This is an archived blog from when I ran Conscious Public Relations Inc. from 2008-2018. Excuse the potential outdated-ness!
What happened to the word emo? I notice we’ve stopped using it. Let’s bring it back in this blog.
Did you know that when we experience uncomfortable feelings such as anger, fear, guilt, and sadness, our brain releases chemicals that give us a physiological experience, and that neural response is gone in 90 seconds?
For me, negative feelings can last anywhere from 10 minutes to a few days to years depending on the memory and intensity of the situation. So this 90 second thing is pretty revolutionary for me.
The 90-second shift
In Beyond Body Beyond Mind, Dr. Sukhi explains that physiologically, after 90 seconds, you should no longer feel whatever feeling you did in response to your surroundings. He says:
…if I remain angry after 90 seconds it is because I am making the constant and conscious choice to continually let that circuitry run by hooking into it with my left mind. (He defines the left mind as the part of the brain that is caught up in details, organization, seriousness, judgment, and mind chatter.)
Knowing this, how do we ensure that the feeling is only 90 seconds and that we don’t carry it with us? Well, Dr. Sukhi has a suggestion for that too.
Whenever you get hooked into a self-sabotaging loop, the first thing to do is honor it. Yes, honor the pain, fear, etc. Once you honor those feelings, shift to a place of gratitude and thank your mind and every cell within your body for having the ability to fully experience that circuitry. After the physiological response has ended (90 seconds), you have a choice. You can let that neural loop continue to run or you can come back to the present moment.
Break the loop by thinking about something that brings you great joy…Then bask in the feelings of pleasure…Once you arrive there and are feeling a little better, think about one thing you would love to do in your life right now. Then think about what it would be feel like to be doing that. Bask in this feeling some more (essentially overriding the old pattern).
Don’t know about you, but I’m feeling great already. I’ve been practicing a lot of gratitude this year, so I love how gratitude for negative feelings is part of the process. And then shifting from that feeling to joy and the feelings we want to have in the future… this is also an exercise I’ve been learning in my self-development classes. It’s very powerful for even minute, random tasks.
Can you shift your emo in 90 seconds? Try it today and let me know how it goes.
