Day 4 30 Paintings in 30 Days

A Little THIStle and THAT © 2013 Amy Hillenbrand

10 x 8 Oil on board

$170.00

Gremlin Report

(If you have just tuned in, I am tracking how my commitment phobic gremlins behave or mis-behave during this 30 day painting challenge)

Due to some personal family events last night,  I had a this thought: "I don't feel like painting". Those commitment phobic gremlins thought they would seize the opportunity and keep me from my easel today.  They love to take advantage of any opportunity to keep me stuck.  So I did a little process that I have used for years with my personal coaching clients.  It is a simple, but sometimes not easy, technique to get one's self back to center.  It is called 'feel the feelings'.  

You see, God gave us the ability to use our emotions to get through good and bad things that happen to us.  But, there's a catch. When we were children and a feeling was so overwhelming we couldn't follow through with feeling the emotion all the way because our synapses were not fully formed in our brains.  We thought we would absolutely die and if we went to deeply into the feeling.  So as an adult we tend to still function that way, we feel something a little bit but not all the way and the feeling just lingers in our bodies. People are so use to walking around with unfelt feelings they do not even know they are doing it.  

So first I recognized I had the feeling- I didn't feel like painting and quickly realized it had nothing to do with me painting. It had to do with not fully feeling the sadness that I had touched on earlier in the day. So I identified the emotion, got really in touch with it and then determined where I felt that feeling in my body and then felt it, felt it some more and then felt it some more.  It took probably 20 minutes and then my body and mind were at a state of peace.  

So next time your are procrastinating or can't sleep, check in to see if you have fully felt the emotions you had yesterday, last week or maybe last year.