The Answer to How to Handle Your Anger & Sadness Regarding Oil Gushing into the Gulf
I have heard how furious and sad people are at what has now been going on for months in the Gulf of Mexico. Are you one of them – furious at BP and furious at the U.S. government’s handling of the situation? I am one of them too, which is why this blog is for both me and you.
You (and I) vent to others the despair and sickening feeling that you feel, but in the end you cannot stop the oil leak. You are left not knowing what to do with the anger and sadness you feel toward this tragedy. What bothers me is that along with this anger and sadness is a sense of hopelessness that there is nothing you can do. This simply is not true!
Although you and I feel right blaming BP and the government for the mess our ecology is in, I know there is a deeper answer that is waiting for you and me to claim. You see I teach a process which is called F.E.E.L.: Feel Every Emotion as Love. I know it sounds like a philosophy for sensitive people or for those emotionally challenged, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. F.E.E.L. is a process that gives you empowering insight to what you are feeling. Because you are constantly feeling about everything throughout your day (whether you are conscious or not), understanding your feelings from this emotionally conscious level changes you and how you go about living your life.
The F.E.E.L. perspective teaches what anger is really about from an emotionally conscious level. Anger from this perspective is about owning your power. You see when you turn to BP and the U.S. government about your anger, psychotherapists like myself call that projecting. It is not that there isn’t merit to that anger you feel, it is just that it keeps you in the victim mode. When you are the victim, you don’t have power and cannot create changes because you have given away your power to the voice of your ego.
F.E.E.L. supports you to listen to the inner wisdom within you, which recognizes that your feelings are present out of love to guide you back to your inner truth. You are right to be saddened and angry at the impact on the land and sea, the animals and the chemicals that are being used which will eventually show up in our food chain, causing us health problems. Your sadness is present to get really clear that you, and I – let’s face it pretty much everyone takes forgranted some aspect of our Earth and her natural resources. Can you use your sadness to get clear as to how you can honor the Earth even more?
Your anger is present to support you to claim back your power and make changes for and within you. From this level of understanding, your anger is not about revenge or blame. Those forms of anger are from the ego. Your anger from an emotional consciousness perspective supports you to ignite your power and passion to really look at you and where you fall in the picture.
Maybe you can begin with the plastic you waste. Have you used the power of your voice to demand that we get charged a sizable sum when you forget your grocery bags or does that sound too inconvenient? Do you recognize or blow off your part of the oil dependency cycle that we are in?
Seeing yourself in this light allows you to see how much more similar you and I are to BP and the U.S. government in not taking full responsibility. The government and BP are a mirror to how we don’t yet hold ourselves fully accountable either. To make the shift happen, begin with you!
There used to be a chosen few who innately knew how to use their negative feelings such as anger, sadness and frustration and use them to empower them. These are the leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Gandhi to name a few.
We can no longer afford to only have a chosen few act from an emotionally conscious level. You too are being called to Feel Every Emotion as Love so you can live from an empowered state toward all aspects of life. This Gulf event is an awakening for all of us, myself included, in many ways.
No matter how much you are doing in regard to being environmentally conscious, I guarantee that if you feel sadness or anger that there is more responsibility that you can claim. This isn’t about being the perfect environmentalist rather this is about your essence yearning for you to take another step toward protecting our Earth. Be clear if and when you are the victim because then your ego is getting the best of you. Now is the time to tap into the potential that waits within, which only you can claim!
I would LOVE to hear your ideas about one or two steps you have already taken. It is very likely that a step that you have already done is a prime example of what someone else can do next! Also, please share one more step that you are willing to commit to now and set a date of when it will be completed.
Remember it is your ego that would have you believe that your actions are insignificant. Trust me when I say that your feelings of anger and sadness will begin to shift the moment you beginning following where your essence wants to take you in regard to this situation and every other situation in your life.
Live Emotionally Conscious – Live Exceptionally Well,
PS: If you would like more support in seeing how your feelings can support you to further tap into your potential, check out my F.E.E.L. Virtual Mastery Program. In honor of celebrating freedom in all its forms, I would like to extend a $10 off discount for the first month of my F.E.E.L. Virtual Mastery Program. If you want to learn how your feelings can support you to tap into more of your potential go to www.MichelleBersell.com/feel, which is good until July 4th.
What to Do From an Emotional Consciousness Perspective When You Lose Your Cool?
Dear Michelle,
I’m having a lot of trouble creating boundaries between my sense of peace and my 13 year old son who’s exploring risky behaviors. I wondered if you could speak to that kind of challenge. I find that his behaviors send me into really unwanted tailspins. It’s fine for me to say ok detach. And I already meditate and do yoga, but then he reveals that he’s tried stealing something and wow there goes my cool. I’m looking for ways to better mediate my emotional life so I can be a solid parent to my child. I look forward to hearing your response.
Roberta
Hi Roberta,
First of all, I want to validate your reaction when you hear that your son has attempted stealing. I am sure it blew you away knowing that he is engaging in behaviors that are not for his highest good. Of course this would be upsetting to you! My bet is, however, that your reaction isn’t feeling good to either yourself or your son. So even though I understand why you lost your cool, I want to support you to move out of the reactionary ego perspective and instead gain clarity and empowerment through emotional consciousness. So whatever you do, don’t detach from your feelings! We need your emotions to understand the next steps you need to take and to improve this situation.
The good news is that your situation applies to everyone when they lose their cool. Regardless of the circumstance, when you lose your cool, the feeling you are experience is first ANGER and second likely frustration. When you learn to recognize these feelings through the lens of love (as in Feel Every Emotion as Love) you can begin to differentiate between the messages of your ego and the messages of your essence.
Your ego reacts in anger when subconsciously you believe that your power has been taken away from you. Roberta, in your case you are feeling powerless as to how to move your son away from engaging in risky behaviors.
Frustration is where “not good enough” lives and seeps in when you feel like you are spinning your wheels. Roberta, because you have likely tried different measures without success, your ego can take a hold and judge your abilities. A part of why your reaction gets so strong is because you take his behaviors and make them personal about you. Although this is common for parents, especially teenage parents, to do, it isn’t your truth.
As your anger and frustration get triggered from your ego, you are going to blow. My work doesn’t say that you have to not ever blow. Sometimes, circumstances just push enough of your buttons. Yet, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t understand the inner wisdom coming through to support you to CREATE CHANGE!
As I teach in much greater detail through my F.E.E.L. Virtual Mastery Program (www.MichelleBersell.com/feel), your anger and frustration have much wisdom to share. Anger from a spiritual perspective is always about claiming your power. While frustration is present to tell you that the way you are going about doing things isn’t working and you need to create a shift back to your inner wisdom.
Roberta, your anger is present to tell you to claim the power you still have toward your relationship with your son. Although your ego is telling you that you are powerless in this situation, nothing could be further from the truth. Your son is reaching out to you when he admits that he attempted to steal. Your true power is tapped into when you look to what is triggering this for him. He is looking to you for guidance (no matter how much he may act that he is blowing off what you say) because he told you the truth!
Tap into your own experiences of feeling peer pressure to remember that you did (as well as myself and everyone else) dumb things to get others approval. Have compassion for yourself for your mistakes and use that to have compassion and understanding for him. Then from a loving place, ask him questions such as who he was with, what he was feeling like around them and allow him to begin to see the light of what is really going on within him. Your power is bringing out the truth to what is really going on rather than staying stuck on the surface issue of stealing.
Your frustration is your essence guiding you that things have to change. Put the onus back on him to what he thinks needs to be done to make a change. Don’t let him let his ego off easily. Guide him to stand up for his essence and the man that he wants to become. How can things change to support him to realize that within himself? You can support him but only he can claim it for himself.
The lesson is for all of us that when we lose our cool, we are buying into a version of ourselves and a version of reality that isn’t true. As a person on a path to live more consciously, you can take this experience (and every experience your emotions come up) to become in greater alignment with your truth and power!
Thanks Roberta for sharing your story! Glad to hear that you are already meditating and doing yoga, as those activities will support you to gain access to the inner wisdom that is within each of your feelings.
Live Emotionally Conscious & Live Exceptionally Well,
How to shift an “off” day to “on”
No one ever sets off to have an “off” day. You are just going about living your life and one thing leads to another, or so it seems. If you are on the path to living your life more consciously so you can embrace more of your potential, your work is to bring awareness to what is really going on.
What is really going on during an off day is that you likely lowered your standards. Of course you are not going to go about your day thinking “Today would be a great day to lower my standards.” So how does this happen?
Believe it or not, you are most likely going to lower your standards when you are going after something you want. You see, in your mind sometimes to get what you want, you “make exceptions.” Making exceptions is fine except when you go against what feels good and right to you. The problem is that it is way too easy to make excuses even if your exception does not feel right to you.
Take me for example. Yesterday, I had an appointment with a really well-known figure regarding his participation in the next New Consciousness Audio Series. Unfortunately, the appointment time was incorrectly scheduled and if I wanted to fit in to his very busy schedule, I needed to rearrange some appointments on my end. I knew at the time, I didn’t feel comfortable making changes to my schedule. It just didn’t feel right. Still, I did as I thought of how wonderful it would be to have him as a part of the series.
Against my better judgment of my inner guidance, rearrangements were made. And you know what? The rearrangements threw off my day.
Now for the kicker, HE NEVER CALLED!
You see it is these little instances where boundaries weaken and you can easily have no clue. After all you want to be a good person, so you think you should give people the benefit of the doubt, be compassionate etc…. What happens is then that you are likely going to blow off your contribution to the problem. You will say to yourself something like “It is no big deal.”
You are correct in that it is no big deal to the other person involved. Yet, the truth is that instances in which you lower your boundaries should matter to you.
In my case, I could have easily forgotten about it and just have my assistant reschedule with his assistant. No big deal right? WRONG!
The big deal is that how I feel going about my day matters to me. Being in flow with my work makes a big difference in my day and I don’t like feeling “off.”
What is key to remember is that this has everything to do with my actions and not his. If I would have listened to my inner guidance, this wouldn’t have impacted my day as it did. It would have been “on.”
You are going to mess up at times and not listen to your inner guidance, just as I did. If you want to remain living emotionally unconscious (like many do) you will easily blow off lowering your standards. You won’t recognize how you disregarded your inner wisdom and then you will wonder why life at times feels like such a struggle.
Living emotionally conscious, however, you can choose to recognize your part in the equation. When you do, you are living more empowered because you see how you can handle circumstances in a way that is in greater alignment with your essence.
And this, my friends, is exactly how healthy boundaries are created! It is through the times when you dismiss your boundaries that can affirm the importance of boundaries in your life.
It is just like how successful people have experienced a lot of failures prior to their success. The same holds true with your boundaries. People with healthy boundaries that supports them to live their best life have become conscious of the times when their boundaries were lax. The reason is that in both cases, you learn and grow – IF YOU ARE WILLING & AWARE!
Of course, I became aware of this instance by recognizing my annoyance, which was really just light weight anger. Utilizing my anger from an emotionally conscious state, I realized my feelings were about me claiming more of my power. Through that understanding, I claimed back my power through re-establishing boundaries that feel good and right to me.
For me, the person who blew off our appointment has nothing to do with how I felt. He was simply the vehicle of how I was supposed to remember my truth to support me as my work progresses. The stakes may become higher, but my truth remains the same. Evidently, I needed that reminder! Once I got it, my day went from feeling “off” to feeling back “on!”
You need reminders when you are on your path to grow and evolve. Your emotions are there to support you to stay on track. Choose to live emotionally conscious to embrace the power within you that will allow you to turn around an “off” day and get back “on” track to living your best life!
Live Emotionally Conscious – Live Exceptionally Well,
Before I uncovered the truth to our emotions, I would become paralyzed by my feelings and fears, even though I had been professionally trained as a psychotherapist and life coach!
