Day 2: Investigate
On day 1 we focused on taking inventory of what we were feeling and today we are going to investigate why we are feeling the way we are.
Take one of the emotions you wrote down from the day before and simply ask yourself, “why am I feeling this?” Or another way to think about this is to ask yourself the question, “what is happening in my life that is leading me to feel this way?”
For example, the other day I came back to work from vacation and found out that one of the software applications I had developed needed a crucial software update. I began to feel pretty anxious about this and when I asked the question “why?” I was able to reflect upon the fact that I’ve been in stressful situations before with this software application and that I’m always worried about making software updates to this application for fear of breaking something that is a crucial part of our company’s product line.
This may come easy to you or it may be hard for you to verbalize or understand why you’re feeling the way you are, and that’s okay! It is crucial in this step that we be kind to ourselves. We want to avoid any judgement of ourselves and instead allow ourselves to be curious and free to explore what we are feeling.
Once you have a base understanding of why you are feeing what you are you can try to go deeper by continuing to ask “why?”
For example, in my situation above I could ask myself, “why does updating this piece of software make me anxious?” In answer to that, it makes me worried that I’m going to update it in a way that will break it and cause problems for our company.
Once you answer that why question, continue to keep asking “why?” Why would it be a problem if I did end up breaking the software in my update? Well, that would be embarrassing for me and stressful to have pushed out broken software.
The goal with this continual process of “going deeper” by asking why is to gain an awareness of what is driving your feelings. This often times is playing out the “worst case scenario” in an effort to gain emotional awareness. Emotional awareness provides clarity and the ability to manage what we are feeling.
Again, if you’re unable to “go deeper” into why you are feeling the way you are, that’s okay! Being able to recognize what we are feeling and the top-level reason is still super helpful!
So my challenge today is to be curious with yourself and investigate why you are feeling the way you are. And tomorrow, we will look at what to do about what we are feeling.
Get In Contact
If you would like help asking this question “why” in your own situation, I’d love to work with you! I offer one-on-one coaching and would love to help you process what you are currently feeling and help you figure out what to do about it. If this is something you think you might be interested in, I offer a free 30 minute consultation for you to share what you are experiencing and allow us time to discuss if one-on-one coaching would be right for you. It would be my honor to get the chance to listen to you!