Here’s How You Find Your Emotional Baggage - It’s Really Easy!

You’ve probably known about emotional baggage for a long time… and not known or understood how to find it, let alone get rid of it. You can talk about it but you don’t really understand it.

I’ll bet that you would love to get your hands on your emotional baggage and rid yourself of it once and for all. Well, maybe I have something for you here.

For more than three years, I’ve been working hard to clean out my emotional baggage. And with every year, with every month, with every week, I’ve been getting better and better at it.

You Can Too!

You can find your emotional baggage really easily, too. I’ll let you know how to do it. Because I discovered that actually, it’s really easy to find your emotional baggage - in the most surprising way!

My Mistake

You see, one day I made a mistake. I was working with a customer at the end of a long day, at the end of a long week, and you guessed it, I was tired.

One of my weak points is that I’m a people pleaser (yes, that’s also emotional baggage, but that’s not where I’m going this time). I was reporting on the payments my customer had to make and I noticed that I could cut out one of the payments. I was eager to let the customer know, naturally, and my customer was pleased to hear it (but not as pleased as I had hoped).

Anyway, I made a mental note of it, and then after my customer left, I quickly cleaned up and went home. And made NO notes about this payment.

Anywhere.

But Wait

But that’s not the baggage part. That’s coming. Three weeks later, the customer emailed me to ask about the payments. You see, in my infinite ineptitude, I billed the customer for the payment that I had said was already paid. I got the email at a busy time. Again,I wanted to please my customer by responding quickly.

I didn’t check deeply. I just said that the payment was due. I checked my books too quickly.

Soon my customer complained to the head office. I’m upset that my customer went past me direct to the office. I get angry, then re-read the email about the complaint.

That’s when I realised my mistake! But by this time, I am quite agitated, and

… here it comes…

I discovered my emotional baggage!

I found it because I was so agitated over this situation. It took three years of ‘inner work’.

First Message

So here’s take home message number one: if you get agitated or upset about something, that’s where to look for emotional baggage.

I took some time out to explore this feeling of agitation. I’m getting really good at it these days.

In no time at all, I have discovered not one… but three problems!

I discovered some of my feelings towards that customer that were - actually quite easy to clear up. But I also discovered two other ‘bags’. I had some deeper feelings towards head office and my dealings with them.

The other ‘bag’ was the most surprising of all. I discovered some of my feelings towards money.

Second Message

I had heard that we all have lots of emotional baggage about money. Everyone has their own set of baggage about money but most of it is deep and well hidden.

And most of it is very emotionally charged.

People fight over this stuff, after all.

The Start of It All

My problem was with people who are money grubbing. I could easily identify one of the chief sources of these feelings. As I child I clearly remember watching an animated version of the story “A Christmas Carol ''.

The character of Scrooge was very greedy, almost evil, at least to my child’s eyes. I very quickly decided I hated that character… and anyone like that.

You can imagine how successful I have been with money, considering that I hate people who have even the slightest feeling of being money grubbing (heavy sarcasm here).

I also find it very difficult to check money payments because I would hate it if people thought I was a scrooge-like person.

So I am not stupid, but my emotional baggage connected to money has been holding me back. The worst thing is….. I was totally unaware of it! I thought those things only happen to other people.

Then I finally saw it in myself.

One More Time

So the promised secret: you can find your own emotional baggage by taking a closer look at things that make you feel emotional.

This is especially true for the darker emotions like fear, anger or sadness. The hard part is to be aware of the emotion right away when you feel it ….and to take the time to explore it deeper when you can.