If you’d like to be more present and more aware of emotions, become an observer of your own life.
I recently heard this idea of acting as though you’re waking up in a new body each morning and your one job is to make the most of this person’s life. Their past doesn’t matter, all that matters is what you can do today.
This concept got me thinking about presence and noticing my emotions as they arise, so they don’t consume me and dictate my decisions. I was feeling pretty tired at the time and this thought popped into my head: “Oh, this person is feeling tired right now.”
It reminds me of a Buddhist practice where you call yourself out when you lose your present state. So if you’re meditating and notice you start thinking about what you’ll eat for dinner, that rude comment someone made, or the project you have to finish, you call yourself out by saying “Thinking, thinking” or “Thought, thought”.
They’re both ways to catch yourself when you go off-track and remind you to stay present and aware of the current moment. Becoming an observer helps more with emotional overload – when you start getting stressed, anxious, or mad you say “Oh this person is feeling insert emotion”. It strips you away from associating yourself with the emotion your body feels by making you an observer. You’re not feeling the emotion, that body is.
You can try this as a way to interrupt the negative feedback loop your emotions create. Prevent the emotion from forming negative thoughts in your mind thus causing more negative emotions. Step outside the body by pretending you’re simply an observer – like a scientist taking notes on a volunteer for an experiment.
From there you could think of ways to help yourself – “How can I help this body work through this?”. When you feel ready to move forward, get back to work and enter the present moment again.
When unwanted emotions arise, become an observer, an objective opinion, a third person perspective. Call out the emotions as though you’re noticing them in someone else, then see what you can do to help them find the present moment again.
July 25, 2022
