What if there was no such thing as positive or negative feelings?

What if there was no such thing as ‘negative’ feeling or a ‘positive’ feeling? What if all feelings were just feelings?

I was listening to a podcast the other day and during the show, this loving mother was talking about her 2 teenage daughters. She was talking about how both of her daughters were feeling really unhappy lately. They were feeling down in the dumps and she wanted to brainstorm ideas on how to help them feel better. 

The other woman on the podcast commented by saying “How come you don’t want your daughters to be unhappy?”

What a question! One that really got this mother, and me, thinking. 

What came out of this was that she wasn’t really sure why she didn’t want her daughters to feel unhappy. She just didn’t. She wanted them to be happy. To feel better. To smile and enjoy their lives more. 

“But why?” the other woman asked. 

“What’s wrong with being unhappy?”

“What if unhappiness is part of the deal when you’re living your human life?”

“What if the only way we even know what happiness is, is because we have experienced unhappiness?”

“What if instead of trying to ‘feel happier’ we opened ourselves up to unhappiness and  experienced what that felt like in our bodies. 

What if we really, truly, stopped and tuned into our bodies and described the feeling in great detail. 

You know what would happen? We would realize that unhappiness (like all emotions) is simply a vibration - a tingling, a warmth, a frown and a scrunched up face with clenched fists. It’s completely manageable and totally part of the deal. 

Once we experience the emotion, rather than pushing it away, we realize we are feeling that way because of what we are thinking. Then we can decide to continue thinking the thought that creates unhappiness, or we can change our thought to something different. 

The choice is ours and it’s a beautiful choice to have. 

xo