What Does It Mean to Own Our Emotions? | Question of the Week by @ecotrain

Before I go on and on, some of you may have read a post I did two months ago on A Tutor's Tale Part 5: Should Social Emotional Education Be Taught?. Hence, I am trying not to write something too similar to it, though that post was the "trigger" that got me thinking about us handling our emotions, as well as acknowledging them. Today, I want to talk about what I have been learning about being powerful and free and why I relate it with owning my own emotions.

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I have been watching Westworld, a drama series quite a bit with my husband. This series is about a group of hosts who are robots programmed and being instilled with emotions, and even responses out of artificial instincts. They were made to feel that they are real and they have their life stories. Little did they know, they were controlled and reset anytime the humans behind them want them to. Later, some of the hosts got "awakened" and started to realize there is another world beyond their artificial worlds. Gradually, they murdered many of their "creators" because they want to feel and decide for themselves. I am not exactly sure why I am telling you this story but when I was young, I thought that I was wired that way whenever I felt really sad or disappointed. I told myself that those feelings AREN'T MINE and I must had been programmed in the night for me to feel certain ways. I tried to convince myself I was made to feel them. It was a very powerless way to live.

As I grew up and my vocabulary for emotions expanded, I know it is impossible and realized those feelings are real. I got to learn to face and deal with them, face to face. That was when the journey of owning up my emotions started and boy, it was difficult!!!

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Growing in our emotions

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I think we grow into learning our emotions and owning them. It is more rampant to see children who are still learning their emotions blaming their emotions on others' actions. As we grow, we learn more of the emotions and we can even anticipate them coming, based on previous experiences or the exposures we get through social medias, conversations and even movies that we watched. Life has a way of teaching us about emotions and none of us is immune from feeling, not even the most rationale person on earth. One way or another, emotions DO affect us and they are not evil.

In the face of fear, pain or disappointment, we may start to deny our emotions. Maybe we try to toughen up ourselves, by creating a defense shield to not let emotions come in and make us feel again. Maybe we try to eliminate all negative emotions like Joy in the movie, Inside Out. When emotions are all kept out, the "colours" of our inner world will also be kept out like how Branch was in Trolls. We may even grow into masking ourselves behind happy faces but suffering from the inside, which is the major cases with many comedians and celebrities who were actually suffering from depression like Robbie Williams, Anthony Bourdain and even perhaps Avicii.

However, there are also the positive growing aspect of emotions. When one learns about the capacity of emotions he or she can have, it will drive them with great compassion for those who are homeless, fatherless, less fortunate and those in need. Many great foundations around the world are started with a great emotion of love and passion. Such emotions would transcend sacrifices to be made, like when a mother would risk everything to just save her child.

Definitely, as we grow in age, the spectrum of our emotions grows too. I personally think as we grow, we know ourselves better too to manage what is within us.

So, what does it mean to own our emotions?

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Emotions are great indicators as they point us to where our real selves are standing. Sometimes, they are great leaders when we need to act on instincts or impulses. Emotions are innact and I would say, be daring to feel them and process them because they grow us. I am not here to stand against emotions but I want to be powerful with them in me and for them to flow out from me as well. Yes, I am learning to live with my emotions and own them, so I can own up my actions or any consequences that follow.

In my opinion,

1. Owning would simply mean acknowledging our emotions at every stage or point of our lives
2. Deciding how far we let emotions influence the decision-making
3. Be answerable to whichever decision made without blaming others

All of the above can be summed up in a powerful and wholesome person. When I read about this topic by @ecotrain, my thoughts went back to 2 great books I have read by this great author, Danny Silk. The two books are Keep Your Love On and Powerful and Free. I myself have learnt and am still learning from Danny and also my church pastor too who teaches along this line as well.

"What is a powerful person?"
A powerful person is someone who is driven by great self-consciousness, not succumbing to just instincts without processing them and can give the very opposite response even if emotions are gripping him or her in fear or anxiety or even happy feelings such as intense excitement and the "butterflies in the stomach/floating on cloud nine" feeling. It means taking control of our actions and decisions, owning them.

When I was first introduced to the term "a powerful person", like most of us, I thought of a person who is domineering or authoritative in power, telling others what they should do. However, that is the very opposite of someone who is really powerful. If a person is dominating and controlling, it probably shows powerlessness or insecurity within, such as shown in a bully usually.

According to Loving on Purpose, there are 8 traits of a powerful person:

1. THEY DO NOT TRY TO CONTROL OTHERS.
2. THEY CREATE A RESPECTFUL ENVIRONMENT.
3. THEY REFUSE TO BE A VICTIM.
4. THEY REQUIRE OTHERS AROUND THEM TO BE POWERFUL.
5. THEY MAKE DAILY DECISIONS THAT ALIGN WITH THEIR VISION.
6. THEY LET THEIR “YES” BE “YES” AND “NO” BE “NO.”
7. THEY LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY.
8. THEY CONSISTENTLY DEMONSTRATE WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE.

A powerful person knows what he or she wants and will work his or her efforts towards it, finding and linking resources and connection. We can condition our mind, surroundings and even emotions to work around the goal and who we want to be. Notice that we do not try to control others or use passive-aggressive way to get our way. Being powerful simply means we control what we can, which is ourselves. No matter what others or circumstances may throw at us, we can be answerable for our actions. We can be held accountable to those we trust and we allow them to speak into our lives too. It does not mean emotions will not affect us, but we decide to not be slaves to emotions. Instead, we rule our emotions as masters who can process them and then act after that. We will only act with what we ourselves can bear.

Differences between a Victim and a Powerful Person

I found this on the Facebook account of Danny Silk- Living on Purpose's page:

When I live a life of reaction, I stay a prisoner to my circumstances, but when I live in response to situations, fear and pain are no longer my motivators. I can assess the situation, pray, and make decisions that protect my heart and those around me. Source

A Powerful Person	A Person with Victim Mentality
Says: "I get to..."	Says: "I have to...." or "I was made to...." or "He or she made me...."
Finds self-motivation to empower self	Finds reasons to justify why his/her action is done and why he/she cannot
Trusts God, others and him/herself	Trusts probably him/herself only and probably not too, feels have to draw others to focus on him/her
Be responsible for own decisions/actions, apologizes and works on the mistakes, fixing the mess	Blaming others on the action or tries to manipulate others, whether outrightly or subtlely
Can calm him/herself before responding	React out of impulses and perhaps thinks he or she deserves it
Operates with power and freedom, offering solutions	Operates with an entitlement attitude like a consumer
Driven by passion and motivation	Driven by anxiety or lack mentality

At the same time, a powerful person knows what can be toxic to his or her, which relationships can access to the core and which are to kept out of some boundaries. Keeping boundaries is not selfish, but it is self-care. On some days, I know I am at my lower state, I will surround myself with positivity and people who spread them, instead of drawing near to people who are in self-pity and the "enery-suckers". I do not mean that we do not care for those in distress, but know ourselves before doing that, whether our emotional capacity allows that or not because in the end, we cannot blame the others since we chose to. I have a problem when I can feel I become a dumpster for people to dump their rubbish and yet that's all they want to do. I know in long term, it can poison my soul and I choose to stay away when my own emotional health is at stake or rather, I have not reached the emotional intelligence to handle them.

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Having said this, I would like to share that I too have been in the dark pit of self-pity before. During that time, I could not seem to hear the voice of God or those good real friends who stood by me. I was just grieving and mourning the whole time, looking only introspectively. It was then I was handed a 20-day devotion named "I DO HARD THINGS" by Havilah Cunnington, I pushed myself out of the pit to meet God half way. I then understood that it was not that God was far and did not want to help me, but I clouded myself with only what I want to hear - self pity. My good friends "scolded" and "urged" me and I CRAWLED, DRAGGED myself out. That was when I learnt that I need to own my life as well as my emotions. I could slowly look beyond myself, no longer feeling I was the only victim. Whether I am totally healed of the experience, I am not sure, but every now and then I remind myself I can do hard things. I got this, no matter how difficult it is and even if the trauma can still come back to haunt me. I decide that I am better than this and I have overcome it, hence I will overcome it again. I relive a life with confidence, no longer by self-generated words and how I see myself but how God sees me and values me. If I feel defeated, I process and I cry with God. He taught me to be REAL with Him and it is okay. I cut down my unrealistic expectations on others to love and accept me. I learn to accept things when they are not ideal (most of the times) and be surprised when an expectation is met, treating it like a life extra bonus. I may still get all fidgety and panicky but I decide that I want to make peace with myself and let go of some expectations in life.

How do we get better at owning our emotions?

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I always think that we need to take time to be comfortable with ourselves to do some reflections. Some call it soul-searching, some call it meditation. I call it "SELF-CARE". We can only love others effectively when we can love ourselves effectively. There is this thing called projection. We may not like certain things or we like some things others do or have so much because it is actually what we want deep inside. I have a friend who would come to me whenever I go out on a date with my husband, saying, "You are lucky, your mom-in-law can take care of your boy when you go dating. You can stay at home with your child." Hmmm, for a long while, it disturbed me. I was trying to figure out why too. Hence, I communicated or rather confronted her in an honourable way to tell her the way she said it disturbed me big time, was there any underlying reason or something she is hinting? It was a good talk. A person who is powerful can also communicate what is within us to another person, without expecting him or her to read our mind. This, I am guilty of, especially in my relationship with my dear husband (working on it since we have communicated on that before). Well, I think all of us will get better with lots and lots of life practices, just like exercise!

We can also talk to people whom can get us accountable, in case we get "drowned" in our emotions. These are people whom we have given permission to speak into us whenever we get too carried away. It is said that the outsiders can see things that we may be blinded with. They can be trustworthy and of course, it also takes the test of time to identify these people, sometimes with much hurt and pain too, not forget to mention betrayals as well. I have been telling myself at least if they do show they are not trustworthy, it is good for me to find out sooner than later, hence setting healthy boundaries would work too.

We are powerful human beings, emotional beings. We are the ones to determine what goes through our eye-gates and heart-gates and after they go through, what we do with them: to allow them to rule or keep them as reference points. I always hear this from my brother-in-law:

We are made powerful to choose. Even when we choose to not choose, that has already been chosen.

In short, I would think that owning our emotions means living a powerful life and not "surrendering" our power to others/the refusal to live as a victim to others' actions. We should embrace our make-up as emotional beings, to feel but not to let emotions paralyze us and drown us in some pit that we cannot climb out from. I think instead of being led by emotions, we can manage them.

I would like to bless YOU and MYSELF with this wise words from Danny:

We all have room to grow in becoming powerful people. No matter what, know that every step on the journey to getting free and being a powerful person is worth it. Choosing to say “Yes!” to a life of responsibility will be one filled with adventure and joy. Do not let powerlessness and a victim mentality steal from you any longer. You are a powerful person who can make powerful decisions. And more importantly, you are a powerful person who can choose to love--because He chose to love you. Source

My favorite motivational bible verse of all times:

We all experience times of testing, which is normal for every human being. But God will be faithful to you. He will screen and filter the severity, nature, and timing of every test or trial you face so that you can bear it. And each test is an opportunity to trust him more, for along with every trial God has provided for you a way of escape that will bring you out of it victoriously. ~1 Corinthians 10:13 (the Passion Translation)

Let's own up and do something about what we feel!

List of References:

• https://www.lovingonpurpose.com/blog/becomingapowerfulperson1
• https://www.lovingonpurpose.com/blog/rq-8-traits-of-powerful-people
• https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1707395.Danny_Silk
• https://www.facebook.com/DannyLeeSilk/

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