#11 Feelings - A follow-up
I finished 2-weeks ago one of my coaching modules, called Process, which is all about processing feelings and emotions in coaching. And since my last article was about emotions, I think this would come as a nice follow-up.
I know that we don't speak enough about what we feel, and if you're in an organization, the focus tends to be on actions and KPIs, not on feeling and how we are right now. Or, if we ask that, it's still in the work context.
But, if we don't own them and speak about them unconsciously, we create the conditions to rule our lives and our decisions. And the idea is to establish another relationship with that emotion.
One of the homework exercises we had to do was answer the below question, which we then unpacked with our leaders and other coaches.
And the question is:
What can't you be with?
Write a list of all emotions and feelings that you can't be with or that you avoid.
Once that's done, think of situations where you experienced them and be as specific as possible. What was the context? What other feelings are coming from that situation? What is in this moment? What is happening underneath? Can you name the emotion - what is it that you're experiencing now?
Are you trying to come up with a solution already and trying to fix things, or are you just being in that emotion?
Leave your list aside and come back to it later in the day or even the next day - is there anything new emerging?
One thing that the course leader said was, "when we don't like the present, we tend to justify our answers." Have you noticed that most of the time, we say, "I've done this because of XYZ"? Where do you think that is coming from for you?
For me, I can't be with resistance to change, which underneath there's a feeling of being useless and weak - the coach actually helped me unpack this with a lovely visualization, which I might write about at some point. In my case, the next question I got was, "what do I need from weakness?" which I am still pondering on.
So, from today's article, what are you learning? How can you integrate that into your life?
Stay curious,
Flo
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