Our Emotional Scale
We have a lot of emotions! Sometimes, we may experience feelings or thoughts that we don’t have a name for or that may be difficult to describe. An easy way to understand our emotions is simply to determine if they make us feel good or bad. Once we notice we’re feeling bad in any way, we can begin to elevate our unpleasant feeling to a more enjoyable one by consciously moving up our Emotional Scale. If we simply identify how we feel without comparing it to other emotions, it can be challenging to know how to change that feeling. When we see where our emotion is generally ranked against other emotional states, we can begin to deliberately move toward the more positive and coherent emotions. As soon as we make the decision to cause an improvement in how we feel, we immediately feel better because we are no longer powerless to our difficult feeling. Once we decide to concentrate on shifting our unpleasant emotion to an improved emotion, it’s rather easy to climb our Emotional Scale.
Understanding Our Emotional Scale
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Humans have an incredible range of emotions, and understanding how we feel in a given moment can be challenging when we’re flooded with extreme feelings. Sometimes, we may even feel many emotions at the same time! This emotional scale can simplify our feelings, helping us break down layered emotions into more simple, manageable ones. The top of the scale is represented by the highest and most skillful emotions we experience when living positively, while the bottom shows the less skillful and painful feelings we can get stuck in when living negatively. When we can identify where our emotions fall on this scale, we gain insight into our current perspective. Once we understand how we feel, we can work on elevating our emotions up towards the top of the scale so that we may radiate our best and brightest self. Our feelings are influenced by our thoughts, so all we have to do to raise our emotional wellbeing is shift our perspective to acknowledge the goodness available to us in every moment (practice gratitude, appreciation, and love). When we have good feelings, they inspire other good feelings. When we are negative, we'll continue to see things in a limited perception that stems from a pained and hurt place. Instead of spiraling downward, spiral yourself upward and enjoy the uppermost range of your emotions!
When we build and practice our positive emotions, there are so many incredible, long-lasting benefits we can take advantage of. Read more about this concept in this amazing article that discusses how a person’s wellbeing can be defined as their ratio of positive to negative emotions! |
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Working with our Emotional Spiral
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Any time we notice our mood spiraling down into fear, insecurity, anger, doubt or other negative feelings, we can pause, take a breath, and concentrate on elevating our feelings to a more tolerable (if not enjoyable) place. We choose our perspective. We can work upwards, inspiring our feelings to build positive momentum. At the very least, we can prevent our perspective from digressing into a deeper negative rut.
When we’re troubled by negative emotions, it’s unpleasant and draining. We feel bad, so we do less. Then we feel even worse, and we do even less. However, with positive momentum, we feel a little better each time we do something, and so we feel better + better and accomplish more + more. The sooner we can reorient our attention towards wellness and joy, the less effort it’ll take to elevate our mood later because we’ll have less negativity to recover from. Our feelings can influence our energy, attention, patience, interests, and reactions, so it’s especially important to keep them circulating in a positive direction. |
22 Levels of Emotion
This scale is sourced from the Leading Edge Abraham-Hicks teachings, written by Esther and Jerry Hicks.
Check out my complete recommended reading here, or buy their powerful and life-changing book about the Law of Attraction, Ask and It Is Given, directly by clicking on this link.
Check out my complete recommended reading here, or buy their powerful and life-changing book about the Law of Attraction, Ask and It Is Given, directly by clicking on this link.
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Light vs Heavy
A great way to navigate life is through contemplating our emotional weight. Does our experience feel light or heavy? We can respond to the same situation with lightness, heaviness, or a combination of both. Responding with lightness would be laughing at difficulties, shaking off embarrassment, inviting compassion into moments of frustration, offering forgiveness and reassurance to hurt feelings, or choosing to focus on something positive in a challenging scenario. All these reactions have a lightness about them where we don’t get stuck or weighted down by our emotions. Light emotions include joy, love, appreciation, empowerment, freedom, positivity, passion, enthusiasm, hopefulness, and contentment.
Sometimes, we may find ourselves feeling heavy about things— feeling bothered by difficulties, feeling shame in embarrassment, suffering in moments of frustration, experiencing agitation or sadness at hurt feelings, or choosing to focus on what’s not working, what’s not right, or what doesn’t feel good. These responses feel heavy and make it hard to feel light, happy, and free. Heavy feelings include pessimism, irritation, overwhelm, disappointment, doubt, worry, blame, discouragement, anger, hatred, and jealousy. The heaviest emotions are insecurity, guilt, unworthiness, fear, grief, despair, and powerlessness.
Fortunately, we can lighten our responses consciously. When we notice we’re feeling the weight of a heavy emotion, we can smile, offering love to the heaviness and gently look for a lighter perspective. There’s always more than one way to look at things, so we can relieve the heaviness by elevating our perspective by just a small amount. We don’t have to go from total heavy gloom to complete joyous lightness, but we will immediately find relief from the depleting negativity of heaviness when we redirect our perspective to even one degree lighter. Lessen the weight of dissatisfaction and discontent by looking at the situation with love and positivity, and the lightness will flow naturally.
Sometimes, we may find ourselves feeling heavy about things— feeling bothered by difficulties, feeling shame in embarrassment, suffering in moments of frustration, experiencing agitation or sadness at hurt feelings, or choosing to focus on what’s not working, what’s not right, or what doesn’t feel good. These responses feel heavy and make it hard to feel light, happy, and free. Heavy feelings include pessimism, irritation, overwhelm, disappointment, doubt, worry, blame, discouragement, anger, hatred, and jealousy. The heaviest emotions are insecurity, guilt, unworthiness, fear, grief, despair, and powerlessness.
Fortunately, we can lighten our responses consciously. When we notice we’re feeling the weight of a heavy emotion, we can smile, offering love to the heaviness and gently look for a lighter perspective. There’s always more than one way to look at things, so we can relieve the heaviness by elevating our perspective by just a small amount. We don’t have to go from total heavy gloom to complete joyous lightness, but we will immediately find relief from the depleting negativity of heaviness when we redirect our perspective to even one degree lighter. Lessen the weight of dissatisfaction and discontent by looking at the situation with love and positivity, and the lightness will flow naturally.
Personalized Support with Emotional Awareness and Regulation
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If you'd like to further discuss the emotional scale, learn techniques for quickly shifting to positive emotions, and practice skills for emotional regulation, I offer personal sessions through Zoom/Discord/Skype/phone/text. Personal sessions are a great way for me to offer support and teach a combination of mindfulness skills, meditation techniques, and philosophy concepts to empower you to feel your best. How we use the session is up to you, but I usually suggest a combination of discussion and mindfulness practice. I also offer guided meditations and I can extend helpful tips to help you incorporate mindfulness into your daily routines. The personalized education, practice, and open discussion in a session will help you build solid mindfulness skills that will support you in living a mindful, loving, and peaceful life.
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Become a Patron for Ongoing Support
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A great way to receive ongoing support and inspiration for your mindfulness practice is by becoming a Patron. I offer my Patrons exclusive benefits such as early-release content, daily Snapchat stories*, and weekly invitations to nourishing and inspiring community events (meditations/mindfulness practice/discussions/creative time on Zoom and connecting with other Community members on Discord). Patrons can also chat with me directly to deepen their understanding of mindfulness, art, and happy living! I'm able to offer insight, encouragement, support, coaching, and quick meditation and mindfulness techniques directly through Snapchat/Patreon/Discord. Being a Patron also means you'll have early-access to any art I have for sale before I release it publicly online.
*I use my Snapchat stories to share my personal mindfulness practice, to offer inspiration for daily mindfulness and wellbeing, and to offer a special real-time look into my art process. |
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