Exercising Our Emotions

We exercise our bodies, our right to free speech, our right to bear arms, but do we ever exercise our emotions? We feel our emotions and sometimes we let them control us, but do we strengthen them in a positive way? That's a new concept to me.

I will be in Yoga training this weekend and my required reading is, "Growing the Positive Mind with the Emotional Gym" by Larkin. I won't say it is the most well written book, however he does have some interesting concepts. For instance, he suggests we exercise our positive emotions by thinking about them for 10 seconds several times a day, specifically "Joy", "Gratitude", "Peace", and "Love". He suggests attaching a song and a visual reference to each of these emotions, i.e. maybe "Silent Night" and a "dove" for "peace".

He went on to tell how he lives in downtown LA near a fire station. The fire trucks are noisy and loud and leave the station at all hours of the night. He was going to complain about the noise and ask if it's really necessary to sound the sirens at 2 a.m. when there isn't any traffic, then he decided to stop being a victim and feel grateful to the firefighters instead. So, he decided every time he heard the sirens he was going to think about peace. He sang his "peace" song and thought about his visual reference, and before long he stopped noticing the sirens - he exercised and strengthened his positive emotions.

I decided to put that theory to the test. Some of you might know that I have struggled with my temper during transportation, i.e. road rage. I don't know where it comes from, but instead of "gym girl", I'm "grim girl". So, I am choosing to think about "peace" when I see brake lights and stop lights. Instead of red making me see red, I'm going to see and feel peace!

I challenge you this week to exercise your positive emotions - joy, gratitude, peace, and love. Make your positive emotions strong, build them up. You might not lose weight from this type of exercise, but it might be the most important kind of exercise.

Eat and Exercise Intentionally!

Cindy