10 Things you need to know about emotions

1. There really is no such thing as a positive or a negative emotion. It is not the emotion that is negative or positive; they all have a potential of being either. It’s the context in which the emotion is being expressed. There are times when anger for instance, is appropriate, helpful and positive. 
2. It is the appropriateness or inappropriateness and the intensity of the emotion being expressed that determines whether it’s going to be a catalyst for a good or difficult moment for everyone involved.
3. How the emotion fits with the environment or the influence on the environment that the emotions create that determines whether it’s going to be a positive or negative experience.
4. When you block emotions, you block them all, both pleasurable and painful. Feelings of numbness and depression can be signs that you tend to block your emotions.
5. Emotions play a very important role in modulating the balance between feeling good or bad – they are our signal that we need to reflect on whether we need to move towards or away from something. Ignore them and it can lead to some poor decisions.
6. A highly effective way of coping with stress is to deal directly with emotions. First, pay attention to how you may distract yourself from your feelings. Do you do any of the following?
• Keep busy?
• Watch too much TV? 
• Scroll social media for hours?
• Reach for something to eat or to drink? 
• Sleep too much?
• Intellectualize?
• Focus on other people?
• Engage in excessive shopping?

Whichever your preferred method, interrupt the process by stopping and spending a few minutes of quiet time to focus on what you are feeling and then try to examine it without feeling it. See if you can identify the trigger for the emotion.

1. There is always a trigger and there has to be a response. That response might be an increase in heart rate, reaching for a distraction, a facial expression, a blush, or thousands of other reactions.
2. Managing Emotion happens in that fuzzy area in between the trigger and the instinctive initial response/reaction. When you learn to create and use a gap to think or use a pre-planned response, the second reaction can be very different and controlled.
3. The better you get at creating this space and using it effectively, the more you can control the second response in a given situation. You can train the second response to become the initial instinctive response – hence the myth that some people can control their emotions. 
4. This is a learned response and takes practice, but does not mean that this trained reaction extends to every emotion in every area of life. However, it is very helpful if you can train yourself to react well to pressure.

If you want to know more about managing your emotions then why not visit www.mindsetcollege.co.uk where you will find lots of tools in The Power of Awareness https://www.mindsetcollege.co.uk/power-of-awareness-1  and The Art of Competing https://www.mindsetcollege.co.uk/art-of-competing1

Written by David Sammel