We all have days when we tend to get hung up in a particular emotion. These are the days when something hits an emotional trigger and we feel it in our entire body. It takes over our thoughts and drives us to talk, act, and behave in a way that is linked to a certain way of believing about that particular emotion/situation.  Some one makes us mad and presses our buttons! We have a literal rush of emotion: anger, frustration, invalidation, sadness, insecurity. Perhaps, this is on automatic, like a short-circuit linked to a belief system.  Ask yourself, “Was I actually trained to react this way when THIS emotional button is pressed?”

The body is the sensory perceptual part of our existence that interacts with the world around us. It sees, tastes, feels, hears, and sees. Some or all of the experiences we have, are filtered through this physical body. It serves as a compass for our entirety and points us to what is going on both inside and around us.

Messages include things like: “Be Nice!” (usually in the face of an insult), or “Don’t say anything unless you have something nice to say” (usually is a way of stuffing our true emotions) or even, “Don’t cry, there, there” (usually because the person shutting us down is uncomfortable with that tearful expression). Where do these beliefs and messages we hear in our head come from? Our programming, or in other words, our up bringing, and our parent’s up bringing, and their parent’s. You get the visual.

So what if we could learn to point our compass in the way that we wanted to go. Instead of it just being a filter to locate where we are, what if we could use our compass to aim it where we want to be?  We can! We have this lovely mechanism that is built-in to our entire system called IMAGINATION. Imagine where you want to be. Picture what you want in your mind. Feel in your body and heart what being there will feel like.

Quote from my fellow MFR therapist Joel Ronnington:

“The beautiful part of feeling what you are envisioning is that you can practice feeling the good stuff – feel what it will be like when you are there already, after the goal has been reached. Move into the direction you want to go, instead of away from where you don’t want to be!”

If the filter of the belief system gets in the way, and says “can’t”, or feels like effort, then begin to ask yourself, what is it that I believe about this desire or goal that is limiting me? What filter (programming from my upbringing) is changing my perception? See if it can be reframed or thought about in a new way that may make it possible to navigate to where you want to be. Even the slightest shift can change our perception. Like the three windows below, though side by side each offers a different view.

Example: say you are a middle-aged grandma of very young grandkids. You are 50 lbs over your ideal healthy weight. You always say to yourself, “I’m fat, I need to lose weight so I can chase after these little people!”  In fact you even WANT to lose weight. But you hold the belief passed on by society and your upbringing that, “It’s my hormones, I’m over 40!”  Well it may be. But let’s dig deeper. Hormones such as insulin, adrenaline, vitamin D and cortisol are directly linked to your diet. The food we eat TELLS our hormones what to do. Our activity and emotions also tell our bodies what to do via the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems (fight flight freeze responses). So the programming may have a grain of truth to it, but it is NOT the whole truth. I believe “Deception is bred in half-truths!”  We deceive ourselves if we believe and act as if we have no choice or control over our lives. We are a species that has been given free will, or the power to choose. This is especially the case when it comes to what to believe.  Remember  that  we believe what we say to ourselves more than anything else we hear.

So what’s in your programming?

                                  What were you taught?

                                                          Do you believe it?

If so, you are bound to act on it. Belief drives motivation which fuels actions and behaviors.  “What do you feel?”  Notice I did not say “How do you feel?”  Every sensation that passes through us is filtered by the physical, which is processed by the limbic system. The limbic system is where our opinions are put into slots and memories are formed. So we believe something about the color RED when we see it. We like it we don’t. It represents hot, fire, stop, danger, love, compassion, atonement, etc. We were programmed to believe those things because red is just

                               RED

Or is it? Red is RED because we made an agreement to call it RED as an English-speaking society. In French, it’s Rouge, but the color didn’t change, those making the agreement did.

If your compass always points to anger when you see RED, ask yourself “Do I believe this?”  “When was the first time I felt angry when I saw red?”  “When was the last time?”  “Do I agree with this belief that Red is an ANGRY COLOR?” If this no longer holds true for you, then I would ask that you begin to change your belief about the color Red as an exercise.  It can represent many things, or no thing. It can just be RED. The choice is up to each of us.

That way when RED pops up in our life, (it represents a trigger in this sentence only, then goes back to being red) we can choose to adjust our compass or at least how we read it. If we choose to  MINDLESSLY REACT while being driven by the madness of a belief that we did not contribute to when our compass was being formatted, then we are a robot. Robots are programmed to carry out the bidding of the ones who coded it. We are not robots. We are people.

John F. Barnes, PT and founder of JFB Myofascial Release Approach says, “Without Awareness there is no choice.”

Let’s choose a different way, one that works with us, and is not self-defeating. Use your imagination to see and then state aloud your goals. In the example above this would be, “I see myself smiling and happy, playing with my grand kids, full of love and energy.”

Reformat your compass. POINT it towards life and love.  Awareness will come, and momentary choices will follow.  Choose well. Journey on in love and light.