Why and how to make sure you are managing your emotions to live your best life…
The quality of our life is based on our emotional experience; how we feel is everything. Our feelings guide us in what to do making our behavioural choices for us. For example, we may feel angry so we shout, we may feel sad so we withdraw, we may feel frightened so we get defensive. The tie between how we feel and what we do is strong and most of the time we don’t even question our response to our emotions. However, there is enormous value in understanding exactly what our emotions are telling us to do and to create a more transparent relationship with our emotions so we can understand if our emotions are always guiding us in the right direction. Emotion control is fast becoming the most powerful way we can make sure we reach our potential and create the life we want.
HOW EMOTIONS GET IN OUR WAY
The part of our brain that experiences emotions is deep in the core. When it is activated, it is literally impossible for us to use the clever part our brain, the outer brain. Our decisions become more childlike and more protective, we pull into behaviours that require little thought and therefore are more likely to rely on well-worn habits or short cuts. We are likely to make more mistakes as we judge the situation based on these principles rather than really trying to understand what this specific situation needs from us. In essence we are subject to being controlled by our emotions, and pulled off from our more clever self. It means that we may end up doing things we haven’t really thought through, we may say or not say things that we later regret. Here are six things that you can do to control your emotions.
1How in control are you of your emotions? Do you feel that sometimes your feelings take over your choices? Do they pull you into behaviours that actually make things worse? For example, when you are feeling low, do you reach for the ice cream?! While that might help in the short term, does it help you in the long term or is that you letting your feelings guide your choices. Take back control by focusing on your future self and make sure you are serving a good version of that future rather than allowing your feelings to pull you off your goals.
2Learn more about yourself and your behaviours. By starting to keep a journal you can start to see patterns of your behaviour. You may find that there is a habit you have of being defensive or attacking, withdrawing or sulking, avoiding thing or people, blaming systems or people, taking too much on or pulling back from everything, saying ‘yes’ when you want to say no or not speaking your truth in the moment in case we make it less likely they will like us, avoiding decision making or getting lost in decisions. While infrequent behaviours may not help you understand your habits, frequent behaviour patterns indicate your well-worn paths.
3Start to watch others and the way they show their emotions through their behaviours. Use this information to learn more about what you like or dislike as ways to manage emotions and see if you can start to ‘act as if’ you were that person when you have the opportunity to experience a difficult emotion.
4Can you reinterpret the feelings you have as something else? For example, the feelings we get from excitement are not that different from those we get from fear, but reinterpreting, giving them another meaning might help you to work through what to do next in a way that is helpful.
5Develop a tool box to drive deliberate change over your emotions. If you want to change your emotion from sadness to comfort, know what you can do to bring yourself comfort (e.g. grab a blanket, a hot drink and a nice book). If you want to change your emotion from lonely to connected, reach out to someone or go for a walk and practice greeting people you pass in the street or the coffee guy. If you want to lift your mood practice changing your sensory experience (e.g. burn different essential oils, listen to different music styles, look at nature or pictures that create nostalgia or joy). Keep practicing different things to gain more control over your experience.
6If the difficult emotions seem to be overwhelming you may need to consider getting support. If you feel that the difficult feelings are disproportionate to what is happening, or you have found it difficult to focus on anything else, or if you have found that there is a persistence to these feelings that you can’t shift, it may be time to talk to your GP to find someone who is skilled and can talk this through with you. It may be that there are simple solutions that you can’t see because you are ‘in’ it or options or tools you don’t know about that could be super helpful.
Your happiness and your high performance relies on you controlling your emotions so they do not control you. Learning to welcome and tolerate even difficult emotions allows you to powerfully chose actions that will lead you to your goals rather than further away from them.
This is an edited extract from Dr Amy Silver’s latest book The Loudest Guest, (published by Major Street Publishing, $29.95rrp). Amy is a psychologist, international speaker and author on the management of our emotions for high performance. For more info go to www.dramysilver.com
By DR AMY SILVER
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