Creating Emotion

Practice believable thoughts that support the action you want to take.

A student told me she wasn't feeling inspired or motivated. She didn't have the emotion she thought she needed to do the things she wanted to do.

She also told me she didn't want to manufacture an emotion.

You don't have to. But isn't it amazing to know you can? You don't have to wait for inspiration to arrive before you start creating the life you want.

Start by accepting the emotion you have

Creating emotion is not a way to escape being human. We are not supposed to be happy all the time, and life is not supposed to be effortless.

When we believe we should always feel good, we start resisting anything that doesn't feel good. We miss the full experience of our emotional lives.

You can't resist humiliation hard enough to create peace. Resistance requires you to be tense, on guard, and against what you are feeling. That is the opposite of peace.

When you allow humiliation as a vibration in your body, you can be at peace with having it. You can recognize the thought creating it. From there, you can also recognize your ability to think something different.

So the first skill is feeling. Not avoiding the emotion, not ignoring it, and not acting it out. Yelling when you feel angry is a reaction. Experiencing anger in your body without reacting is a different practice.

What feeling would help you take action?

Think about a result you want. Then work backward through the Self Coaching Model.

If you want to increase your income by $2,000 a month, what action would create that result? For a coach, it might mean marketing, making offers, and bringing in more clients.

The action and the result have a mathematical relationship. The emotional work is understanding what would help you take the necessary action.

You might choose confidence, excitement, or motivation. You don't have to feel all of them. Start with one.

You can take action from fear or aggravation, but deliberately generating an emotion like confidence can make that action much easier. Other emotions will still come along. Accepting them keeps them from derailing you.

Build confidence with thoughts you believe

If confidence is the feeling you want, what would you need to believe?

You might believe you can figure this out, that you are capable of learning, that your work is valuable, or that you are willing to keep taking action until you get the result.

One thought often needs supporting thoughts. If you want to believe you can get more clients, look at the evidence you can genuinely use. Have you helped someone before? Have people responded to what you teach? Can you repeat something that already worked?

Practice the thoughts that support your confidence. Don't leap to a statement you don't believe and expect it to do the work.

Your brain may already be very practiced at doubt. New thinking can feel awkward because it is unfamiliar. That is where deliberate practice comes in.

When something doesn't work, notice the temptation to use it as evidence against yourself. Your job is to keep looking for and practicing the thinking that helps you show up confidently.

Inspiration is not coming in a package

I once spent a long time waiting to be inspired. I kept waiting while feeling the opposite of inspired.

Eventually, I realized inspiration wasn't going to arrive in a specially wrapped package. I had to create it.

If you have programmed your mind to produce doubt, waiting for that same mind to spontaneously deliver inspiration is not a useful plan.

Give your brain something deliberate to think. Look at what you are feeling and why. Choose the emotion you want to generate, and practice believable thoughts that produce it.

This requires effort. Even ten solid minutes of looking at your mind, accepting what it is doing, and creating new thoughts is work. But this is your most powerful tool. It deserves your attention.

Stop delegating your emotional life

Many of us know we want to feel loved, appreciated, and valued. Then we assign other people the job of creating those feelings.

We want our husbands, bosses, or children to follow our instructions so we can feel appreciated. When they don't, we feel disappointed and blame them for the emotion we aren't experiencing.

Think about your birthday. If you want to feel loved and appreciated, you can create love and appreciation. You don't have to wait for the right gift, the right restaurant, or a surprise party.

I know the objection: you don't want to have to do it yourself. You want someone else to do it for you.

But you know exactly what you want and what you need. You can give yourself the thoughts that create that feeling. Waiting for someone who repeatedly doesn't do it the way you want means repeatedly choosing disappointment.

You can still want people to do things for you. The distinction is knowing that it is not their job to create your emotions.

Practice choosing your emotional experience

First, recognize what you are feeling, understand why, and own it. Next, decide how you want to feel to create what you want. Then practice as many believable thoughts as you can find that generate that emotion.

The more you practice, the better you get. You develop thoughts you can return to when you want to feel grateful, kind, confident, or excited.

You don't have to wait for your life to fall into place before you feel good. You can create the feeling, then take action from it. That is an extraordinary ability to have.