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Most of this document is a direct excerpt from The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.

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COMMITMENT THREE

Feeling All Feelings

Above the Line: I commit to feeling my feelings all the way through to completion. They come, and I locate them in my body then move, breathe, and vocalize them so they release all the way through.

Below the Line: I commit to resisting, judging, and apologizing for my feelings. I repress, avoid, and withhold them.

Keys

• Achieving emotional literacy involves two steps:
  1. Developing clear, accurate, definition of emotion
  2. Identifying the core emotions
• At its simplest level, emotion is energy moving in and on the body.
• CLG assumes five basic human emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, and sexual feelings.
• Feelings are often repressed b/c they’re viewed as distractions to good decision-making and leadership.
• Individual emotions exist on an intensity spectrum (low, moderate, high). For example, boredom is usually anger we aren’t facing or expressing.
• What are you feeling right now?
  • If the words “I feel” are followed by “that” or “like,” you are expressing a thought, not describing a feeling.
• Where is that feeling in your body?
• Are you willing to release the feeling by matching expression with experience?
• Emotional choice:
  • Repress: “I’m not angry” (bulging veins, red face, clenched jaw). Cutting off flow like a kinked hose; affects all emotions.
  • Recycle / Redirect: Deny you feel anything and run in a myriad of ways (“numbing out,” drinking, shopping, eating, working, watching TV, self judgement).
  • Release: Locate the emotion in the body. Breathe. Allow or accept the emotion. Match your experience with your expression (make a sound; move your body!).
• Feelings are supposed to be released, but instead of releasing emotion we hold on to it.
  • Repression is usually related to emotional permission learned in childhood.