Stop Denying Your Feeling

What do you do when you are feeling good? Maybe you smile, laugh, show your sparkling eyes, move energetically, and so on. It is very easy to do that because of that good feeling. How good you will feel when you are satisfied, optimistic, peaceful, euphoric, enthusiastic, confident, cheerful, affectionate, infatuated, amused, proud. How good you will have your day.

Then what do you do when you are not feeling good? What do you do when, for example, you feel sad, depressed, disappointed? Maybe you cry, lock yourself in your room, eat anything, drink anything. Or maybe you just pretend that you are not feeling that. The most obvious one when you are feeling down is that all of your energy has suddenly vanished. A different thing happens when you are feeling angry or annoyed. Your energy, your urge, suddenly levels up very quickly. Your urge to shout, hurt, torture is very high. Because of that sudden urge, maybe you do those things; shout at the person who makes you angry, hurt and torture those that make you angry. Your energy can be very destructive. Or you just pretend that you are not angry or annoyed.

If you are willingly accepting your positive feelings, why not also accepting your negative feelings? Why do you have to pretend? Why do you have to deny those feelings which are considered negative? If you pretend that you don't feel those, you are suppressing them. The more frequently you suppress, the bigger explosion you will have from inside of you.

If you have no problem of expressing your positive feelings, why should you have a problem of expressing your negative feelings? Are you ashamed of being called too sentimental because you cry? A singer, Dionne Warwick, says that crying is cleansing, there's a reason for tears, happiness or sadness.

You are not showing that you are weak when you cry. You are showing that you have a soft heart. You are not showing that you are cruel when you get angry. You are just showing that you are human. Acknowledge your anger but don't hurt others when you are angry.  Use your high energy when you get angry to do things beneficial to you, like doing sport or gardening. There are no wrong feelings.

Appearances can be deceiving

What do you have in your mind when you look at that picture? Do you think that the cat is going to eat the chickens because of the way he looks at them? Or do you think that those chickens will wake up and run away because they feel threatened?

You know what happens in nature that small birds are preys for cats. And if you've never owned any cat in your life, you will probably think that cat is going to eat those chickens.

But in fact, after that picture was taken, my cat was just smelling those chickens' heads while touching and tapping their fur gently. After he did that, he just walked away. The way he looked at them seemed cruel, but actually he didn't do anything cruel to them.

However, most of the time we have the tendency to judge anything or anyone from their appearance. If, for example, we see a tall guy with his fair complexion and cool haircut, we tend to think that he must be very confident having that look.

When on one ocassion you get a chance to talk to him heart to heart, he reveals his dark past of having traumas. Those traumas have been haunting him, making him difficult to socialize. Then do you feel deceived by his appearance? Don't blame him for having that confident look. It's your fault that you just look at him superficially.

It's also your fault to assume a middle-aged man walking alone on the street as a beggar or a homeless man just because he wears dirty clothes. How if he is actually a generous person, looking for stray cats or dogs and giving them food? How if he is just walking back home to his family after a day's hard work?

You can have your own assumption or judgement when looking at a person or a thing. But remember, appearances can be deceiving. If they look like what you don't expect (for instance: cruel, dirty, poor, lazy, stupid, ugly, etc.), don't just look with your eyes; try to also look with your heart. Rushing to judgement will only create your overreaction to that person or thing.