Are you using up your joy juice?
Do you have unlimited emotional resources? Can you feel strongly all the time about everything? In fact, you cannot. Just as we have limited attention spans, so we have limited ability to feel things. Intense feelings are fueled by hormones in our body, be they adrenaline or testosterone. As soon as these hormones are secreted into our bloodstreams, they start to be reabsorbed. We can maintain a heightened emotional state only until our glands have secreted their store of hormones. When these hormones are depleted, we feel tired.
What this means is that the more of your emotional resources that you use for negative things like anxiety, anger, and frustration, the less you have left for things like joy, happiness, and vitality. The same hormones which fuel fear can also fuel excitement, but not if they are depleted because we are constantly fretting.
In order to experience more joy in your life, you need to give up experiencing the negative things. You can’t have both. What this means is that you are going to need to learn how to let go of regrets, old issues with other people, complaints about the world, and attempts to control others. The more free and relaxed you can feel and the more free that you can allow others to be (no matter how much their opinions or actions differ from your own), the more you will be able to experience joy in your life.
Experience success, experience coaching.
Posted: June 5th, 2009 under Life Coach, Relationship Coaching, Relationship Counseling.
Tags: changing, coping with emotions, stopping bad habits