Why Emotions Are Hindering Your Growth

Your emotions aren't the problem, your habit of letting them lead your life is.

As someone with a master's degree in psychology, I have reservations about suggesting that honoring your emotions is hindering your life, but I challenge you to stay present.

We cannot honor our feelings twenty-four seven and expect ourselves to think clearly, rationally, and make decisions from a level-headed space.

Why?

Because your emotions don't give a f*ck about where you are trying to go and who you aspire to become.

Of course, your emotions matter and should be respected, but they shouldn’t be the driving force in your life. Your emotions only care about one thing: COMFORT.

Comfort does not guide us to lasting change, love, happiness, and success.

Comfort guides us to what feels familiar based on past conditioning and experiences that forced us to survive through life, not thrive. If your conditioning reflects trauma and hardship, those spaces are going to feel comfortable and easy. 

For many people, comfort means letting the blocks and insecurities rule their lives out of fear of repeating past pains.

It's comfortable not to love when past relationships have failed. It's comfortable to stay in bed and eat like shit when you don't love yourself after hardship. It's comfortable not to take action in your career when you have gotten off track. It's comfortable to shut out our goals when we carry a belief that we are not good enough.

How is it comfortable? Because our brain has been wired by years of exposure. It’s created neural connections shaped by all the events in which you were let down, abandoned, dismissed, or unloved. 

In those moments, you developed coping mechanisms that forced you to act, retreat, and operate in ways that may not be liberating you right now. The longer you allow your emotions to rule your life, the longer you will stay stuck in the life that you are desperate to escape from. Self-sabotaging, avoiding, and hiding.

What happens when your emotions never feel like getting up and moving your body? You become stagnant and unhealthy. What happens when you don't feel like loving your partner? You treat them with disrespect. What happens when you don't feel like loving your animals? They don't eat. What happens when you don't feel like loving your kids? They suffer from your irritation. What happens when you don't feel like going to work? You don't pay your bills, and you struggle.

Your feelings don't know everything you are working towards and what you want from life. Your feelings only know what you've gone through, and want to try to protect you.

The fact is that we must deal with the unresolved tension that is going on inside of us, or it will continue to eat away at the quality of life we allow ourselves to experience. However. It shouldn't rule every single decision, behavior, and action you take. 

You have to hold logic, emotional intelligence, and the dedication to your future you - not your past self. 

You are more than what your emotions are telling you. The thoughts and feelings that you experience don’t have to be the only thing that is true. You can witness their presence while knowing when enough is enough. 

Honor your emotions by knowing when it’s time to stop entertaining their cycles and move forward. When it’s hard, when you feel the resistance, when you just simply don’t feel like it. 

Awareness is the first step. Direction is the next. If you want a structured way to work through emotional patterns and build stronger self-command, you can explore my Emotional Mastery Workbook here.