Manage Your Emotions

As you search for meaning and purpose in your daily life, you’ll be required to manage your emotions experienced along the way.

We live in a world that tells us we must be positive, even though a great deal of personal growth takes place when we’re experiencing discomfort as we navigate challenges.

Being positive has become a new kind of moral correctness. Although I love being around positive people who help lift me up, I also appreciate when someone is authentic with me.

We all have times when we experience a whole range of complex emotions. Some people label emotions as good or bad. Judging and labeling emotions in this way doesn’t serve our resilience. It also doesn’t support authentic interactions with family, friends, co-workers, employees, and others we encounter in day-to-day life.

How you manage your emotions impacts every aspect of your life. If you try to suppress your feelings, they’ll come back even stronger and you’ll struggle to navigate them effectively.

It’s only when we open ourselves to working through our experience of uncomfortable emotions–such as fear, sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt, embarrassment, and disappointment—that we’re able to recognize that ultimate success comes from embracing our whole range of emotions as a gift.

You don’t get to raise a family, have a meaningful career, or leave this world a better place without experiencing some stress and discomfort.

How to Manage Uncomfortable Emotions

Susan David, an award-winning Psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and author of Emotional Agility, tells us that “Discomfort is the price of admission for a meaningful life.”

Here are a few key strategies that the author recommends as you work through the stress and discomfort of experiencing uncomfortable emotions:

1. Be compassionate with yourself. Recognize that you’re doing the best you can with what you have.
2. Create space between you and your emotions. Instead of saying, “I am angry,” say “I notice that I’m feeling angry.”  When you say I AM, you are making yourself the emotion.
3. Effectively name the emotion you’re feeling. “I am feeling _____.”  When you practice this simple strategy of effectively naming your emotions, it activates the readiness potential in your brain that helps you identify your intentions moving forward.

 Choose Your Attitude and Focus

In order to live a life that honors what matters most to you, it’s important to lean into your emotions and move through the discomfort you feel. Otherwise, you simply stay stuck and feeling bad. The more important something is to you, the more intensely you may feel a whole range of emotions.

How do you shift from an uncomfortable or unhappy feeling to one of your choosing? I  share some tips in my blog, Seeds of Greatness, which discusses the importance of attitude and focus as you nurture something you want to grow.

Martin Luther King did not deliver his message, “I have a complaint.”  He had every reason to complain, but he understood that he would attract more of whatever he focused on. So instead, he delivered his famous message, “I have a dream.”

There are three things you have control over:

1. Your thoughts
2. The images you visualize (created by your thoughts)
3. Your behavior (what you say and do)

It all begins with your thoughts. When you carefully choose the thoughts you focus on, you also control what you visualize, which affects your attitude and how you behave.

Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, was an Austrian Neurologist and Psychiatrist. He was also a Holocaust survivor who reminded us that “The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” It was Frankl’s ability to choose his attitude that enabled him to survive three horrific years in various concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau.

Frankl pioneered an approach to psychotherapy that focused on the human search for meaning.

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

-Viktor Frankl

Lessons from World Thought Leaders

All of these great thought leaders were imprisoned for what they believed in and fought for. Each one found ways to effectively manage their emotions and choose their attitude so they could honor their fierce commitment to a cause.

Nelson Mandela fought against apartheid in South Africa and was imprisoned for 27 years. Without his commitment to the abolition of apartheid in the face of oppression and imprisonment, the world could be a very different place.

 

Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese writer, professor, and human rights activist who called for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule. He was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. During his fourth prison term, he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

 

Mahatma Gandhi was the leader of the Indian independence movement against British rule. He first went to prison in 1922 for civil disobedience. He was released from prison after serving five years of his six-year sentence, and went on to become the most famous advocate of peaceful protest in the world.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. became the face of the Civil-Rights movement in the 1950’s. He played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was arrested five times for his nonviolent resistance to racism.

 

Rosa Parks was an African-American Civil Rights activist who became famous when she stood up for what she believed – by sitting down. In 1955, Parks sat on a bus in Alabama, heading home after a long day of work. When asked to give up her seat to a white passenger, she refused and was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black people to relinquish seats to white people when the bus was full. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system. It also led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.

 

Susan B Anthony was an American social reformer and feminist who played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement. She campaigned for equal rights for both women and African Americans. In 1872, she was arrested and convicted for voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York. In 1878, Anthony arranged for Congress to be presented with an amendment giving women the right to vote. It became the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Imagine having enough passion for something that you felt compelled to focus your thoughts, visions, and behavior in a way that you’d never give up on your dream.

What’s possible in your life?

If you’d like support to do this important work, let’s schedule a no-cost, no-pressure Discovery Call today.  I can help you take the next meaningful step to move you forward with passion and purpose.

Additional Resources:

• Blog: Seeds of Greatness
• Blog: The Key to Living the Life You Want
• Blog: How I Discovered My Purpose
• Blog: Out of Control
• Guide: Cultivating Happiness: Living Life on Your Terms