One afternoon in my childhood, a younger child scraped her knee while playing in our group.
She was not badly hurt, but she was afraid and very upset.
So she cried and cried. A grown-up came over to comfort her, but still the girl cried and cried. It seemed nothing could stop her crying.
Then, we all heard the bells of an ice cream truck passing through the neighborhood.
In an instant, the little girl forgot about her upset, thinking instead about ice cream. And she stopped crying completely!
What had happened? The little girl was feeling negative emotions of fear and upset, and in an instant, let those emotions go. The girl let go of those negative emotions because she was distracted by the sound of the bells—and the thought of ice cream!
I found out years later that we can all learn to do what that little girl did with negative emotions—let them go!
I refer to many emotions—fear, sadness, impatience, frustration, anger, and self-judgment—as “limiting” emotions, because they get in the way of our playing our best game.
Now, there is not a single emotion that I want to avoid or deny. They give variety to our life experience.
But there is also no good reason to hold on to them if they're holding us back.
So, happily, we can learn to let these negative, or limiting emotions, go—all of them!
