Which Version Of This Experiment Suits YOU?

The last few weeks I've been sharing a little experiment to show yourself how much more interesting you are emotionally than you’ve probably realized.

In the first version, I asked you to name an emotion you wanted to feel more of for a week. Say, relaxed.

Then all week, whenever you felt an emotion contrary to your preferred emotion, (say, annoyed), you’d do the experiment by declaring how your unwanted feeling in words. "I feel annoyed".  Then, here's the twist, you'd add your preferred emotion to the end of the sentence. ‘I feel annoyed. And relaxed’.

The point was to notice that you can feel both states at the same time. As an additional surprise, you may also have found that when you lingered in the dual feelings for awhile, you'd feel less or not at all annoyed. And much more relaxed instead!

By being intentionally present to both feelings, your emotional field was able make the adjustment you desired for you.

This exercise hit a chord, as evidenced by all the positive responses I received about the results.

The next week, I extended the little exercise further by explaining why a negative emotion dissipates when we allow for the simultaneous presence of a preferred feeling, and compared it to the heat of a drop of boiling water dispersing naturally when dropped into a large pool of water.

I even got fancy and gave the exercise a name: ’The Boiling Drop of Water Experiment’.

I was having fun with this so the next week I made a video recording guiding listeners through the Boiling Drop of Water Experiment.

As this series of events progressed, a woman in my online learning community, Madge, reported in about her experience.

With her permission, I share her words here because they emphasize something important about our ability to influence our emotional energy.

We can discover and CHOOSE what works best for us.

Like every aspect of ourselves, we are built differently from each other. We have in-born inclinations and can use trial and error to clarify what we prefer and what work best for us.

We are right to be the way we are and as we embrace this fact, we free ourselves to find what suits use best and then refine our preferred practices to make them more and more our own.

This is is so important, I named a distinct step for this - PLAY - in my 5-step In Deeper Process for shifting emotional energy. (If you're new to it, consider this). 

Madge played with two versions I offered of this experiment and noticed she had a preference for one over the other.

She didn’t try to make both work equally well, thinking they 'should'. She tried both to see what was better for her. Here's what she said,

“I think the boiling water drop is a phenomenal idea. Genius. I personally prefer the original very simple approach of experiencing both kinds of emotions. That works well for me. The recording made it long and complicated (for me) so I’ll stick to your original posted experiment. Just offering my experience. I love simple.’

High fives to Madge!

This week, why not borrow Madge's curiosity about herself and try both versions of this experiment again. (Or for the first time).

See if one version of this experiment works better for you than the other. 

Here's the first version.

Here's the second version.

If a clear preference emerges - or you find a custom tweak that works even better, I'd love to know.  Just email me with I PREFER... in the subject line.