Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk about why

feeling our emotions is really

key to our healing and growth.

So most of us have this basic

orientation towards our emotions

that there's good and bad emotions.

Good emotions are the things like

happiness, excitement and calm.

Bad emotions are things like

fear, anger, sadness, or shame.

Now in our culture today, the idea

is very strongly promoted that we

shouldn't feel any of the bad emotions

and that we shouldn't express them.

And we should just be feeling all

the good emotions all the time.

Now, this idea is so strongly promoted

that we often feel like there's

something that's gone terribly wrong

with us if we're not always happy.

But the reality is is that there's no

such thing really, as a bad emotion.

Some emotions for sure are unpleasant.

That's true.

And some emotions are more pleasant.

That's true.

But none of them are

inherently bad or negative.

In fact, all emotions serve a purpose.

They're like messengers.

They hold valuable information about

how to best navigate our lives.

The more difficult feelings, actually

like anger, regret or sadness, they

actually often hold some of the most

valuable information about where we need

healing, where we might need to change

our lives or where our boundaries or

our values may not have been honored.

So if we don't listen to our emotions,

we may miss out on opportunities to live

our values more fully, to heal our old

wounds, to break free from old patterns

of conditioning and to look after our

wellbeing and grow mental strength.

So most of us can feel a pretty strong

urge to distract ourselves, push through,

numb out difficult thoughts and emotions.

We may turn to numbing or escaping

behaviors like shopping, emotional

eating, scrolling the web,

drinking, that kind of thing.

When we do those behaviors continuously,

they can be detrimental to our wellbeing.

And also the reality is,

what we resist persists.

That is if we continuously avoid

feeling our emotions, they will persist.

In fact, the research shows that

avoiding our emotions tends to

prolong them and make them bigger.

Now, why would that be the case?

Because they're trying to tell

us something a lot of the time.

There's a message we've not yet

acknowledged or heard so it stays around.

My invitation for today

and ongoing is this.

Try to see difficult emotions, not as

bad or wrong, not as an enemy, but as

an invitation to the parts of ourselves

that are craving our attention.

See them as opportunities

for healing and growth.

A simple practice that you can try is

to pause and become still when you feel

any difficult or unpleasant emotion.

And just ask yourself, if this emotion

had a voice, what would it say?

We can try a practice of

this in today's meditation.

So I invite you to now settle in for that.

And as always, thank you for your

practice and your presence here with us.