I was reading a book entitled Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and found the following on page 68:
Rather than avoiding a feeling, your goal should be to move toward the emotion, into it, and eventually through it... even for boredom, confusion, or anticipation. When you ignore an emotion... you miss the opportunity to do something productive.
This approach is quite different than that which I was taught growing up and in Yeshivos. We were always taught to quash negative emotions. If you are learning and bored, something is the matter with you; you should feel guilty about it. Change you attitude.
Many great works of Torah based self-improvement will tell parents to minimize the emotion shown to a child, and tell of stories of how great men controlled and overcame their emotions for example when losing a child on a holiday. Anger should be banished.
The only place I recall seeing a vestige of the concept expressed here is when the Baal Shem Tov teaches that if one has an improper thought during prayer, rather than banishing it, as others teach, he should go with the thought and elevate it.
Honestly, I am still trying to truly understand what the Baal Shem Tov meant, as well as what this books means. But I have tried the book's advice a few times over the last few days to get a new experience. Rather than run from what it is that I am experiencing, I have allowed myself to think about it and let the feeling take me to its conclusion. By that time any negativity in the feeling has usually dissipated.
