Welcoming an emotion is about awareness, being open to it, and learning not to fight it.

Accepting an emotion, on the other hand, is giving our sense of power away to the emotion and the subsequent experience it leads to, with the premise that there is nothing we can do to change it.

This leads us to become victims of our emotions. And the victim mindset, in any context, is an unhealthy mindset, in my opinion.

I think of accepting an emotion as being indefinite:

“This is what I’m experiencing, and there is nothing whatsoever that I can do to change it.”

And that is hardly ever true!

While we may feel it’s hard to change our emotions, there is nearly always something we can do to shift our emotional state.

The number one strategy I’ve learned to do this is by changing our physiology, which is a fancy way of saying: move your body.

As Tony Robbins often explains, our body (physiology) directly impacts how we feel (psychology). This can involve adjusting our posture, breathing exercises, exercising, or even simply smiling.

When I reflect on times I’ve been in a negative emotional state and moved my body, I’ve felt better, whether that’s calmer, more composed, more peaceful, or experiencing greater mental clarity.

On the flip side, when I’ve remained stationary—often sitting still in the same environment where the negative emotional state occurred—I’ve prolonged the emotional state and even aggravated it, ending up feeling worse.

This is often what happens when we blindly accept our emotional state: we give our agency and power away to our emotions and end up feeling worse, both physiologically and psychologically.

Striving to welcome an emotion is a much better goal. It’s by welcoming emotions—and learning to feel them without reacting or casting judgment—that we develop emotional intelligence, all while keeping our agency intact.

We recognise our emotional state and what we’re feeling. We can then use those emotions as feedback tools to understand ourselves, to learn and grow, and to make conscious choices toward a new, more enjoyable and peaceful state.

I don’t know about you, but that’s incredibly empowering—and a much healthier way to experience life than being a victim of our emotions.

Of course, this isn’t easy. We often fall back into old habits and behavioural patterns.

That’s why it’s a daily practice.

A daily practice of living consciously and mindfully—of having tools in our emotional toolbox to help change our emotional state when needed.

Breathing exercises and physical movement (especially short walks) are my go-to tools.

There can be some trial and error in finding what works for you.

That said, any form of changing our physiology—aka moving our body—is going to have a positive effect and help shift our emotional state.

That’s not just my lived experience—it’s also what the science says.

It’s up to us to find what works and start welcoming, not blindly accepting, our emotions.

REMINDERS

1.

Welcome emotions, don’t surrender to them.

Being aware of and open to our emotions helps to welcome them. This empowers us; blindly accepting them doesn’t.

2.

​​Move your body, shift your state.

Our physiology influences our emotional well-being. Just another reason to get up and move our bodies.

3.

​Emotions are feedback, not fate.

Emotions are not fate. They are feedback tools that we can use to understand ourselves, learn and grow.