How often have we listened to our hearts?

I wish to share about what I have learnt from listening to how I feel, to some it may sound like a fancy wishy thing to do but at some point of our lives we have all done it. I recall many times I did something just because it feels right, not just driven by logic, and how powerful that decision turn out to be. Also all the songs I once had on repeat, because I grew to love a song from how the melody or lyrics was able to resonate deeply with me. Listening to how I feel had helped me in many ways to live better, happier, more fulfilling and I hope to share my 2 cents to whoever who resonates with this too.

In my state of survival and constant grasping for the next best thing, often I do feel like a robot going through the day without knowing what had happened as time flew past by so quickly, how many of us have felt the same at some points of our lives?

What was taught

From young, I have been taught to hold back my emotions to be "strong", this is very common especially in the typical asian culture. However as I grew older, it seemed like holding it back everytime does more bad than good. I realised every single feeling that had been held back never left, in fact it has been accumulating inside me, and it's only the matter of time it all explode out of me when I can't hold them in any longer...

How many times have we exploded in anger because of all of bad experiences we constantly force ourselves to put up with, or got angry/aggressive to someone to simply protect ourselves from embarrassment as a coping mechanism. Or gotten bullied, wronged so many times that one day you couldn't hold it any longer and start bursting into tears.

How often have we let our emotions drive our decisions unconsciously?

It sure had happened a whole lot of times to me, I am still learning to do it better and I have seen myself gotten better at it.

Emotions

I grew to learn that Emotions are not to be held back, it's meant to be Managed. In order to learn to manage it, I learnt that we have to be willing to feel it and allow it to be in our space. Don't ignore or avoid it, it doesn't mean we have to aggravate it, but just simply, observe it with curiosity and compassion for it's only there to tell you how you are feeling about something. Do it for yourself like how you would do for someone you care for.

Emotions are not bad, for they are our truths speaking out.

Without listening to our truths, we won't be able to understand how the environment/situation is affecting us, and begin to learn how we can manage ourselves to handle what's in front of us.

As what someone once shared, "Life is about management", and I couldn't agree more. If we don't begin to make it a conscious effort to learn about ourselves consistently, managing ourselves and the external environment is only going to be mostly through accident or stroke of luck.

Start Somewhere

We can start somewhere, it is to allow ourselves to feel, and learn something new about ourselves today, everyday, as much as possible. It might not be easy to listen to it, but as a person once said to me,

The only one who you can guarantee is gonna be with you till the end of time is yourself. So if you don't stand for yourself, who would?

So let's spend some time to show more compassion and patience to our feelings from now onwards. This is for myself and anyone who is following along; let's build a better relationship with our feelings, and ultimately with ourselves.

For anyone who might prefer a tool to help them do that, consider downloading https://apps.apple.com/us/app/three-good-things/id1212999482 (iOS) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.plumstudio.threegoodthings&hl=en&gl=US (Android) that can help you create a simple habit to be in touch with how you feel everyday, thank, acknowledge what happened, and through that, constantly learn new things about yourself. Btw i'm not sponsored by it, if you're wondering.

As always, thank you for being here.