The emotional weather inside us can be sunny, warm and calm; it can be brisk, breezy and bright. And we all know that sometimes it rains (or snows). The rain can be calm and cool, it can also be relentless, with water pouring down in sheets. Atmospheric rivers they now sometimes call them.
Whatever our emotional weather is, we take it with us, everywhere we go.
There is an opportunity that comes with observing an emotion like weather. When I see my emotions like weather, I am better able to plan my day by being informed by the emotions I am having. In other words, I can almost dress for them. Even more amazing, I have noticed that the better I am at observing and naming my own internal weather, the better I am at influencing the type of emotional weather that shows up inside me from day to day. In other words, I can almost influence my emotional climate.
Living here in Canada, I don’t go beyond my front door without checking the weather outside. Be it glancing out my window, so that I know to grab an umbrella or my mittens; or looking up the temperature and wind direction, so that I can optimize the activity I do that day. Maybe I will go for a walk, or a bike ride, or maybe a ski… Maybe I will spend the day inside, curled up with a good book. It depends on the day; it depends on the weather…
When I am informed about the weather, I am better able to choose the things I do; I am also better able to enjoy the things I choose. Being practiced at checking in with my emotional weather gives me much the same thing – an opportunity to make more informed, better choices; and an opportunity to enjoy the choices I do make even more.
I am better able to plan my day.
I know what to wear.
I learn to appreciate that different weather brings different opportunities. As a skier, I love the snow. Not everyone feels this way about the white fluffy stuff😉.
So, what if we could consider our emotions in much the same way that we consider the weather?
Emotions are useful data to inform our choices.
How might this simple reframe better allow us to be with and process through our emotional experiences? For starters, if we invite our emotions to be like the weather, we can start to see ourselves as separate from the way we are feeling.
“you are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather. ”
In the words of Pema Chödrön, I am not my weather. I am the sky.
I am not sad. Sad is something I feel.
I am not angry. Angry is something I feel.
I am not happy. Happy is something I feel.
Once you create even a little bit of space between you and the thing you’re feeling, you can start getting curious about the useful information contained within.
We’ve all been invited at some point in our lives to “take the emotions out of it” (often our decisions). Now I find this is funny.
If I were going on a challenging hike in the mountains, I’d never say: “Let’s take the weather out of our decision to go”. Instead, I might ask: “What’s the optimal weather for us to go on that hike?” Or “considering the weather, what kind of hike should we go on today?” It would be foolish to take the weather out of a day. There is good information in knowing the weather.
What if all our decisions and choices could be emotion informed? What’s the difference that might make? Because just like weather, the emotions we experience provide useful information for us. The better we are at noticing and naming this valuable information, the better we can become at making emotion-informed choices. What a thought!
As coach, I work with an assessment tool called EQ in Action, to uncover a snapshot of a person’s “emotional weather patterns” Contact me if you are interested in learning more.
I would like to thank Alison Whitmire at Learning in Action for the courage and commitment she shows up with around emotional awareness & learning; and for planting this seed in me, our emotions like weather.