What is Emotional Fitness?
Emotional Fitness refers to our ability to understand, use and integrate our emotions into everyday life. Like a muscle, our emotions need to be used in order to utilise their full capacity. The outcome of healthy Emotional Fitness is greater resilience, higher self-esteem, greater inner calm, self-trust and mental strength. This leads to higher levels of personal achievement and fulfilment in life.
Our level of Emotional Fitness is evaluated by our ability to feel, sense and integrate the full spectrum of all types of emotion. We can develop tools to be able to handle all emotions, rather than try to ignore, hide or cut off undesired emotions.
A common outcome of Good Emotional Fitness is a natural union between desires and outcomes. This is shown as more frequent good luck and an abilityto get what we want in life. Life flows with ease because we understand that our unconscious programming is the software creating our future performance limits.
Hence Strong Emotional Fitness, known as Emotional Fitness Flow is built on the following principles.
Inner Fitness Flow Principles
1. Alive Energy
Emotions are energy in motion. Understanding emotions and having the tools to be comfortable experiencing the full spectrum of emotions is important. We must identify unhappiness, anger or sadness and know how to integrate, express and validate such emotions without suppressing them.
This does not mean letting emotions take over. We still choose when to express them. Rather than the immediate outward expression of emotions, we can decide when it is appropriate to express how we feel. We have a choice as to whether we express our feelings privately or to other people. We should be open to feeling our emotions rather than trying to control or suppress them. But we can have control over timing. We can always choose when we want to be authentic in our outward emotional expression.
2. All is Feedback
Emotions are signals that drive our guidance. We must learn to recognise feedback from our emotions and make choices based on that feedback. All experience provides us with learning if we can see the bigger picture. Our unconscious beliefs determine our future performance and possibilities in life and we need to identify them. Even problems and challenges provide learning. These can be seen as constant feedback and an opportunity to learn, grow and change. With awareness, we can observe and let go of many triggers and change habits and the recurring negative patterns in life.
Our inner programming can be accessed via our emotions as the link to access our beliefs and software driving our life. Hence the limits of what is possible is decided by this programming which is a major influence determining our everyday choices. Too often we don’t get what we want in life, we get what our unconscious self and our inner programming creates. This is shown as repeating old patterns in life until we identify them and use them to change and grow.
3. Observer Awareness
We can observe our thoughts, our body and emotions without being them. For example, our emotions are not us, they are an important expression of us, but we can control them and choose our reactions. We can decide if we wish to empower or disempower them at any time. Mostly we empower them yet this is not always appropriate or suitable in some circumstances. Detached awareness, to stay open to any possibility, is the basis of ‘flow.’ By not being overly attached to any outcome, we can then move forward feeling focused, yet fully open to change.
4. Where Attention Goes – Energy Flows
Clarity builds success. If we are clear about our objectives we are much more likely to achieve them. But our intentions must feel right. Not only does this build passion but it also provides clarity of focus. It also requires detached awareness, to stay open to any possibility. By not being overly attached to any outcome, we can then move forward feeling both focused, yet fully open to change. This is the difference between intentions and goals. With intentions, we are not attached to only one outcome. Intentions may be less time-bound, as we trust our feelings, rather than logic, in defining our outcomes.
“Where attention goes – energy flows” is built on emotions becoming energy in motion. But we don’t need to try to disengage or disempower so-called negative emotions. While we should avoid expressing them publicly we must always acknowledge them and express them privately by using the Emotional Fitness Toolkit. This may be an entirely private expression of anger or sadness which helps us identify them to ensure these negative emotions do not keep recurring. Hence while all emotions are valid signals, we determine which emotions we want to grow and which ones we integrate for growth. We should identify the negative emotions and grow the positive ones to help us reach our desired success and outcomes.
5. Letting Go
As we build Emotional Fitness, this greater understanding builds higher levels of inner trust and self-knowledge. From this comes the ability to stop trying to force things, and learn to trust our instincts to allow things to flow and unfold in life according to our master blueprint. We should recognise the feedback. This will help to stop being motivated by fear and insecurity and become motivated by passion, inner trust and purpose which grows from knowing our inner selves.
Part of letting go is to find inner peace derived from our own thoughts. Emotions create thoughts so true inner freedom is letting go of an overactive mind and gaining greater Emotional Fitness in our inner stillness and clarity of focus. This applies with elite performance in sport as well as all aspects of life.
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