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- Unstuck Yourself: Part III
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.
And, just like Chance, Sassy, and Shadow (you do know these names, right?), you’ve got a scent your subconscious can always sniff out to help you return home.
Well, at least to your emotional home.
(they're the animals in Homeward Bound…)
What you house within this home directly shapes every aspect of your life.
Your emotional home infuses its energy into the words you speak to yourself, which has a powerful downstream effect on…
Your self-talk
The stories and beliefs you hold true
What you do - and don’t do - habitually
The results you experience
And, ultimately, who you are as a person…
Remember, the word “emotion” literally means “energy in motion.”
Think about that for a second: if bitterness is a foundational component of your emotional home, how are you showing up every day?
If you were anything like me as a young kid, you gave plenty of thought to your dream home. I used to imagine a gigantic house with a big backyard that was located right on the beach.
Maybe this was your dream, too.
Or, maybe you envisioned the spacious fenced-in yard with a pool, hot tub, and diving board.
Perhaps, you envisioned a quaint and cozy cabin out in the woods.
No matter your unique dream home design, it felt like home because of the perceived feelings it gave you.
You could see yourself thriving in such an environment - feeling safe, peaceful, calm, and content.
Home isn’t easy to define. But you know when you’re there.
Underneath your dream home exists a collection of feelings you’re seeking.
Feelings you call home.
It’s time to create those feelings within you and rebuild your emotional home.
Before we do that, however, we need to create a blank slate of land to begin construction on your new emotional home.
Deconstructing Your Emotional Home
In last week’s Unstuck Yourself Newsletter, I introduced you to the concept of your emotional home and walked you through a powerful exercise to help you clarify yours.
If you’ve not yet read this newsletter and completed the exercise, do so now.
Your emotional home is the collection of emotions you’re unconsciously conditioned to come home to. Like your current home (I hope), they’re safe and familiar. And, this safety and familiarity evoke a sense of comfort.
But as we learned last week, if you continue to come back to a place of lack, anger, and guilt - as an example - you’re never able to step into consistently experiencing content, joy, and peace.
Emotions are unconscious learned responses that were impressed upon you as a child. You’re not responsible for the emotions that compose your emotional home, but you are the only person who can change them.
There are multiple approaches you can take to begin unlearning these responses but one of the most effective approaches - think dynamite-like - is forgiveness.
It’s likely there’s some amount of resentment, bitterness, or anger present toward the person or situation you believe is most responsible for shaping your emotional home.
Go ahead and take a nice, deep, letting go breath…
Notice the emotion making itself known in your body right now after reading that.
Where do you experience it?
How do you experience it?
Is there tightness in your chest?
Perhaps, there’s an elevated temperature or warmth radiating throughout your entire body.
When you refuse to let go of blame, bitterness, and anger toward someone or something, you’re wasting an incalculable amount of energy harboring these emotions.
This is the same energy that could be spent consistently engaging in a new behavior - with the goal of having that behavior become a habit. The process of upgrading an action into a habit is vastly expensive (energetically).
Choosing to lean into forgiveness and let go of those emotions can help you completely blow up your current emotional home and make way for the home of your dreams.
I’m going to share a few pointers about how you can begin practicing forgiveness, but I want to make three points clear first:
This takes repetition and time. It’s not always as simple as saying “Okay, I forgive you.” Practice patience, compassion, and grace with yourself here. The early stages of forgiveness work necessitate commitment and consistency.
You have to truly desire to forgive - forgiveness demands energy, emotion, and intention. You must truly want to do this.
This is often best done with the help of another - whether that be a friend, family member, therapist, or coach.*
*To accelerate the unlearning and deconstruction process, I cannot recommend Hypno-Mindset Coaching enough. This multi-faceted coaching modality will help you uncover, unlearn, and release this emotion at its core - when it first came into existence as a part of the foundation of your emotional home.
Regardless of how you wish to tackle forgiveness, the following needs to be clear:
What or who are you working to forgive?
What’s the emotion you currently harbor as a result of this hurt or wrong?
How would your life be different if you could no longer feel this way?
How is it costing you to continue carrying this emotion?
The technique I’ve found most powerful to accelerate feelings of forgiveness is rooted in what you may call visualization, meditation, or hypnosis - basically, an intentional emotional experience.
Here’s how I recommend you go about practicing forgiveness:
Bring the person or event to mind that you desire to forgive.
Take your time to recreate the experience in your mind’s eye, noting what you see, hear, feel, smell, and even taste.
Begin to notice the exact feeling present, such as anger, resentment, or sadness…how do you experience it? Is it a warmth, tightness, heaviness, or something else? Note that.
Using the power of your mind, begin to turn up the volume of this emotional experience (think about this as a dial with settings 1 - 10).
Next, begin to turn down the volume - striving to turn it down at least one notch in your first session. Don’t resist - if it doesn’t feel possible to turn it down any lower today, that’s okay. Repeated daily exposure and repetition will make this proess easier and easier.
Additionally, after you’ve turned down the volume as much as you can in today’s session, begin to imagine a color you love forming at the top of your head.
Experience this color as it washes a wave of deep forgiveness over you, allowing yourself to see, feel, and experience it make its way in through your head…through your body…down through your legs…and out the bottoms of your feet.
Finally, take a moment to journal about this experience. What came up and how did it feel? What were you able to let go of? How do you feel now compared to before this practice?
Rebuild Your Emotional House
Before you read any further, I encourage you to take a moment to breathe.
In (through the nose)...2…3…4…
Hold…2…3…4…
Exhale (through the nose)...2…3…4…
Hold…2…3…4…
Let the mind and body relax so that you can begin to turn down the volume of your critical conscious mind and turn up the volume of your imagination.
Repeat this a few times until you feel a sense of calm and relaxation…
Okay, welcome back.
To begin rebuilding your emotional home, you must be clear on what emotions you want deeply desire to include in the cement mix of your foundation.
Funny enough, one powerful way to help you gain clarity on these emotions is to in fact bring to mind your dream home.
Begin to see the area surrounding your dream home…
Do you have neighbors?
Is your home located in nature?
Begin to see the exterior of your home…
And make your way inward, not only noting the detail and decor of each room, but noticing the energy…
Experiencing the feelings that wash over you as you continue to clarify this vision in your mind’s eye…
Take your time with this - it’s really helpful.
As you continue to accumulate the warm and fuzzy feelings of excitement, take note of what other emotions are present…
Next, it’s time to identify the first three adjectives (descriptive words; emotions) that come to mind that represent how you want to feel on a daily basis - the same feelings you experienced as you visualized your emotional home.
Do this now.
I’ve asked a variation of this question hundreds - if not thousands of times. The most common answers I hear include:
Confident
In control
Calm
At peace
Love
Content
Fulfilled
Energetic
If needed, take a moment to review the emotions list we referenced last week to iron out and clarify the three (no more than three) emotions you’d like to be baked into your new emotional home.
Move In and Make It Feel Like Home
You now have clarity on the new core elements that comprise your emotional house.
Excellent work.
But just like moving into a new house, it will take a little while to make it feel like home.
To fast track your way to feeling more at home with these newly cemented emotions, take the time to outline at least one specific action step that evokes the newly laid emotions.
For example, if love is a newly chosen emotion, what’s one way you can and will show love to yourself and others each day?
Write down at least one clear action step that helps you experience this emotion daily so that it begins to feel more like home.
However, if you really want to fast-track feeling at home again, the most powerful way to begin cementing a new belief, a new way of feeling, and a new way of being is to invite in and create an emotional experience.
For example, if confidence is a part of your new emotional home, you need to make the time every single day to sit in silence to allow yourself to see, hear, feel, and experience what and how confidence shows up in your life.
How does confident you speak to yourself and to others?
How does confident you care for yourself?
What does confident you believe about your worth and capabilities?
How does confident you carry his or herself in social and work situations? What do you notice about your posture, body language, facial expressions, and overall energy?
What’s your vibe?
I recommend that you spend anywhere from one to five minutes living this experience in your mind, making it very real by inviting in each sense to the image.
For example, confidence was an emotion I worked on planting in my emotional home this year. I would spend time daily seeing how I carried confidence in my posture - I stood and sat up straight, walked with a calm, calculated strut, and had an easy smile that was ready to be given at a moment’s notice.
I heard the way I spoke - so clear, crisp, and concise. I felt the energy - that confidence - flowing through my body as I navigated my morning routine through the day and into my evening routine.
I became that person over and over again in my mind until I simply became that person in reality, too.
Not a visual person? Tap into all of your other senses to make this experience as real as possible. How do you hear yourself speaking differently? Do you notice any previous anxiety or overwhelm in your chest, stomach, or upper back present or absent?
Your Next Step
Take action.
Seriously.
Get clear on your new emotional house and start turning it into a home. Go back and review each prompt and exercise I shared. I shared this for your benefit, not for the sake of writing more words!
You can’t change unless you change.
I recommend you set aside at least one minute (yes, you have that) each morning after you wake up and evening when you go to bed to participate in this visualization experience.
Give yourself grace and time to recognize what’s been going on while also knowing to be true that there’s a path forward and that you can move houses.
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter.
In next Friday’s Unstuck Yourself Newsletter, I’m going to introduce you to the root cause of your stuckness - something I refer to as the Fear JAR.
You may catch up on previous newsletters here.
If you have a question about anything I discussed in this week’s Unstuck Newsletter, feel free to drop me a message on Twitter (@pauljsalter7) or Instagram (@paulsaltercoaching).
My email inbox is always open, too: [email protected]
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