Identifying and learning from emotions

Take control of your consistent emotions and begin to consciously and deliberately reshape your daily experience of life.

-Tony Robbins

When the so-called “negative emotions” (anger, anxiety, sadness, depression..) arise, we often feel trapped, unable to cope with them, and in this way, we drown even more in sadness or hopelessness. However, these emotions aren’t ought to be negative! They appear for a reason and thus we can identify their messages, adjust, and take action.

Handle your emotions

Here’s a method on how to and not to manage your emotions:

• First of all, stop calling them “negative”! They’re here to help and show you the way. So call them “message emotions” instead.
• Next, let me show the ways not to cope with your emotions
  • Avoid them- suppression (don’t just do nothing about it!)
  • Feel nothing or endure them (emotions are significant so don’t get rid of them)
  • Share the problem (why would you want to make anyone else as depressed as you are?)
  • Compete with others’ emotions (don’t compete with anyone regarding whose problem is worse!)

Instead, you could learn and utilize them in a positive way by changing the physiology, perception and action!

 Follow the next steps:

1. Identify the emotion whether it’s anger, sadness, overwhelm, etc.
2. Acknowledge and appreciate the emotion for bringing you a message.
3. Get curious about its message and ask: Do I know everything about this? What else could this mean?
4. Get yourself reassured that you have the ability to deal with it, and remember a time when you overcame it. If you haven’t done this before, you can do it now.
5. Be certain that you can overcome it in the future again.

Message emotions show us that it’s time to take a grip, display strength, decisiveness and act in a new way

Examples 

Here’re some examples of emotions and what messages they give:

Fear– Prepare for something important. It’s time to focus. Remain frozen or go snowboarding.

Hurt– Change communication

Anger– Your own rules are violated. Maybe it’s time to make new rules or accept and let it go.

Frustration– What you’re doing isn’t working. It’s time to change, flex and adapt.

Disappointment– Focus on what you want right now and what you can do about it.

Guilt– Own standards are violated. Reflect on your values, do something differently.

Overwhelm–  It’s time to reprioritize, take one step at a time, stop multitasking.

Lonely– Need to connect with people.

Boredom– Recall enjoyment, curiosity, find pleasure.

Anxiety– This is important to you. You truly care and there’s nothing wrong with it. However, you don’t have any control over the outcome. Let your butterflies fly in formation, embrace them, and appreciate because they’re here to make you perform better. Don’t remain frozen, but take action, knowing that you have anxiety as your friend.

Now, you have your emotions in place, and thus your mental state is ready to change. You’re able to ask positive questions, breathe efficiently, move in an empowering way, talk kindly to yourself and focus on the positive. You have the entire arsenal for managing your state and the last thing that you need is the intention to change and apply this to your daily life. Create a ritual to which you’re committed to stick with. It won’t be easy at the beginning, but you’ve got to persist and implement this in your daily routine, so you can control your state when it will matter the most.

Good luck!

Mastering others is strength,

Mastering yourself is true power.

-Lao Tzu