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Feeling Good

I haven’t made anything I don’t believe in. I’ve always started a movie with a song in my heart, and even when I’m a little unclear about it, something magical happens and it comes into focus in a way that I’m feeling good about.

Nicolas Cage

How do we define “feeling good”?

What makes us feel good?

Ho do you treat yourself and others when you feel good?

Who are you when you feel good?

Feelings are a very subjective and non quantifiable area of our existence. They are very hard to describe, understand and convey to some one else in the course of a normal therapy session or a conversation. We have to presume that what we feel someone else also feels and we use common experience to help the client, therapist or other person understand our feelings.

As with all my therapies and writings, my intention is to hopefully help you, the reader to find a greater understanding of your own self. That journey that you are on through life is in its self very subjective to you the individual, so don’t try to force an understanding that you think is expected. Just allow yourself to observe and feel!

Back to the original questions about feeling good. My observations have given me two distinct answers.

Firstly, we feel good because of a personal achievement in relation to other outside influences. We achieve our desired weight, purchase XYZ product, are promoted at work, enjoy a personal physical sensation like a massage, caress of a lover or playing with a pet. All these experiences are external and involve the positive achievement of an outcome resulting from a judgment or comparison of ourselves to culture, society and or other people – how we see ourselves fitting in to our environment is positive and we feel good.

Secondly, we feel good internally. This kind of feeling is non definable to other people, like the experience of waking up laughing, or the good feeling derived from prayer or meditation.

You may notice that both these types of feelings, the external and the internal are symbiotic in nature, they both feed of and add value to the other. Unfortunalty a lot of “New Age” and other self awareness systems simplistically ask us to forgo the primary physical response and only focus on the secondary internal response, yet they fail to understand that without the external trigger, the internal understanding is impossible.

Take a moment this week to identify an external event or trigger that resulted in you feeling good. Then focus on the feeling, contemplate or meditate on it and allow it to deepen or increase. Sit for a moment in that good feeling, enjoy it, and allow it to change your outlook on life.

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