From Resistance to Taking Responsibility

🛎️All negative emotions are caused by RESISTANCE.

When we feel angry, depressed, discouraged, fearful, or stressed we focus on justifying the situation we are in:

😠I’m angry because… I was just blamed for something that wasn’t my responsibility
😔I’m depressed because… it doesn’t seem to matter how hard I work, it is rarely appreciated
😒I’m discouraged because… I received negative feedback about a project I worked very hard on
😟I’m fearful because… it’s clear that my line manager doesn’t like me
😮‍💨I’m stressed because… I’m overwhelmed by my workload

💡Resistance is caused by feelings, thoughts, and behaviours that we don’t want:

❌We don’t want to feel angry; we don’t want to be blamed.
❌We don’t want to feel depressed; we don’t want to be unappreciated.
❌We don’t want to feel discouraged; we don’t want to receive negative feedback.
❌We don’t want to feel fearful; we don’t want our line manager to dislike us.
❌We don’t want to feel stressed; we don’t want to be overwhelmed by our workload.

By focussing on what we DON’T want we justify the situation we are in and, inadvertently, disallow and disregard ALL the things we have learned in our lives and everything we know about ourselves.

By disallowing and disregarding everything we know, we neglect using our knowledge and resilience to improve the way we feel.

⚠️This isn’t helpful.
 
🙋So, what can we do? How can we tap into our knowledge and resilience to improve things when we’re feeling negative emotions?

💡Focus on what we DO want. Focus on how we WANT to feel, what we WANT to think, how we WANT to behave, and how we WANT others to behave.
💡Then consider HOW to move from what we DON’T want to what we DO want.
💡This takes us way from resistance to ALLOWING.
💡ALLOWING means embracing our knowledge, resilience, and everything that we are. This is EMPOWERING. The action we take from this place is very different from the action we take from a place of resistance. For example:
 
Action from a resistant place:
❌Me to my boss: “I’m angry because I just got the blame for something that was your responsibility”.
👉This keeps me stuck by giving my power away to my boss.
VS
✅Action from an allowing place:
Me to my boss: “Please can you clarify with X that Y is not my responsibility”.
👉This empowers me because I am taking responsibility for managing the situation.

💡Growing our awareness of when we feel negative emotions and moving from being stuck to being empowered is emotional intelligence in action.