I have this incredible friend who, no matter what life throws at her, is always laughing. And I mean always.
The story of her childhood is not an easy one. She grew up in poverty, and lost her father as a young teenager. Yet, when she tells stories of her youth, she literally cracks up the entire way through. It's incredible. She finds humor in even the most difficult situations. And no surprise, she's an absolute delight to be around.
Or what about this? Have you ever met someone, who, no matter how beautiful their life may appear, always finds a way to complain about something? Even the most trivial details?
We all have different emotional homes from which we engage in our lives. While we each experience a range of emotions throughout our lives, generally speaking, our emotional home tends to fall within a habitual range of a few, unconsciously chosen favorites.
This is based on years of practice exercising the same emotional muscle in response to stimuli. Bit by bit, we build our house of emotions through experiences, exchanges with influential characters, and our own internal musings.
If we are conscious, we may recognize, and work with the emotional habit patterns (both positive and negative) that have been passed down through our families. If we haven't put much thought into it, often we carry on our inherited emotional legacies without thinking twice. We share them with our partners, friends and kids, who will then share them with theirs, and on and on.
We use events as triggers to get back to our emotional home because we're comfortable here, not necessarily because it's what's best. This way, it's not ME it's the TRIGGER that set off the emotional response.
SPOILER ALERT: It's always you (me), the trigger is merely that.
Consider being at dinner and the waitress brings you the wrong dish. One person may react in complete frustration, "I don't have time for this!" She yells. While another might laugh it off as say "hell, I wanted to try this one anyway." A different person might feel incredibly guilty, as she always does, believing that it was her fault that she didn't speak loud enough for the waitress to hear her when she ordered.
You see? One circumstance, a million different responses all to bring us back to our emotional homes.
So, I ask you, what is your emotional home? Can you identify 4 primary emotions (try two empowering and two disempowering) that you experience on a regular basis? And finally, are you content with these or do they perhaps need an update?
A little food for thought, this Wednesday, Dear Ones.
Love,
Brie
Interested in further identifying and understanding your emotional home? Wanna reset the ones that aren't so supportive? Than please...
March 16-23, 2019