Negative feelings and emotions are the potato detectors of our bodies, in the sense that they detect issues of right and wrong, or in other words, injustice. In the same way that eyes detect light and ears detect sound, emotions detect potatoes.
In the first chapter of the potato book, I write that having emotions is a part of being human, just like having arms and legs. In this regard, having emotions is not the problem. If I were to write the potato book today, instead of comparing emotions with arms and legs, I might have compared emotions with having eyes and ears, for emotions are more akin to being part of a sensory organ of some sort.
We are interested to learn how to let ourselves feel the feelings we feel, and not to be afraid of them. For certain, negative emotions are difficult to experience, in the same way that physical pain is unpleasant to experience when we are injured. But as there is a protective element to physical pain, there is a protective element to experiencing negative emotions. They are the potato detectors, alerting us to issues of injustice in order to give us opportunity to navigate the paths of our lives as successfully as possible.
If you have a smoke detector in your home, the sound it makes when it goes off is unpleasant to hear, and draws us to action. But what is our action? Is our action to remove the battery from the smoke detector so that we don’t have to hear its shrill sound? If so, we may be in danger of succumbing to a fire, with possible material damage and health risks. On the other hand, if we attend to the reason the detector is alarming us, and deal with it, then we are using the smoke detector for what it is intended for.
In the same way, there are risks involved in making our emotions be the problem when we feel them. As potato detectors, they are alerting us to something we need to address. If we aim to suppress our emotions when they are triggered, we may experience the complication of health risks. On the other hand, if we attend to the reason our potato detector is alarming us, then we are using our emotions for what they are intended for, and we may find that they are resolved and over time become less intense – not because that is our primary goal, but because the potato that they are detecting is being addressed. The smoke detector turns silent when the danger is dealt with; so with our emotions. Let us not fight our emotions; let us allow them to work for our benefit. Training yourself to form the constructive mindset therefore gives you the confidence to allow yourself to feel as you ought.