Q&A 20 – Two Ways to Look at an Uncomfortable Feeling

We innocently tend to think of discomfort and unwanted feelings (like food cravings) as problems that need to be solved. What if they are actually something else? What if they are reminders, pointing us toward our true nature of peace, calm and joy?You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes* How we innocently compound our discomfort by thinking it’s a problem * What if we saw unwanted feelings as feedback, pointing us to our true nature? * How we’re surrounded by a sea of wisdom at all times that can help us with any problemTranscript of episodeHello, explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 20 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.Today the topic is about two ways to look at an unwanted feeling.I was journaling this morning in my journal, as I often do on a quiet Sunday morning, and I had this situation where I was uncomfortable about something. I had a really distinctly uncomfortable feeling. And for the past couple of days before that I had been wondering what to do about the feeling. And as I journaled, I reflected that there are two very distinct ways to deal with an unwanted feeling when it comes up. And that the understanding that I explore on this podcast has pointed out to me the fact that there are these two different ways to deal with things like this, and how the old way, which I’ll talk about in a second, that I used to deal with things was really fraught with a lot of anxiety and pressure and self recrimination. The second way that I’ve learned to deal with these things like this on uncomfortable feelings, or unwanted feelings, discomfort, things that look like problems, is so much more peaceful and relaxed, and it just flows so much better. The Old Way to Deal with Uncomfortable Feelings Like CravingsSo let me share a bit about what I see about this. When we have an unwanted feeling, and that could be a craving, it could be something like the drive to overeat the first way, and this is the way that I learned how to deal with any situation like that in the past was or is to see that feeling as a problem. Let’s say you’ve got a craving, and you we culturally, we just kind of automatically look at the drives that we feel to participate in an unwanted habit, the cravings that we have, we see them as problems. And that’s totally innocent and totally natural. I approached that situation like that for three decades. And unfortunately, what happens is when we look at an uncomfortable feeling, and unwanted feeling like it’s a problem, then innocently, we end up layering a whole bunch more thought, and thinking onto this to a situation that a doesn’t require it and doing that really isn’t helpful at all. Speaking from my own experience, looking at my unwanted overeating habit, and the feelings that were associated with that, looking at that like it was a problem actually only dug me deeper into the hole of having that unwanted habit. When I saw that situation, that feeling, as a problem that meant that I was looking for solutions. And as I said a little bit earlier, adding a whole bunch more thinking on to that situation. Where might it have originated from? And what what might have caused this within me? What sort of brokenness or damage within me might have caused me to have these ongoing cravings? The the more years that went by with me thinking about that situation like it was a problem, the more the more thinking and the more discomfort was heaped on top of what was already originally there. And like I say that it was like trying to get out of a hole that I was in by digging deeper into the hole. Again, we’re always doing this innocently.