How to stop being sad and find your mojo, authentically...

Summary: How to extract positive values from negative emotions, such as feeling sad, by using hypnotherapy, emotional release and higher self processes from the fields of NLP and Hawaiian Huna as well as simply using negative emotions as clues to what we really value about ourselves or hoped would happen. I've had a number of epiphanies lately while coaching clients and running the free weekly seminars. One of them has come from the area of M-Braining along with the ideas of Mike Iamele (The Sacred Circle) and also the work of Thomas Gordon who created parent and teacher effectiveness training. In the M-Braining model there is the idea that we have three brains. The head-brain, the heart-brain, and the gut-brain. Apparently there are neurons around the heart and gut, not just the grey matter in your head! In this model the head is in charge of plans and strategy. The gut is in charge of instinct, motivation, fear and courage - and if it clenches it has a concern that the other two brains need to address. And the heart is responsible for values and priorities - what is important to you and you alone! So basically, your heart is you! It's the job of your head and gut to come up with plans and motivation/action to make your heart happy, to realise the values of who you are in your life. Now the insight I got from Mike Iamele is this - that we internalise a praise-shame dichotomy from society and from the way we are conditioned as children. This means we label positive emotions as worthy of praise, and negative emotions as worthy of judgement, ridicule and shame - or, we treat them as things that are wrong and that need 'fixing'. Thomas Gordon, who created Parent and Teacher Effectiveness training courses talks about the 12 roadblocks - communication methods that generally don't succeed when we are talking to someone who is upset. These include giving advice, sending solutions, reassuring, lecturing, analysing, probing and others. If you use these on your teenager when they are upset they will generally tell you to F&*% off and slam the door in your face!

Small children will unfortunately try to please you and bury their true feelings and there begins the human tale of woe that we spend the rest of our lives unravelling. Either we grow up as pleasers, or rebels or emotionally stunted and unable to be vulnerable with our partners, desperately afraid of expressing an emotion that is not worthy of 'praise'. But here's the thing... if we just pick up the good/bad, right/wrong, judgemental overlay of our binary western culture for a moment, and set it to one side, we are then able to treat all emotions as neither good nor bad, but simply as presenting important information. Thus, if you are angry, it's likely that an important value that you prize has been violated. For example, if integrity is important to you and you read that your favourite politician has told a lie or stolen money, you may feel angry about that. If you hoped your partner would be kind when you shared some vulnerable information about yourself and instead they were mean and teased you about it, then you may feel hurt or disappointed. If someone you love passes away, you may feel incredibly sad because you perceive the loss of important traits that you valued about them - their humour, friendship, kindness....all sorts of things, as well as the person themselves. In my experience in coaching, negative emotions are meant to be released quickly by the unconscious mind and higher self, not held on to for decades. This is a concept that comes from Hawaiian Huna - the original cultural framework of the local Hawaiians prior to colonization. There are a number of key processes that can be used from Huna to release negative emotions and beliefs quickly and effectively. But what I want to talk about here is the concept that your negative emotions are simply like a warning light on your dashboard. They show that your boundaries are being threatened and that in this moment you are being prevented from showing up in the world fully as you. If you value kindness and people are mean, you may feel really upset about that. But the point is to honour yourself and say "I'm not wrong for valuing kindness. I am allowed to value kindness. And I will". What we learn to do as children, however, is make the adults right and ourselves wrong. This leads to a critical internal voice and so most clients walk in the door and say "I always beat up on myself" or "I'm so hard on myself". If you are in a situation where everyone is being kind, and that is your top value, then it's likely you will experience joy, because joy occurs when 100% of your values are able to be expressed or experienced in a given moment. So, in this we find the Logic of the Heart. Negative emotions and positive emotions are all to be embraced because they reveal your soul and what you value as important. It might be different to others. And that's ok. But make yourself right for being you and valuing what you value. If you are feeling sad now, start by asking yourself this question - "What was I hoping would happen". Or, "How did I hope it would be?". The answer will reveal your priorities and a list of value words. Write them down. Read them back to yourself. Allow any emotion or tears to be released and pass - emotion is just a sensation, nothing to be afraid of or ashamed for. Read the value words back to yourself saying "I am a person who values x and y and z values - these are who I am, these are important to me. In the future I will speak up for my values and build my life around making sure I can express my top values. And in that short conversation you will find life direction, career direction and clarity around your relationships. If you feel any emotions are stuck in there, then look on the website under "About" and read the pages on Hypnotherapy, Emotional Release and Higher Self and see if any of those processes are something you'd like to investigate further. This can be done by googling the processes or through a coaching session with me. Whatever you decide, though, consider that emotions can be released easily and quickly and instead of carrying them round for years and years, you can transmute that energy and that pain into a beautiful understanding of who you really are and what is really, really important to you in life - and then, with that clarity, set about creating it now! Imagine a world full of people who were authentically in touch with their highest values and joy, instead of running round trying to medicate their emotional pain through status, power, money, addictions, substances etc... Let's together create an authentic, happy world now, one person at a time, starting with ourselves :-)