Unwanted emotions can cause us all sorts of trouble. They can include – stopping us from moving forward with ease, causing trouble in our relationships, workplaces, and friendships as well as creating symptoms of pain within the body, anxiety, and depression. There is no reason why we need to hold on to the stories that created these unwanted emotions. Especially since it is very easy to release them so you have a happy, free, and fulfilling life.

How do I discover these unwanted emotions?

Through journaling, this simple method will help you understand the life lessons that have caused these unwanted emotions. Follow these 7 simple steps and you will:

• release what no longer serves you;
• discover how these lessons have helped you grow and become who you are;
• empower yourself with the outcomes and understand how it has all helped you;
• find powerful affirmations to use often to improve the way you see and talk to yourself; and
• finally, be free from the burden they have unwillingly become to you;

Grab a journal or notebook and walk yourself through these 7 questions. Let’s see how much difference they will make to your perception of what you learned through it.

1. What happened?

Start with identifying an emotion or event that has a hold on your life. Ask yourself and write down – what happened? What do you remember about the incident? Who was involved? How did it happen? Where were you? Who else was there? How old were you?

The more detail you can remember about the event the better. It is important to get your own perspective about the event down. This will help you understand more as you move along.

2. How did you feel at the time?

At the time of the incident, you would have had a very set of defined feelings. What were they? Write down how you felt during this episode. What thoughts were running through your head? What emotions or feelings were dominant?

Explain all of these thoughts, emotions, and feelings – write them down in detail. How it affected you at that moment only. Were you angry, sad, hurt, crying, screaming, silent, ashamed, etc? Realising these emotions helps you to understand how far you have come as we progress further but they are very important to your understanding.

3. How do you feel about it now?

It is time to review how you feel about this incident now. There will be a marked difference in the emotions that you feel as they no longer will have a stranglehold on you as they did at the time.

Looking back on it now you will notice these differences. It will not be as strong or painful as it once was and you will also realise that you have made growth throughout the time in between when it happened until now.

Part of this process is to help you understand and acknowledge how far you have come already and how you have already survived this incident and it has changed intrinsically who you are on the inside.

4. What did you learn – what are the differences? Be grateful for the lessons…

Look at the difference in your emotions! What is the difference here? There will be changes that have been made and these are the lessons you have learned.

When you look at these qualities and attributes you start to comprehend why you had to go through that event – as it is where you learned to be you.

Being grateful for these events and incidents helps us accept that we are human beings here to grow and learn. Each of these episodes has taught us something that has made us into the wonderful person we are today. So show some gratitude and appreciation for them as it is all part of the plan of your life.

5. Forgive yourself!

We sometimes struggle to accept that our soul asked to learn these lessons. We may never be sure how they are going to turn up for us, but as part of our soul’s purpose – we did ask for them to happen. It is a big concept at times to accept but everything in life has served a purpose to us. Before we incarnated as part of our Akashic Record and Life Contract we asked to learn certain things and some wonderful soul’s offered to teach it to us.

So you need to go back to the younger version of yourself – the one who had to go through this incident and forgive them. Forgive them for not knowing what they wanted to learn, for now knowing how to deal with it, and for suffering the consequences of it longer than was necessary.

Show your younger self how far you have come and how you survived the incident and how it has made you into the wonderful person you are today. Identify the true lessons you learned and embrace the outcomes in yourself as you accept that you have grown exactly as you were supposed to.

Stop beating yourself up for it. You made it, you survived and thrived through it and now you understand that you will never have to learn that again. You are where you are supposed to be in your life right now – this is the plan you made for yourself all along.

6. Forgive them!

Forgiving them is often the hardest part of this process when in truth it should be the easiest. Forgiveness does not mean that you condone what happened, that it didn’t cause you pain or harm or that it was insignificant in your life. It is about taking back your power into yourself. Holding on to these events doesn’t hurt them in any way shape or form – it only continues to hurt you.

They only did what you asked of them in your soul contract. Someone had to teach you these lessons – they volunteered to be the one to help you do this – so forgiving them is easy. We can’t judge them for it as we asked for it and we can only be grateful that we got through it the way we did as this is what made you who you are. That is the most important part – you are exactly who you need to be.

So forgive them and let yourself release these unwanted emotions that no longer serve you – you deserve it.

7. Write letters!

Sometimes the anger, hurt, betrayal, and more will be sitting inside of us with nowhere to go. This is where you start to write letters – that will never be seen or sent – to the person who did this to us. So you can write them a letter expressing all of this pain inside to get it out of our system and release its hold on us.

This is one of the most cathartic parts of the process You get to say all of the things you want to that will make you feel bad if you had to say it to their face and you can rail at yourself and them for going through it. Sometimes we forget that the person we are maddest at is ourselves.

In this process, you can write to yourself and say all the things you think that no longer serve you. Getting it out of your head so you longer repeat the process of putting yourself down and blaming yourself for all of this.

REMEMBER – you have already survived this and it is has been an important part of your soul’s growth and you have made it through. That is what counts the most.

Moving forward and utilising your lessons instead

When you have seen the difference in your feelings from the time you went through it to how you feel now. you will see the lessons you have learned. These are important aspects that now become your affirmation and mantras for growth. They are the attributes you learned. The whole reason you went through what you did.

Make the most of them and empower yourself with the outcomes. Remind yourself of what you learned and how far you have grown and these incidences and events will no longer hold you back. You will be free to create and manifest the true life you are meant to. It is time to be free and creative moving forward – being the true version of yourself who has already conquered the lessons in life you wanted to. It is time to make them work for you rather than against you.