Dear Reader,

How do you feel?

If you have followed the Olympics or watched interviews with people who have accomplished something great or heroic, you might have noticed that one of the first questions they get asked is: ​
How does it feel?

We have a natural eagerness to know and understand how people who stand out of the crowd and accomplish great things feel. A potent mixture of positive emotions such as pride, joy, victory, freedom, and accomplishment, reflected back to us, is intoxicating and inticing. It awakens our own desire to have such experiences.

But getting into that good feeling place doesn't have to involve winning a medal at the Olympics (thank goodness!). It's as simple as making how you feel a priority. Why? Because how YOU feel is at the centre of everything in your life. It's where it all starts. The way you feel influences everything you do as well as how it will impact others.

If you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, step on a lego, and then end up stuck in a traffic jam, it might seem like your day is off to a very bad start. Tending to how you feel can help you reign in that bad luck streak, turn your day around, and glide into your next appointment with renewed energy!

It's not about writing to the mayor's office, asking for all traffic issues in your city to be solved, or berrating your kids for dropping a Lego on the floor (it's actually great that they were playing with something other than a device!). It's more like the pre-flight safety videos say: if the cabin pressure drops, put your own oxygen mask on first.
It's time to care about how you feel!

So, in practical terms, what does it mean to tend to how you feel?

It means coming down into your body and bringing your awareness to all parts of it. Think of it as getting into your body, as if you are putting on a one-piece suit.

It's as easy as reaching with your focus into your chest, belly, and hips, all the way into your toes. It doesn't have to take long, just a few deep breaths. It helps to close your eyes if you can, place a hand on your heart or on your stomach, wiggle your toes, and land here and now in your body.

You'll find that there is not necessarily a specific emotion you can name. It's more like a whole rainbow of signals and sensations that you usually leave out of the equation. It can be anything from the light on your face, the cold breeze on your back, the solid ground under your feet, the subtle thightness in your jaw, the nervousness in your belly, or the reassuring weight of the watch on your wrist.

This mix-bag of information is what triggers your reactions to the world around you.

By taking in this information, you learn to decipher it and come up with meaningful words to describe your overall state of being. This helps you understand where you are at and how you can improve your state of being. With a bit of practice at reading these signals, you get to choose how you respond to your environment.

That's where the big payoff is!

If you're unaware that you've been hungry for the past two hours, that you're wearing an extra layer that makes you too hot, and that you feel a contraction in your belly because you're worried about your child passing his exam, you might not realize that you are speaking angrily to your colleagues during the project meeting and be puzzled that they seem so uncooperative and blunt.

Just landing in your body can make you realize you want to take off that extra clothing layer, eat a snack, and send a loving thought to your child. From there, you can address your project meeting on a different footing.

That's what it means to feel. It's as simple as that.

It means to take in the information from your whole being, to notice how it responds to the environment, the room, the people, and conversations you are having.

Feeling is your ticket to more deliberate choices, more harmony with yourself and your environment. It gives you more information about what is going on within you, as well as the opportunity and power to improve it.

When you become familiar with the experience of feeling, you are less prone to overwhelm, emotional overload, or disconnect. You become more stable and confident in the face of the unknown.

If this is something you would like to practice, I invite you into my ​
3-Question Experiment.

In this three-part series, you will be guided into the mechanics of FEELING, what it leads into, and how to let the positive side of what you feel naturally emerge.

It is a deep dive that will naturally immerse you into the experience of FEELING. It provides a gateway to play and identify different types of information that are available to you when you tap into FEELING and gives you a strong foundation to apply it in everyday situations.

I want to learn to FEEL more!

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Once you open the door to FEEL, you realize that it is an ever-changing adventure that doesn't submerge you into discomfort but instead helps you receive the message and the solution to it.

Although the question What do I FEEL might seem underrated, asking it helps you claim your power back!

I wish you wonderful explorations and discoveries!

Big hug,