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THE MODERN HEALTH LETTER
BUILDING EMOTIONAL AWARENESS
(The path to the good life)
I spent a long time lying to myself and everyone around me.
When people would ask me, what motivated me to leave Switzerland for a new life in the UK, I told them about all the dreams and goals I wanted to achieve.
But the truth is, I left because I wasn’t courageous enough to face all the problems I was dealing with in my life at that time.
So I ran away.
To a city where no one knew me and my story.
To a place where I could leave all the heavy emotional baggage and the pain I was carrying behind me.
To be a new person.
Today, I understand why so many of us choose escapism, distractions and addictions over taking responsibility.
The short-term relief and peace you get by distancing yourself from what you don’t want to accept can seem to be a better option than the courage it takes to face and accept reality.
But the long-term consequences of avoidance will also guarantee you that you will never be able to create a life you will truly be happy, at peace and excited to live.
The race against reality.
At this point, you might realise that we spend most of our lives running:
This shows us how powerful emotions are.
Some of us rather spend our whole lives running, trying to escape the emotions that we feel instead of slowing down, stopping and turning around to face them.
Our emotions constitute the core of our being.
They are not only powerful, they are absolutely essential to our physical and emotional health and are the foundation our life is built upon.
By running away and refusing to create space for your emotions, you cut yourself out from the most important part of this human experience.
So you are right for choosing to run away.
So was I, when I left Switzerland for a new life in the UK.
Because from that perspective, the only option we seem to have is to run.
You can feel the immense weight, the heaviness that reality and the truth hold, because it’s loaded with all these emotions you have no idea how to carry.
And there is all this shame and anger certain parts of you feel that make you want to hide from everyone.
Even from yourself.
I get it.
And I don’t judge you for refusing to slow down and surrender to what is instead.
Because I know how difficult it is to do that.
But I also want you to know that it is possible.
And with some help, the right people and a lot of compassion, you are capable of it too.
Through this letter you will hopefully realise that you are not only capable of putting an end to your race, you deserve to choose presence and acceptance instead.
We live in an emotional dark age.
“We live in a society that doesn’t understand emotions. We don’t know what to say when someone loses their loved one. We expect people to work the next day after a betrayal. We have no idea how to process grief or have uncomfortable conversations. And we wonder why people are so anxious, exhausted, and lonely.” Dr. Nicole LePera
Everything that happens inside of an individual (internally) is being reflected on a societal level (externally).
The micro influences the macro and vice-versa.
The consequences of us not being able to feel, embrace, express and learn from our emotions on an individual level (the internal happening), ripple out in a society where we don’t know how to hold space for each other’s pain and emotions (the external reflection).
We don’t know how to see, hear, feel, understand and tune into the spectrum of negative emotions experienced by our child, our parents, our friend, our partner or our co-worker.
Instead, we judge, criticise or invalidate them as soon as they express the need to share the parts of themselves that have been hurt.
The invisible code of conduct our society has been built on has conditioned us to be completely disconnected from our own and each other’s pain.
It’s a collective behaviour that most of us learned in our families first, that now runs deeply into the structure of the society we live in.
This level of disconnect that we all face on an emotional level is simultaneously being reflected on a physical level.
We dived into the effects and consequences of this disconnection from our body and how to build a relationship with our body in this letter.
The process of emotional awareness and better individual and collective mental and physical health lies in our ability to learn how to feel and attune to our own and each other’s emotions.
I hope you can realise how opening yourself up to healing your heart, feeling your emotions and dedicating yourself to health is going to simultaneously heal the world.
This is the most liberating, inspiring and rewarding path one can choose.
“We live in a society that doesn’t understand emotions. We don’t know what to say when someone loses their loved one. We expect people to work the next day after a betrayal. We have no idea how to process grief or have uncomfortable conversations. And we wonder why people are so anxious, exhausted, and lonely.” Dr. Nicole LePera
Implement my daily approach to life to make your mental + physical health
effortless.
- The power of emotions
As I said previously, emotions constitute the core of your human experience and are the biggest drive and motivator for almost all of your decisions and actions.
You can’t go one day without feeling any emotions.
This shows us how present our emotions are in our everyday lives.
When we come into this world as babies, we experience the world around us only through our emotions.
We feel before we walk or talk.
We are neurologically wired to create connections and relationships through our emotions because if we don’t, we wouldn’t be able to survive.
The physical and emotional needs that we have as human beings depend on our ability to connect with ourselves and with others.
Life is all about connection and relationships.
What constitutes the foundation of all relationships?
You guessed it – your emotions !
Running away from emotions means running away from relationships, therefore from life.
So, to fully immerse yourself into the experience of life, build deep connections and healthy relationships with yourself and with others, you have to reconnect with your emotions.
How to feel your emotions?
Most of us learned and conditioned ourselves to repress certain negative emotions that weren’t welcomed and accepted in our childhood.
This also created a state of distrust in yourself because the feedback you got when you were little and trying to express these negative emotions was:
“you are wrong for feeling this way”
If your parents or caretaker weren’t able to create space to receive and validate emotions like shame, anger, upset, distress or fear, chances are that you found a way to avoid feeling them or to cope with them every time they show up in your day.
You want to learn how to feel and express your emotions for two main reasons:
Your personal truth is a reflection of who you are, your boundaries and what your needs are.
So, let’s get to know who you are by learning how to feel.
1) Observation and awareness
You have never stopped feeling.
Your emotions still come up with the hope of being felt and released.
You just learned how to repress them and leave them in a corner of your being.
Now that you are aware of the importance and immense power your emotions hold, try to become aware of the process and habit you created to push your emotions back down into your body instead of letting them come up and releasing them.
Let’s say you are at work and a situation happens that makes you upset.
Can you see how the emotion of upset slowly comes up but you shake it off with a deep breath and refocus immediately back on your computer?
By the time you end your day, you have completely forgotten to fully acknowledge and release that emotion, or it might be in your mind, but you convince yourself that you shouldn’t make a big deal out of it.
Once you become aware and start to clearly identify the habit you have of shutting your emotions down every time they want to come up and make you aware of something that is important to you, you will naturally feel the need to create space to feel and listen to them instead.
2) Reframe your perspective on emotions
Every emotion that you can feel coming up is always valid.
You are never wrong for feeling the way you feel.
From the perspective you hold, you are completely right for feeling that emotion.
Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise, tell you off or shame you for feeling a certain way.
Remind yourself that no one can hold the exact same perspective you do, because no one is you and knows the story of you as well as you do.
Some people will have empathy and compassion for the different ways you feel, others will tell you to stop exaggerating, dramatising or call you too emotional.
Let these people have their opinions and shift your focus on the underlying message that comes up with the emotion you are feeling instead.
The emotions you feel contain a precious message about what is important to you and why.
This is what forms your personal truth and unique combination of needs, desires and ways to look at life.
All these little messages that come from your emotions hold the precious key to unlocking the path towards your definition of a good life.
3) Be present
This is what I mean when I say “create space” for your emotions.
The next time you feel any emotion come up, stop running.
Instead, bring your awareness and attention into your body.
Close your eyes, take a couple of deep breaths and observe how your body feel as you invite that emotion to come up.
I really like to directly talk to the emotion I am feeling when I do this.
“I can feel you anger. I know you are right here and would like me to look at you and feel you. I want you to know that you are allowed to come up and fully express yourself and I want you to know that I will be here with you when you are ready to do so.”
This is an example of how I create space for my emotions.
4) Write
Writing is one of the best ways to translate your feelings into actual words.
This is very important because once you learn how to feel your emotions, you want to practice communicating them to the people around you.
It’s also a beautiful way to bring your emotions from the internal (your body and mind) to the external (your piece of paper) and therefore directly improve your physical health too!
5) Structure your life according to your truth
Most of us have built our life around our parents, society’s or other people’s needs, values and expectations.
What you will come to realise by listening to your emotions and your truth, is that certain parts of your life are not aligned with what you truly want.
The strong emotional feedback that you get every time you try to do something you don’t truly want to do will invite you to reconsider the way you are currently living your life.
- Now might be the time to leave this job.
- Now might be the time to let go of that relationship.
- Now might be the time to say yes to that opportunity.
- Now might be the time to start that project.
- Now might be the time to apologise to that person.
- Now might be the time to ask for help and support.
The changes that come from listening, feeling and prioritising your emotions over anything else will completely shake up your reality.
In the short term, it will feel like the life you have been living up to now has been a complete lie.
Because you will have to let go and detach from so many things, people, beliefs, certainties and situations.
But in the long term, you are giving yourself the gift of freedom, deep presence and internal peace.
The freedom to be who you truly are.
The presence that comes from not having to run anymore.
And the internal peace of knowing that you are living according to what your heart and soul desire.
I will see you in next week’s letter.
Until then, take care.
Oli
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Implement my daily approach to life to make your mental + physical health
effortless.