling, it’s transient, it’s not quality of life, it’s not so…
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Appreciation.
Life has been an uphill climb lately.  And yeah, I’ve been complaining.  It’s natural, right? 😬 But I also recognize that you don’t reach a peak of the mountain without first walking through the valley.  For the past 4 months, it has literally been one thing after another, and it’s taken me on an emotional roller coaster. There have been essentially 7 significant events that have each taken me down a notch (or several). While I’ve been able to lean on people who care about me for support, there is still something missing that’s left me feeling unfulfilled. So, I’ve been doing what I do: completely analyzing these situations to find the root of what has…
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Fuego.
You know those people who in very few words can ignite a spark 💥 within you? I met with one of those people recently. A woman that I highly respect and appreciate. She tells it to me like it is, laid out as fact, but with a tone that is sincere and caring, not accusatory and demeaning. The distinction in her delivery is important. Great leaders cater the message for the recipient to feel in a positive way. With all this COVID shit going on, I’ve been feeling a lot of different emotions. I’ve been trying to be patient with these emotions, because I’m not sure if I’m feeling them…
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Heart.
Have you ever really paid attention to where you feel emotions in your body? It’s quite an interesting experiment that I recommend you try. I did it for a week, and I learned that nearly every emotion I feel somewhere in the central portion of my body. But it wasn’t all that surprising when I thought about it. When my heart breaks, I feel it in my heart. When I get nervous, I feel it in my stomach. When I feel joy, I feel it in my heart. When I feel excitement, I feel it in my stomach. I don’t feel emotions in my head or my legs. As you learned, our gut is becoming known in the science community…
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Intuition.
Did you know that there is a lot of chatter in the medical community about our gut being our second brain? So when you “go with your gut” or have a “gut feeling”, there really is something to say for that. Scientists call this second brain our enteric nervous system (ENS), and it is made up of more than 100 million nerve cells 😳 that line our gastrointestinal tract from our esophagus to our rectum. The ENS isn’t capable of thoughts as we know them coming from our brain, but it does communicate back and forth with our brain. Researchers and doctors thought that depression and anxiety contributed to the…