Your Emotions Are Talking. Are You Listening?

I used to work ALL the time. Not just because I had a lot to do, but because I wasn’t listening—to myself, to my emotions, to the things I didn’t want to feel. And at the end of each long day, I needed something to turn it all off. A cocktail. The first one helped me relax, the second made me feel normal, and by the third, the dam broke. The emotions I had worked so hard to suppress all day would come rushing out, not as gentle waves, but as a flood—an explosion of everything I refused to acknowledge.

One morning, I was in the car with my fiancé, Ed, heading to work. We were having one of our “business meetings”—the ones that never seemed to end because my work was my life, and my life was my work. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and overloaded. I had taken on too much, not because I had to, but because I believed my worth was tied to how much I could handle. If I was needed, I was valuable. If I was valuable, I was worthy. And so, I took on more and more until there was nothing left of me.

Then Ed told me about one more project I needed to handle, and I snapped. I became that person you pass in traffic—the one screaming, crying, completely unraveling while trapped inside their car. I was the kettle, and the pressure valve had broken. I had no words for what I was feeling because I had spent so long ignoring my emotions that I didn’t even recognize them anymore. It was pure, raw energy bursting from within me, a force I had no control over.

I’ll never forget the way Ed looked at me in that moment. Helpless. Like a parent watching their child in pain with no way to take it away. That was me—screaming in pain, but without the ability to say what hurt. When we got to the office, it took me thirty minutes just to gather myself enough to walk through the door. Even then, I made a beeline for the private bathroom to fix my makeup, use eye drops, and put on my game face, pretending like everything was fine. Like I always did.

But in the car, as my body finally calmed, I wasn’t angry at Ed. I was unsettled by myself. Who was that person in the car? I had no idea, and that terrified me.

That was the moment I realized: I had to start listening.

I had to stop suppressing my emotions and instead, start feeling them. All of them. This was the beginning of the end. The end of my self-sacrifice, my people-pleasing, my perfectionism, my need for control.

And, to be honest, I still work on that last one. But now, I call it self-accountability. Because in all of this, I learned the only thing I truly can control is how I respond to life’s situations. And here’s the truth:

If you don’t allow yourself to feel, you can’t choose how to respond. You’re just reacting.

Awareness is the first step to abundant success. You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. And you can’t expand into your full potential—whether that’s manifesting your dream life, becoming a thought leader, or creating an impact in the world—if you aren’t listening to yourself first.

But here’s where it gets deeper: If you aren’t listening, you may find yourself caught in cycles of imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and comparison. 

Your emotions—unacknowledged and misunderstood—shape your behaviors. The fear of not being enough leads to overworking. The fear of being an imposter fuels the need for perfection. The fear of being left behind breeds comparison. These emotions drive our actions, creating avoidance strategies that keep us stuck. We convince ourselves that if we just do more, be more, achieve more, the discomfort will go away. But it doesn’t. It builds until it demands to be felt.

This is the core of what we do in Manifestation Impact Academy—because your thoughts and emotions are energy in motion, shaping your reality. If you aren’t aware of what’s driving your actions, how can you truly manifest with clarity and confidence? How can you step into your highest potential if fear and self-doubt are calling the shots?

So, I ask you: Are you listening? 

Are you paying attention to the emotions and thoughts shaping your actions? 
How might listening—truly listening—open up more possibilities for you?
And what might shift for you if, instead of reacting to your fears, you responded with awareness?