Synopsis: An Elven teaching about a difference between “smart” and
“wise”, finding the guidance messages for upbeat love emotions, the
grand importance of sharing emotions, 7 upbeat emotions to share and use
for practice in getting your personal guidance messages and more.
It was told of old that the ancient elves taught:
“The smart learn from their hurts, agonies, disappointments and despair.
The wise learn from their joys, ecstasies, contentments, and elations,
while sadly – the rest learn not from their feelings at all.”
Natural, good feeling emotions can give us great guidance. Natural,
good feeling emotions tell us that we are doing something probably
healthful and right for us to do. Shared natural, good feeling emotions
guide us toward more and better bonding together in love
relationships. Natural, good feeling emotions can teach us a great deal
about ourselves, our relationships and how to make both stronger and
more successful. It is our job to learn how to get the guidance
messages of our natural, good feeling emotions and use them for higher,
greater and more wonderful love.
Feelings, both physical and emotional, are ancient, natural guidance
systems working for our safety, survival and advancement. They are far
older than are reasoning and conscious thought. In relationships and
especially love relationships our emotional system of feelings often
gives far wiser guidance than do reason or contemplation. However, it
is even more advantageous when we use our thinking and reasoning
abilities
with our emotions because that gives us the very best guidance our incredible brains can produce.
Of even greater benefit is when two or more people in a love relationship share in a simple, ‘four step process’. First comes
sharing their emotions, second is searching for and
discovering the guidance messages in their emotions and sharing them with one another, third comes sharing and
synthesizing their thinking about the feelings and the guidance message, and finally comes
acting in teamwork
with one another from what they have discovered from sharing and
synthesizing. Synthesizing means to interweave together the guidance
messages of the emotions and actions stemming from those guidance
messages.
Here’s a simple example. Harriet feels cold and understands her
feeling guidance message is to “warm up”. Charlie feels hot and
understands his guidance message is to “cool down”. Instead of arguing
about whether or not they’re going to turn up or turn down the
thermostat they synthesize their guidance messages, so Charlie takes off
his shirt and hands it to Harriet who puts it on. Charlie is cooler,
Harriet is warmer, and both are happier in their harmony together via
sharing feelings and their guidance messages and arriving at
‘synthesis’.
There are a number of good things that come from sharing emotions and
together discovering the guidance that those emotions give. Here’s the
biggest and most wonderful part of that. Sharing emotions together may
result in the most significant relationship experiences people have
together. By lovingly sharing both the emotions we call “good” and the
ones we call “bad” continued emotional connecting and bonding tends to
become ongoing. Without that sharing, emotional connection can fade and
love relationships may die.
Sharing the emotions of good times and bad
times, but especially the upbeat, good times tends to strengthen a
couple, or a family, or friendship, or any other human unit. Sharing
upbeat feelings is more easily enriching to humans who love each other,
but sometimes through sharing hurts there is deep connectedness also.
Without the sharing of good, happy, upbeat emotions the continued
strengthening and enrichment of a love relationship is very hard to
achieve.
Many people do not know that sharing good or upbeat emotions is just
as important, if not more important, than sharing the ‘downer’ emotions
of pain and displeasure. While sharing pain tends to lessen the pain,
sharing good feelings provides motivation to be together, stay together
and move forward together. Sharing good or upbeat feelings also
provides knowledge, for those who know to learn from it, for how to
repeatedly achieve good feelings and the enrichments, health and
well-being that natural, good feelings bring. Consider the statement
“Date your mate or lose your mate” (see blog entry “
Date Your Mate – Always!”).
It is in the shared joys of recreation that couples, families, and
others are re-created as the word recreation indicates. Therefore,
dates, vacations and other ‘upbeat’ emotional experiences are vital to
the healthful continuance of love relationships.
Of course it is really best and highly important to share both the
feelings we call “good” and the feelings we call “bad” which enable us
to better get the guidance messages of them all. In a sense
all feelings are good
because all feelings give guidance. The ‘team’ we call a couple, or a
family, or a friendship, like any team, needs shared guidance.
Otherwise one part of the team doesn’t know what the other part of the
team is all about and, thus, teamwork fails. It is a simple truth that
within a team shared guidance works far better than un-shared guidance
and that’s why it is important that all the team members join in sharing
their feelings with each other. Only then can all share in the
guidance those feelings can give.
Here is an example. His strong emotions were pushing him toward
adventure. Her strong feelings were for safety. With love they shared
their emotions, and with wisdom they synthesized the guidance messages
they got from their feelings. Mountain climbing, starting with a modest
mountain, became the most exciting thing they had ever done together
and the shared excitement, shared adventure and the shared awe of grand
vistas bonded them together like little else could.
She was so thankful
for his spirit and desire for adventure because it brought her worlds
she never knew and ecstasy she never imagined experiencing. Her own
emotions of fear, anxiety and foreboding motivated her request that they
start with a not too difficult ascent and also that she bring an extra
well-equipped first-aid kit, which contained the necessary items that
saved his life when a rattlesnake bit him as they were descending the
mountain. He was so thankful that her emotions guided her to the
safeguarding actions that saved his life.
Shared fears and desires lead to following the guidance messages that
lead to both of them surviving adversity and to a grand and enriching
shared adventure. It also brought them closer together and strengthened
their mutual love experience. He at first had thought her safety
concerns were a bit excessive. She quite definitely thought his
adventure desires were excessive but with love, hope and certain
safeguarding actions she went forward with him. Both came to feel very
glad for being able to understand the guidance their emotions gave them.
So, are you learning the guidance messages and teachings hidden in
the wisdom of your emotions? (For more information about the guidance
messages of emotions see the entry “
Dealing with Love Hurts #1 – Pain’s Crucial Guidance”)
Are you especially learning from your upbeat, happy emotions? With a
loved one, together are you sharing those emotions, jointly learning
their guidance messages, and weaving together what you learn? Do you
actively seek to learn the feelings of those you love and ascertain the
guidance messages and teachings in the feelings of your loved ones? Are
you good at synthesizing yours and your loved one’s emotional guidance
messages?
To help you toward doing these things here are five types of ‘good’
or pleasant to experience emotions, and typical learnings or guidance
messages ‘wise people’ — or elves — sometimes get from these good feelings.
1.
Emotion: Serenity:
Possible Guidance Message: Here is restoration, so linger with it and
soak it up. Whenever you’re stressed, hassled, anguished or just
drained learning from your serenity could help you remember what you
did, and how you behaved, and where you went that got you to serenity
and to its highly restorative enrichment so that you might do it again.
If you share your feelings of serenity with a loved one they may also
feel some serenity or feel more connected with you and your current
serene countenance, plus they could learn the same thing you’re learning
from that feeling. A loved one might also notice and remind you when
you need to do those things that lead to your restorative serenity.
2. Emotion:
Joyful Anticipation: Possible Guidance
Message: Go forward, let yourself get into the anticipated experience
fully, soak it up and be enriched by it. Sharing it with a loved one
may help them have a good feeling of joyful anticipation also, and that
may double both your pleasures, helping to connect you with your loved
one more fully.
3. Emotion:
Tenderness: Possible Guidance Message:
Feeling tender toward someone can guide you to show and share your
feeling softly, delicately, slowly and somewhat carefully. The guidance
coming from tenderness can lead you toward a more intimate connection
with someone you love.
4. Emotion:
Affection: Possible Guidance Message:
feeling affectionate can guide us to lovingly touch, say words of
affection, give and act with affectionate affirmation, and actually be
far more in touch with experiencing what is wonderful about a loved
one. Done well, expressed affectionate feelings are often highly
rewarding to both the lover and the loved. Received well, affection is
often energizing, thus, boosting a person’s experience of you,
themselves and life.
5. Emotion:
Pride: Possible Guidance Message:
Feeling pride guides you to be more confident in either ‘your being’ or
‘your doing’ accomplishments. It also may get you to store up that
confidence so that you can accomplish more. Pride may help you honor
yourself which will tend to strengthen your self-esteem, your sense of
worth, and be more motivated ‘to own’ your okayness and, therefore,
attempt more in your life. Accurate pride also may counter low self
esteem, poor self concept, and a general sense of inadequacy, along with
encouraging independence and self-assertion. (Note: Accurate pride in
yourself is always the enemy of that which is dictatorial and
controlling).
Pride in a loved one, or in your coupleness, in your family, in a
friendship or anything else you’re a part of is great for feeling united
and inspired. Furthermore, accurate pride can guide us toward having a
greater sense of empowered security because of a solidarity with
ourselves and others. Pride in others is best when it is shared, which
rewards other’s actions and helps with feeling connected. Sharing pride
in yourself with a good, self respecting loved one, so long as it is
not overdone and is accurate, usually garners respect and greater
relaxation together. Do note, there are those who may have trouble with
you being proud, for example, the envious, the jealous, the inadequate
and those who have been taught that pride is a sin
It is important that everyone work to get their own guidance messages
from their own emotions because the guidance messages can vary to a
fair degree from person to person. Generally the guidance message in
all so-called “good” feeling emotions is to keep doing the actions or
thoughts that brought the feelings, until boredom comes along to tell
you to do something else. The general guidance message in most emotions
known as “bad” feelings is to do something different, usually right
away. But as you can see from the above examples of upbeat emotions
there is a lot more ‘wisdom’ to be learned and lived by in the “guidance
messages for the wise”.
You and a loved one might want to talk about what you think the
guidance messages could be for both of you together when experiencing
the following ‘upbeat’ emotions: 1. Awe, 2. Joy, 3. Sweetness, 4.
Closeness, 5. Tickled , 6. Ecstasy & 7. Respect.
As always –Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J. Richard Cookerly
♥ Love Success Question
Will you identify and share with a loved one the strongest two
emotions you have felt so far today, and together see if you can discern
what the guidance messages in those feelings might be?