The Abraham-Hicks Emotional Scale: Moving Up

# The Abraham-Hicks Emotional Scale: Moving Up

Your emotions aren't just fleeting feelings — they're sophisticated guidance systems that directly influence your physical health, mental clarity, and ability to create positive change in your life. The Abraham-Hicks Emotional Scale, channeled through Esther Hicks and developed by Jerry and Esther Hicks, presents a revolutionary framework for understanding the vibrational frequency of human emotions, ranging from the lowest states of despair and powerlessness to the highest expressions of joy and freedom. This isn't just spiritual philosophy; it's a practical roadmap for emotional regulation that aligns remarkably with cutting-edge neuroscience research on neuroplasticity and emotional intelligence.

What makes this scale particularly powerful is its recognition that you cannot leap from despair directly to joy — any more than you can jump from the bottom of a twenty-two story building to the top floor. Instead, emotional elevation happens incrementally, one feeling-thought at a time, creating sustainable shifts in your dominant emotional patterns. When you understand where you currently stand on this emotional spectrum and learn to consciously reach for slightly better-feeling thoughts, you activate what researchers now call "upward spirals" of positive emotion, fundamentally rewiring your brain's default patterns while simultaneously improving your capacity to manifest desired outcomes in your external reality.

## The Science

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson's groundbreaking research at the University of North Carolina revealed what she terms the "broaden-and-build theory" of positive emotions, demonstrating that higher-frequency emotional states literally expand our cognitive capacity and build lasting psychological resources. Her studies show that emotions like joy, gratitude, and appreciation don't just feel good — they broaden our awareness, enhance creative problem-solving, and build resilience over time. This research provides compelling scientific backing for the Abraham-Hicks assertion that reaching for better-feeling thoughts creates measurable improvements in life circumstances.

Neuroscientist Dr. Rick Hanson's work on "experience-dependent neuroplasticity" further illuminates how the emotional scale functions at the brain level. His research demonstrates that sustained focus on positive emotional states literally rewires neural pathways, creating what he calls "positive neuroplasticity." When you deliberately reach for thoughts that feel incrementally better, you're actually strengthening neural networks associated with optimism, resilience, and emotional regulation while weakening pathways linked to anxiety, depression, and chronic stress.

Dr. HeartMath Institute's research on heart-brain coherence adds another layer of scientific validation. Their studies reveal that emotions directly influence heart rhythm patterns, which in turn affect cognitive function, emotional stability, and even immune system performance. Emotions higher on the Abraham-Hicks scale — appreciation, contentment, enthusiasm — create coherent heart rhythms that optimize brain function and physical health. Lower emotions like anger, frustration, and despair create incoherent patterns that impair decision-making and weaken immune response.

Perhaps most intriguingly, quantum physicist Dr. Amit Goswami's research on consciousness and quantum mechanics suggests that emotional states may indeed influence probability outcomes at the quantum level, lending scientific credibility to the manifestation principles embedded within the emotional scale framework. While this remains at the frontier of scientific understanding, emerging research in quantum biology increasingly supports the notion that consciousness and emotional states play active roles in shaping physical reality.

## The Protocol

Begin by familiarizing yourself with the complete 22-emotion scale: joy, knowledge, empowerment, freedom, love and appreciation, passion, enthusiasm, positive expectation, contentment, hopefulness, optimism, boredom, pessimism, frustration, irritation, impatience, overwhelm, disappointment, doubt, worry, blame, discouragement, anger, revenge, hatred, rage, jealousy, insecurity, guilt, unworthiness, fear, grief, depression, despair, and powerlessness. Print this list and keep it accessible for daily reference.

Your first daily practice involves honest emotional assessment without judgment. Each morning upon waking and each evening before sleep, identify where you currently stand on the scale. Don't try to change anything initially — simply observe and acknowledge your dominant emotional state. Dr. Susan David's research at Harvard Medical School emphasizes that emotional labeling alone reduces the intensity of negative emotions by activating the prefrontal cortex and calming the amygdala.

Once you've identified your current position, practice what Abraham-Hicks calls "reaching for the next better-feeling thought." If you're experiencing anger, don't attempt to jump to joy — instead, reach for frustration or irritation, which are incrementally higher on the scale. If you're in despair, reach for grief or fear. This gradual approach prevents the psychological resistance that occurs when you try to make emotional leaps that feel inauthentic to your current state.

Create specific reaching protocols for common emotional positions. When experiencing overwhelm (position 17), practice thoughts like "I don't have to do everything today" or "I can handle one thing at a time." When stuck in worry (position 20), reach for thoughts like "Most of what I worry about never happens" or "I've handled difficult situations before." Develop a personalized arsenal of reaching thoughts for your most frequent emotional positions.

Implement what I call the "Appreciation Bridge Protocol" daily. Regardless of where you start on the scale, spend ten minutes each day listing specific things you genuinely appreciate. Begin with simple, undeniable appreciations: the taste of morning coffee, a comfortable bed, functioning eyesight. Dr. Robert Emmons' gratitude research at UC Davis shows that consistent appreciation practices create measurable improvements in sleep quality, immune function, and overall life satisfaction within just three weeks.

Track your emotional trajectory using a simple journal format. Rate your average daily emotional position on a scale of 1-22, with 22 being joy and 1 being powerlessness. Notice patterns: What thoughts, activities, or circumstances consistently move you up or down the scale? This data becomes invaluable for creating environmental and cognitive conditions that support higher emotional states.

## Ancient Wisdom

Traditional Chinese Medicine recognized similar emotional-energetic principles over three thousand years ago through its understanding of "qi" and emotional balance. The Nei Jing, TCM's foundational text, describes how different emotional states create specific patterns of energy flow throughout the body, directly affecting physical health and mental clarity. Emotions like joy and contentment were understood to create harmonious qi circulation, while anger, worry, and fear created energetic blockages that manifested as illness over time.

Vedantic philosophy presents remarkably parallel concepts through its understanding of "vrittis" — mental modifications or emotional waves that create our subjective experience of reality. The ancient sages taught that by consciously choosing higher-vibration thoughts and emotions, practitioners could literally shift their experience of life circumstances. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali specifically outline practices for cultivating "sukha" (ease) and moving away from "dukha" (suffering) through deliberate mental training — essentially identical to the Abraham-Hicks reaching process, but developed thousands of years earlier.

## Your Next Step

Choose one emotion from the lower half of the scale that you experience regularly, and create three specific "reaching thoughts" that feel incrementally better while still being believable to you right now. Write these reaching thoughts on an index card and commit to using them every time you notice that particular emotional state arising over the next seven days. This simple practice will begin rewiring your default emotional responses while providing concrete evidence of your ability to consciously influence your emotional state — the foundation for everything that follows.