O my, I just have to share this. I got sick a little over a week ago and for about a week, I didn’t take any time to do any thought work while I caught up with my to do’s. Well sure enough, my lack of daily mental hygiene started to show in my general mood that week; which was a mixture of anxious and feeling down. I just practiced being aware of how I was feeling, describing it and taking full ownership that I was causing it by my thoughts but stayed stuck there. I was doing my Feb homework on Monday and decided that I wanted to try out “practicing” an emotion. So I picked “excited” because I was also feeling bored. So the next day my 2-yr old is up an hour earlier than normal and I thought, “Now is the perfect time to practice the feeling ‘excited'”. So I did, for an hour. It was fun because 2-yr olds loooove to also be excited, so I had good company. It was interesting because the excitement I was generating was a watered down version but it got me to be very present in the moment.

Ok so that was in and of itself a very interesting experience… however what happened next took me by surprise. As my 5-yr old woke up and I was busy getting her ready for school and breakfast served to the kiddies (no longer practicing ‘excited’) I was suddenly overcome with the strongest feeling of gratitude. It was intense. It was amazing. And it stayed with me for 3 hours! Then when the anxiety crept back in, I didn’t freak out. I just thought, “oh I must have some anxious thinking going on, this too will pass.” and I moved on with my day.

This positive “aftermath” of practicing an emotion was amazing and I am just totally fascinated by it.