How Creating Emotional Space Can Make You Happier

We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.― António R. Damásio, neuroscientist

We are primarily emotional beings.

If you’re in the throes of a new romance or just landed your dream job, you might be feeling terrific about this state of affairs. You’re riding high on euphoria — and who doesn’t love that?

But maybe you’re in a different emotional place. Perhaps you’ve been worried for quite some time about your finances, your health, or your loved ones. If that’s the case, you might think that emotions are the devil incarnate here for the sole purpose of making your life a living hell.

Whether you’re feeling good, bad, or somewhere in between, I’d like to gently suggest that you create space for your emotions.

Why create space for your emotions?

Creating space for your emotions means finding the best time, place and method to regularly and safely investigate and learn from your feelings.

Emotional space like this has many benefits. It lets you:

• feel whatever you feel without negative consequences;
• name your feelings, an important step towards understanding and diffusing them;
• figure out what your feelings say about your needs, your life and your relationships;
• determine your response to these emotions.

Emotions are important. Among other things, they help us survive, give us important information about ourselves, and allow us to connect with others.

And yet. . .

Emotions are great servants, but terrible masters.

Creating emotional space allows you to hone your emotional intelligence — your ability to understand and effectively manage your feelings.

Our emotions are chock-full of valuable information. But acting on them without thought can make life harder than it needs to be.

For example, that anger you feel towards your boss is telling you that something important needs to be addressed. But yelling at your boss because you haven’t taken time to calm down and investigate your anger will make things worse.

Be sure to provide yourself with emotional space on a regular basis. If emotions are running particularly hot as in the example above, just walk away. Don’t allow yourself to respond until you’ve calmed down. It will help you avoid an emotion-related catastrophe.

But also provide yourself with regular opportunities to check in with your feelings outside of heated moments. This will help you get in touch with feelings you might not know you have and regulate them appropriately. And besides, it can greatly improve the quality of your life.

How do you create space for your emotions?

1. Find the best time. When are you best able to calmly assess your feelings? First thing in the morning? After lunch? Before bed? Find a 15–30 minute window that works best for you.
2. Find the best space. You’ll need a safe space to do this work. This might be a quiet corner in your house, a spot outside where you can be alone, your car on your lunch hour, or in the office of a trusted therapist.
3. Find the best method. What activities allow you to think most clearly and dig most deeply into your thoughts and feelings? Perhaps you think best when you journal, take a quiet walk by yourself, sit in nature, or talk with a good friend, your spouse or a therapist.

Interpreting your emotions.

Once you’ve found the time, space and method to investigate your feelings, you might begin to notice some emotional trends. Here are some things your emotional space might help you rethink.

If you’re generally unhappy, you might need to evaluate how you’re spending your time. Perhaps some of your unhappiness is due to:

• Unbalanced priorities. Are some priorities receiving too much attention (work, finances, home maintenance) while others (relaxation, play, meaningful connection) are receiving too little?
• Inappropriate priorities. Are you putting too much energy into priorities that are important to someone else, but not to you? If this is the case, you’re likely to feel unfulfilled even if you’re good at this particular thing as competency and meaning don’t always go together. For example, I was a very good office administrator but the job made me miserable. (To learn more about “priority gremlins”, read this.)
• Good priorities, but bad tasks. Perhaps your priorities are fine, but the tasks you’re assigning yourself in response to those priorities aren’t a good fit for you.

Here’s what I mean: Maybe your priority of staying in shape isn’t the problem, but running five days a week is making you miserable. Perhaps you need to stop running (an activity you hate) and start hiking, swimming or taking a dance class instead. You’re still putting your priority of staying in shape into action, but doing it in a way that’s more compatible with your interests or lifestyle.

I’ll give a personal example. “Animal welfare” is one of my priorities. So when I needed some extra cash, I thought that taking on some dog walking clients would be a great idea. It turned out that I hated being a dog walker; I did not enjoy running from one house to the next all morning to walk other people’s pets. Once I realized this, I found other ways to increase my income and take care of animals that suited me better, such as donating to animal welfare organizations and buying products that are cruelty free.

For more help with managing priorities and tasks, read this.

If you’re unhappy sometimes, then you may or may not need to make changes in how you’re spending your time. While transitory unhappiness is simply part of life, some unhappiness can signal it’s time for a change.

• When unhappiness is just discomfort. Sometimes, what we refer to as unhappiness might more aptly be characterized as discomfort, struggle, or frustration. These emotions aren’t necessarily indicative that you’re doing things wrong.

If the discomfort comes and goes and leads to a result that makes you feel truly fulfilled, it’s probably worth it. (I often feel like this about writing blogs. The process generally starts with me metaphorically banging my head on my desk in angst and scowling at my computer, but ends with me feeling terrific.)

• When struggle leaves a void. Instead, you might find that discomfort leaves you feeling simply tired and unfulfilled. In that case, it’s probably time to use your emotional space to re-evaluate your priorities, your tasks, or both.

The writer Glennon Doyle has said, “I am here to keep becoming truer, more beautiful versions of myself again and again forever.”

I love this take on life — that there is no failure, just greater and greater refinement of our humanity, capacity, and understanding.

If we allow them to be, our emotions can be a powerful guiding force on this wondrous journey to become the truest version of ourselves.

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