Warm Fuzzy - Grasshopper

What gives you a warm fuzzy, a good feeling?

I’m sure there are as many answers to that question as there are people, but I believe it’s useful to reflect on what does it for you.

What you may discover in the process is that many of the things that cause that warm feeling are outside of you. It’s stimulus response at its best.

But what if the outside influencers go on strike? What do you do then?

Do this: Recognize that you’re feeling shitty and don’t try and chase the feeling away. Explore it.

I refer to this process as “inviting the feeling in for tea.”

By exploring it, I don’t mean talk to yourself about it. That just keeps the sensation in place longer. Exploring it means to locate where that feeling registers in your body and give it your full attention. Again, don’t talk to yourself about it, feel it. Stay with the feeling. You’ll be tempted to abandon it and start chatting about it, but that only keeps it in place.

What you’ll find is, after a time, the feeling will melt away. It’s called transmutation ?" a fancy word for naturally changing one element to another. It’s like going from ice to water and then heating that water ’til it becomes steam.

What you’re doing by using this technique is getting out of your head and into your body. You’ll never convince the feeling to move on with logic. Feelings don’t pay attention to logic. Feelings pay attention to attention. Give all your attention to that feeling sensation and you’ll convince it to take a vacation.

If they make a movie about this process, it should be called, “The Return of the Warm Fuzzies.”

All the best,