Wheel of feelings

When I was little living in a cute suburb in Chicago, I found myself playing with a neighborhood friend who was a year younger than I. At some point we got into a disagreement over something I cannot remember, and she began to cry. She yelled at me in a garbled voice and said, “You’re hurting my fillings!” I was so confused how and why I would be hurting her fillings, so I wanted proof. I asked her to open her mouth to reveal her hurt fillings in her teeth and she had no fillings. I yelled back, “you have no fillings!” With both of us unsatisfied we parted ways to try again another day. 

For years I thought about that incident. Why did she say fillings? Then it dawned on me. She said feelings but, I heard fillings! It all made sense now and I felt bad that I had totally disregarded her hurt feelings because, I thought I was hurting her fillings. She’s probably out there in the world putting the two and two together just like I am. 

As a life coach I’ve learned a lot about feelings. I learned that feelings start in the brain and are a vibration we experience in the body. They are caused by what we think and are voluntary. In other words we are responsible for the way we feel, because our thoughts create our feelings. Naturally you may be thinking that it’s easy to just change the thought to feel a different feeling, but it’s not that simple.

The first step to changing a thought is to increase your awareness. Take a moment to think about what you want. Then go deeper and ask yourself what you really, really, want. Finally, ask yourself how you believe you’ll feel when you get what you want. You’ll find that it’s the feeling you desire, and that desire comes from your thoughts. That feeling that you desire is available to you at any time regardless of your circumstances. If you want to change your life, you must become aware of what you’re feeling in the present moment. As a life coach it’s my job to help you identify your feelings. What are the feelings you have? Remember feelings are harmless because feelings can be felt without taking any action or reacting at all. When you begin this practice of awareness, finding your feelings can be difficult. Simply start with mad, sad, glad then use a feelings wheel, available on the web, to pinpoint what you’re feeling and remember what you desire is available to you right now.