People often ask how they can embrace their emotions. Emotional literacy is growing in popularity, but you may not know how to become more emotionally aware and literate. Our psychological state impacts the rest of our lives, so working on it is immensely beneficial.

Here’s 3 ways to embrace your emotions:

• Label them - this means taking a moment to think about how you feel. Which emotion are you currently experiencing? Even if it’s a negatively perceived or difficult emotion, like anger, in your head say “I feel angry”. This is called labelling our emotions and enables the intensity of the feeling to subside. 

• Allow the darker emotions - when we force positivity and push dark emotions away we can get stuck in an unhealthy loop. Whereas when we notice the challenging feeling it’ll have less power over us.

• Be honest - share how you’re truly feeling next time someone asks you how you are. Instead of saying “I’m fine, how are you?”, pause, and take a moment to think about how you truly feel. Maybe you’re feeling very sleepy and calm. Perhaps you’re slightly anxious. Or ready for the day. Be as descriptive as you can with your emotions, you’ll understand yourself better and so will others.

Reading recommendation - Emotional Agility by Susan David is a brilliant book that shows us how to move from rigidity to agility when it comes to our emotions.

How do you embrace your emotions? 

Do you have any top tips?