Transcribed:

Hi everyone. And welcome to episode three of take control with Whitney Wells. So we're just going to dive right into the topic, which is choosing to feel negative feelings intentionally. Deciding on purpose, how you want to feel. Deciding on purpose, what thoughts you want to keep.

You may wonder why would anyone choose to feel terrible or any negative feeling. And my answer: Why wouldn't they? Do you want to feel happy when someone dies? Do you want to feel joyful if your partner is sick or if your child is hurting, or if someone you love is in pain? Do you want to feel excited about the injustice in the world? Do you want to feel good about someone being murdered? I know I don't.

I want to feel sad and angry and in pain about the injustice in the world and for the inequality for black lives. I want to let myself feel those feelings fully. And I want to think "that was a horrible thing". I want to think "I'm strongly against racism and injustice", and I want to think "black lives matter". I choose to keep these thoughts.

I want to keep these thoughts, but it is also very important for me to recognize that I am choosing intentionally to feel these negative feelings. I'm choosing intentionally to think my thoughts that create my negative feelings. I'm creating my experience and I'm choosing this experience. I am owning my experience. No one else created it for me. No one else has that power to make me feel any way. Do not give anyone or anything that control over you. Empower yourself. Please know that you have complete power and control to decide intentionally how you want to feel. You can absolutely decide to feel negative feelings. And that is perfect. Whatever you decide for you is perfect.

The point of thought work is not to always feel positive. And I think that that gets a little bit misunderstood sometimes. The point of thought work is to feel, whether that is positive emotions or negative emotions, and then to decide intentionally how you want to show up. The goal of thought work is to see what you are creating for yourself. Understand that you are in control and decide what experience you want to have, what result you want to create and how you want to show up.

So feel your negative emotions on purpose, if you want to. Feel them because you have chosen them. Feel them intentionally, don't push them away or hide from them. Process them all the way through. Breathe into them and lean towards them. Let them in and embrace them. And how to do this? Well, the first step is to recognize it, recognize the feeling. Name the feeling. And then feel it in your body. Notice how it feels in your body. Where is it in your body? Is in your hands? Is it in your chest? Is in your head? And third lean into it. Go towards it and welcome it.

And now let's take some control. Take a look at the thoughts you have chosen and the feelings you have created for yourself and ask yourself if you want to keep thinking and feeling this way. Are these thoughts and feelings serving you? If they are, keep them. Keep thinking and feeling those thoughts and feelings. If they are not serving you, once you have fully allowed your feelings to exist without urgency or rush, you can move to a thought and feeling that does serve you.

So ask yourself, how do you want to show up? Who do you want to be? How do you want to behave? What experience do you want to have? These answers will give you clarity and intention. Then ask yourself what feeling would I need to feel in order to behave that way? To show up in that way? To create that? Maybe the feeling is focus. Maybe it's confidence, maybe it's clarity. Maybe it is outrage, and maybe it is love. The list of these feelings can go on and on and you decide for you what makes sense for you. And then what thought would I need to think to create that feeling? Decide how you want to show up. So first, what feeling would have you behave in this way? And second, what thought would create that feeling for you? You can decide on purpose, to feel negative feelings. You can decide on purpose to show up in that way or in a different way. But do it from a place of power and control over yourself and your life and who you want to be.

I think it is important and fitting to emphasize that change begins with seeing your thoughts fully. Take a look at them without judgment or editing them, but just as they are. And see them for what they are, they're sentences, they're phrases in your brain. That's all. If you edit or change them because you don't like what you see, they stay with you and can resurface. So if you want to change something in your life or change a feeling or just change a way of thinking, be honest with yourself and see your thoughts. All of them. Now, I think this is fitting to have our eyes wide open now, not just to see our thoughts, but to see the world around us. Don't hide, but instead open up to it. And from that place, you can decide intentionally what you want to think, how you want to feel and what you want to do. You can take control over how you show up.

For me? I choose to feel pain, sadness and anger, because I think it is not right at all for black lives to be treated with such disregard. I believe in equality for all. I strongly oppose racism. I choose to feel sad and angry that our world is like this. Itis a type of pain and sadness that is gut wrenching, but it is needed. Feeling this pain is what will propel action. And after processing these feelings through, I decide intentionally what I want to keep. And yes, I want to keep these thoughts. I want to keep these feelings. I want to intentionally feel sad and angry.

But after taking this look at my negative feelings and purposeful thoughts, I also have another feeling that is coming up for me, which is love. I want to feel love for all black lives. I choose to feel love for my family who are both black and white. I want, and I choose to feel love for my community and my neighbors and the world. And more specifically, I want to feel love for those who don't believe what I believe. Because love has the ability to teach and unite and bring people together and create change. So I have chosen sadness, anger, pain, and love.

So ask yourself, what do you want to feel intentionally. Take control over your feeling. Feel your negative feelings on purpose. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next week.