WordWatch: “...MADE me feel...” (Part 1)
There is no brighter red-flag indicator of disowning your Authentic Power than when you say...
- He made me feel bad.
- She made me feel stupid.
- They made me feel unwelcome.
- My child made me angry.
- Rain makes me sad.
- Blue skies make me happy.
- You make me feel special.
Whether your feelings are “negative” or “positive,” you give your power away when you think or say that someone or something outside yourself MADE you feel that way.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t have the feelings, or that they aren’t valid, only that they are not CAUSED by external conditions.* Feelings/emotions are your body/mind’s way of telling you that your thoughts are IN or OUT of alignment with your “higher truth.”
Your Authentic Self knows that You (with a capital “Y”) are inherently powerful. So when you (small “y”) are holding a disempowering thought, there is a clash between You and you. That clash generates an emotion that feels painful because, like physical pain, it’s there to make you aware that something is out of whack. Likewise, pleasure is an indicator of alignment between You and you.
You’ve been trained to believe that external conditions and behaviors make you feel emotional pain or pleasure, but it’s actually your thoughts about life conditions that cause your feelings. When you change the way you think about something, it changes the way you feel about it.
* Of course things like weather, diet, and past trauma can affect your emotional biochemistry. If you have biochemical issues, you might want to try on the perspective that your biochemistry is an “external condition” that may affect your brain but can’t control your thoughts entirely. Your mind and your brain are not the same thing.
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