As human beings, we a variety of needs that we seek to meet throughout our lives. We have a need to both nurture and be nurtured. We have intense emotional needs that show up in our closest relationships. We have social needs that can be satisfied with group activities. We have spiritual needs that often find fulfillment as we discover an ultimate meaning and purpose in the universe and a connection to things greater than ourselves.
Understanding ourselves is extremely important in identifying our unmet needs and recognizing our (often misguided) attempts to meet those needs. If you are like me, we all need a better way to learn to understand ourselves - especially to tune into our feelings. We are so busy doing things that we don't take time to listen to ourselves and to learn to appreciate our inner world.
Sometimes it is helpful to refer to a list of adjectives such as loving, angry, joyful, kind, submissive, defiant, warm, melancholy, etc., to describe what we are feeling. The more we do this type of exercise the quicker we can get in touch with our feelings. Listening to ourselves is a skill we can develop.
Other ways to learn to listen to ourselves are:
- writing in a journal
- reading from autobiographies or short stories that help us recognize our own feelings and experiences more clearly
- list one or two emotional experiences and then recognize how they came about (each of us has several experiences each day that we could use to practice this)
- describe how we would like to feel in various situations we anticipate being in each day
- describe how we wished we would have felt in situations that we experienced
- imagine ourselves in various situations. Ask yourself "How would I feel if. . ."
- one of the most important ways of listening to ourselves is finding someone to share our stories with who is worthy of hearing them and who will listen with empathy, wholeheartedly, and without judgment
One other way of learning to listen to ourselves is to rate our levels of satisfaction or fulfillment in areas called dimensions of being, which we will discuss tomorrow. It is far better to recognize a lack of fulfillment than it is to try to ignore it or to pretend we feel something we don't. If we aren't aware what is happening in our inner world, we can't work with it. For today, try out one of the above methods. In addition to that, practice checking in with your feelings throughout the day.
Here are a few links to websites that have lists of adjectives you can choose from to describe your feelings:
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