Greetings! I think I’m starting to get the hang of investigating the thoughts behind my feelings and allowing but not following them when I choose.

For example, in not drinking (I had only three–planned–glasses of wine last week, which is unheard of for me!), I am finding that if I notice an urge and mix it with self-pity, e.g. I can’t have what I want, I’ll never be able to have this again, I want it so much, poor me, etc., then I fall into resistance rather than allowing.

If I notice it and look at it from a place of power and choice, e.g. I can have it now but I want health more, self-control more, I want to lose weight and other things much more, then I put myself in a place where it has a lot of peace around it.

Does that sound accurate? I also noticed that the SECOND I stopped reaching for the wine bottle, all sorts of feelings started coming up. I’ll be a while working through those.

But here’s my question: sometimes, or so I have always thought, feelings are important indicators that there’s something there to pay attention to. So for example, I have this sense that a co-worker doesn’t like me, that there’s some unspoken negative emotion there, that my spidey senses are tingling and telling me to tread carefully with her. It’s certainly possible that I’m making all of it up–I don’t know. But how do I separate just changing my feelings to something better, and paying attention to what they’re telling me?

In other words, when do I honor my feelings, even when they’re negative, and use them as the needle on my internal GPS? Or is that emotion–“there’s something to pay attention to here,” or “be careful” or “better get out of this situation now”–a different kind of negative feeling? I’m confused on this.

Thanks!