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Avoidance.
We all value the importance of communication, but so many people avoid conversations that make them feel uncomfortable – which doesn’t solve anything. It actually makes everything worse. I’m not going to go into examples here. We all know how it feels when we don’t feel as though we’re being listened to. I tried to have one of these uncomfortable conversations with someone. I told him what I wanted to talk about, and we agreed to have the conversation at a later time when we would both be prepared to do so. But that later discussion never happened. This person invited me to have a seat at the table, then never let me pull up…
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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…
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Vibe.
Humans are an interesting species, aren’t they? Trying to wrap my head around the social behaviors occurring during this pandemic has my mind running overtime. I mean, I’m not surprised with some of the things that are happening. Humans are social animals who conform in response to perceived pressure from others. That’s basic psychology. But here’s a fun video to demonstrate just because: What has surprised me most about this situation is the positivity. So many people are truly trying to make the best of this situation and are trying to spread joy throughout their communities. I’ve seen videos of teachers parading through neighborhoods in a caravan to see their students. I’ve seen small pop-up “give…
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Emotion.
I write a lot about emotions and feeling them. Psychology fascinates me, so it’s not surprising that this is where my writing leans. But throughout my business and leadership readings, trainings, and experiences, it’s become quite evident to me how much emotion plays a part in our daily lives – and how many people dismiss it as playing an important part in our daily lives. In a TED Talk presented by Harvard Medical School Psychologist Susan David, she performed a study of 70,000 people and found that 1/3 of these people judge or actively try to push aside “bad” emotions such as grief, anger, or sadness. Normal, natural emotions are now seen…
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Emotional.
Remember when I wrote about listening to the wrong podcast episode of The Happiness Lab that prompted the post Sharing is Caring? Well, I finally listened to the episode that was originally recommended for me to listen to. It was called “Don’t Think of the White Bear.” I don’t even remember why this specific episode was recommended to me by a colleague. I think we were talking about how emotions are contagious. But what I took away from the episode was actually justification to my feelings in the post Let Me Be. Turns out, the best way to get over our emotions is to fully embrace them, while we’re feeling…