Can you create a positive life if you feel negative emotions?

Have you ever worried that any negative emotions you feel are attracting negative situations? Or worse, that maybe feeling sadness or anger some other so-called negative emotion is blocking your destiny, preventing you from discovering your life purpose?

This is a common concern, and a fear that people must overcome to allow themselves to feel. Today, I want to talk about when this is and isn't true and give you peace so you can feel your emotions without fear, loving yourself the whole way.

Do negative emotions cause negative things to happen?

The first mindset shift I'd like to mention is that there aren't any negative emotions or experiences. There are painful emotions and experiences, but nothing is all good or all bad.

Painful emotions carry many blessings and some of the greatest gifts in my life have come from my deepest pains. To find peace, it helps to learn how to navigate pain more gracefully, but it will never disappear all together.

Second, let's take a look at where this idea comes from. As far as I know, it has roots in Law of Attraction theory, which essentially says "like attracts like."

This makes sense on many levels. If you focus on everything that's negative, you'll respond based on that interpretation and create more negative circumstances in your life.

But allowing yourself to feel pain isn't negative. It's the most loving thing you can do. Feeling emotional pain is about accepting yourself exactly as you are.

This isn't about clinging to emotions, but opening your heart to them for greater self-understanding. To heal it, you've got to feel it.

The "like attracts like" philosophy creates a lot of fear around painful, or what people consider negative emotions. It creates pressure to be positive all the time. This pressure doesn't create peace, but only an arbitrary ideal that nobody can meet.

It results in an effort to get rid of pain as fast as possible instead of opening your heart to it and truly understanding it.

Is pain a punishment from the universe?

The other perspective I see often is this idea that pain steals happiness. This would assume that happiness is meant to be a constant in life. It isn't. Both pain and happiness are temporary.

Opening up to life's impermanence, taking a little happiness into sadness and a little sadness into happiness creates peace. It's like the yin and the yang, with a dash of white in the black and vice versa.

Many teachers encourage people to choose happiness. However, it seems like there's a deep hunger for permission to feel and permission to love yourself exactly as you are, even if you're not ecstatic 24/7. (No one is.)

I'm giving you that permission now. Whatever you feel is okay.

Even if you crave the authenticity that comes from feeling your feelings, you may fear that you're attracting bad things into your life. This just isn't true.

One perspective on this viewpoint is that the universe would punish you for feeling negative emotions or not being happy all the time. However, you are unconditionally loved. From this essence of unconditional love, the universe would never judge or punish you for feeling sad, but only have utmost compassion for you.

The second perspective returns to the "like attracts like," idea. If you feel pain, you'll attract pain.

However, painful or negative emotions signal that something in our lives is off. Sadness may signal that it's time to release or reconnect to your heart. Anger can signal that your personal boundaries have been violated or that you're giving your power away.

Suppressing or rejecting your emotions means you miss out on these important messages. Instead of going through the pain to create authentic happiness, you live your entire life trying to feel something that you don't. This doesn't create positive experiences, but only leaves you detached and unfulfilled.

If you don't know who you are or what you want, ask yourself — have you been shoving your emotions down, pretending they don't exist?

By tuning into your heart through meditation or journaling, you can heal emotional pain while making any life changes your heart is asking you to make. Download a free meditation below.

With this in mind, negative emotions actually help bring you closer to your destiny or life purpose because they signal when you need to change something in your life, whether the thing you need to change is internal, like a habit or way of relating to the world, or external, like changing a job or ending a relationship.

When painful emotions can cause bad things to happen/block you from your destiny

There is one way that feeling pain can block your destiny: And that's by keeping you obsessed with the idea that you're flawed for feeling it.

If all you can focus on is that your negative emotions are keeping you from good things happening, you won't be able to release the pain or create experiences that feel good. It's not the universe blocking you, but you!

By opening your heart to your pain, you honor your soul and learn more about yourself. This process gives you the gift of understanding why you're feeling pain and ultimately opens the door to true joy.

To move along this path, the non-negotiable element is unconditional self-love. You can't move through emotions and create the life you dream of if you're constantly judging yourself for feeling certain ways or wishing your emotions would just go away.

Do you have any personal practices for tuning in to how you feel? Share them on the blog!

Wishing you a great week,

Suzanne

Suzanne Heyn is a spirituality teacher and online course creator. Her life-changing online course experiences and popular blog help people heal their hearts and love who they are. With an online community of more than 20,000 people, Suzanne is known for her practical, authentic take on spirituality that creates space for deep healing and heartfelt connection.

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