Appreciating Emotional Wisdom

Wisdom is the creative outcome of knowledge
and experience that have become integrated and joined together,
and it is our emotions that inform this process and make it
possible. Our emotions are continually live and online. Like a
navigation system, they are continually informing us. When we
talk about quality of life, we are talking about the way that
we feel. Our emotions let us know when life is going well, and
in no uncertain terms, they let us know when it is not. This is
how we learn and this is how we develop the understanding.

Wisdom is dependent upon our capacity to
listen to and understand our emotional experience. Our emotions
underpin every aspect of our well-being. When we talk about our
mental health, we are not simply talking about our mind and the
way that we think; we are talking about the way that we feel;
and we all know that when we are emotionally stressed or
unhappy, this will have a massive impact on our physical health
and well-being.

Wisdom is an internal journey. It is dependent
upon our ability to trust our own inner experience and our own
inner voice and to be responsive to this. Our emotions are
integral to every aspect of our lives and to our very
experience of being. If we are shut off from our emotions then
we simply cannot arrive at a place of integrity, a place of
connectedness or of wholeness, either internally or externally.

Wisdom is dependent upon our capacity for
reflective thought. To integrate our experiences and transform
them into a wealth of understanding we will need to develop an
internal place of reflection, of curiosity, and of interest.
Paradoxically, reflective thought is both a place of stillness
and yet also a place of profound growth and therefore a place
of movement. When we develop an internal space inside our mind
where we are open to receiving, it enables us to be engaged in
a continual state of real experience, where every moment of
life becomes a journey of interest and possibility. This is why
mindfulness and meditation are so incredibly valuable.

True courage is about looking inwards, not outwards.
 Being able to stand firm in a place of vulnerability and to
 flourish and grow with honesty and humility is a strength
 beyond measure. This is the power of emotional wisdom.

Read the beautifully written full article at The Power of Emotional Wisdom. Images clipped for layout reasons