If you’re emotions are getting the better of you, use self help motivation to take control.
When you feel emotions, you’re senses are experiencing a strong feeling about somebody or something and can create a state of mind that feels good or bad, positive or negative. Emotions that may cause you discomfort include anger, apathy, doubt or anxiety. Those emotions that cause you to feel uplifted include courage, love and joy. Most of us experience these emotions most of the time to some degree or other and are able to deal with them. For many however, it’s not so straight forward.
- Spiraling Down.
When we suffer pain in the present moment, we experience it as hurt. Pain we have suffered in the past we will experience as anger and pain we may believe we will suffer in the future is experienced as anxiety. Bottled up anger that we aim at ourselves, we experience as guilt, which robs of our energy and can lead to depression.
- External Stimuli
What gives rise to our emotions in the first place? The answer is “External Stimuli”. Through our evolution we have have learned to respond automatically to perceived threat and danger, we have become a bundle of automatic reflexes and in many situations that is a good thing. In the modern world many of the threats and dangers that used to exist no longer do so but we are programmed to respond just the same to events that we believe have an external origin and yet are really a response to what we believe and the way we feel and think. The “trigger” is external. Our response is “internal”.
- Reaction
When faced with any situation our brains will search through our memories at lighting speed to determine how that situation should be dealt with and how we should react. The brain is so good at this, it will often react and respond instantly. But this instant response doesn’t always serve us well. For instance, someone may speak to you in a certain tone of voice (this is the external trigger) that your brain instantly interprets as threatening and you respond to the speaker angrily. (The internal response). The brain searched for memories and found one or more where in the past you were hurt by a similar tone of voice to the one you heard. What the person said may not be at all threatening, but before you actually deciphered the words you heard, you have already reacted to the tone of voice. So firstly, you display the emotion of anger and secondly the emotion of embarrassment. So in this situation the speed with which your brain dealt with this situation was less than helpful. We need a little self help motivation that will enable us to take control of our emotions.
- Count To Ten
So if our response to external stimuli is instant but nor always relevant, how can we avoid displaying unhelpful emotions?
We need to place a pause between stimulus and response. Stimulus – Pause – Response. We don’t literally have to count to ten, but if we can get into the habit of pausing for a second before we respond we will give ourselves time to hear what was really said, see what was really there and act accordingly. This like any other habit comes through practice and will take a little time but it is well worth doing. Soon you will be in control of your emotions and this in itself is a form of self help motivation.
I wish you Health, Wealth and Happiness.
