LETTING GO

Seventh publication in the Change Acceleration series

Let go of Something that gets in the way to live your life fully and lead your teams with passion.

What is the Something I am referring to throughout the text? There are not just emotions as you may think. All emotions that you experience, that are relevant to the situation, are important and very useful. The Accumulated Emotions that are triggered; emotions that you suppressed, rejected and cumulated during your life, are the ones that blocks the flow of life; on all five levels: sense of purpose, understanding, openness, trust and respect.

They block your free choices, your desires, your new beliefs, your feelings and your right actions. They cause you and others to react in a inappropriate way, from the place of Accumulated Emotions, not from Yourself. They make you shut down your feelings and the feelings of others, limiting the trust. They hinder your openness by freezing beliefs you already have; keeping you away from new ways of thinking. They stop you from getting to a true understanding of your needs and the needs of you environment, by refocusing you towards your "emotional wants". Finally they hinder your passion in pursuing your visions and in living with a purpose.

All natural emotions that are relevant to the situation are crucial for you to live. Anger is first of them. Thanks to healthy anger you can show people; in a constructive and productive way; where are your borders and when your rules are broken. When you feel the anger, it is a sign, that somebody or something is entering your space. Accumulated anger, when triggered, will only push you to ineffective reactions. The healthy anger that you feel, when somebody crosses your space, will be flooded by accumulated anger from the past. You will either attack others or you will use passive aggression towards them. Ability to get in touch, feel and stay with your healthy anger, will give you courage and confidence in any leadership or life situation.

Fear is important in your life. Thanks to fear you know how much you can cross you limits in a moment. When you experience too much fear it means you should not challenge yourself farther right now. Your growth is a process; step by step process. When you try to pretend you are fearless, you automatically repress your fear. Accumulated fear causes you to either show up and prove yourself in a battlefield or to escape and hide. Neither of those two strategies is healthy. When you have an ability to be with your fear you are able to lead others during a transformation process. People will resist any transformation or change naturally. They resistance comes from fear. When you are able to notice their fear, be with it and stay peaceful, you will make people willing to engage and take more personal risk.

Worry is good, as it makes you think before you act. But acumulated worry makes you think too much. It is called overthinking or an anxiety issue. You stop living you life and you start thinking about living your life. Instead of being happy and open for experiencing, you spend energy on thinking and analizing. Depression, isolation, apathy, issues with sleeping and other mental health problems gets from accumulated worry. When you learn to be with emotion of worry and you do not escape from it by overthinking, you are able to be with people who are complaining and blaming; without being impacted. You leadership actions will be more direct, honest and strong, as they will come from respect, not from automatic emotional reaction.

Grief is very important. Everything has an end. Endings causes us to grief. When you finish a project or a collaboration with a company you liked working for, you will feel grief. When you ideas are rejected you can feel grief and it is normal. When your relationship with somebody ends you will feel grief. The grief, if not ignored, will transform to a nice feeling of warmth, quietness and finally joy. It will help you in building real bonds, true relationship with your team and people in your life. The acumulated grief that you did not let yourself experience throughout your life will limit your natural happiness. You will tend to worry too much when grief is buried in you.

The joy is what we desire. It has two states. It is an emotion and it is a feeling. When covered by acumulated, not expressed joy from the past, it become sometimes too strong and toxic. We feel accumulated joy when we are over enthusiastic, passionate to the extend we loose our objective perspective, we push the vision too much, and we got tired. Strong joy can trigger other accumulated emotions like: grief, fear, anxiety and anger. That is why at the moments we experience to much emotions, including joy, our mind takes over, we jump into thinking and analyzing. Joy in it's pure nature is a feeling. When it flows naturally we are happy, soft, relaxed and calm. Our life flows with ease. People gets happy and open in our presence. Being a leader with access to pure joy makes you able to celebrate successes, appreciate your talents and your teams achievements authenticly.

All emotions that you have resisted and accumulated are like a magnet. One person with a strong emotion of any kind triggers the same emotion in others, even though the situation does no require it; often without the awareness. Physical reactions and interactions between people depend on strategies they minds has developed to deal with those emotions. Some people will use anger to escape from fear; people who cover their fear by being aggressive or very noisy. Other people will use fear to escape from their grief. They will control you, noticing your faults, provoking you, or using a subtle passive aggressive way. Some people will use grief to trigger guilt in others to cover their internal pain and apathy. They will make you feel guilty by showing that they suffer because of what you have done. Some people will escape from anxiety or worry, by showing positive face, artificially smiling and talking a lot; without being interested in others.