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One of the most important things that you can do to help you gain more emotional intelligence is to master your own emotions. This can be hard. When you encounter many negative emotions, like anger, sadness, fear, and so on, they are really hard to control. We have all gone through those times when we get angry about something, even if it is a small thing, and we just lose control. We say and do things that harm others and that we feel bad about later. When this happens, we have let go of our mastery over our emotions, and this is not a good thing.
So the first step is to learn how to master our emotions. This goes with all of our emotions, whether we are talking about the good emotions or the negative emotions. This doesn't mean that you can't feel these emotions ever, but you will observe them and decide whether or not to share them and to what extent, helping you to gain control.
Mastering your emotions can be one of the hardest things that you work in this whole process. It is much easier just to let the emotions come and take over your life, without considering how they will affect you and others along the way. Here we are going to discuss some of the things that you can do to master your emotions better so they don't just take control over your life.
Know yourself
The first step that we will look at is how to know yourself. Are you familiar with how the different emotions will feel to you? Do you know where tension or anger is held inside of your body? When you feel anxious or sad, do you know how these affect you?
There are so many times that we will react to a situation without really knowing why. We feel the emotion come on suddenly before they just spring into action, already in the defensive stance and ready to fight. But if we really got to know each other and gain some awareness, it is possible to tune into these emotions before they start to take over. You can learn where they are inside of your body and over time, you will even be able to spot some sensations, such as anger, that are familiar to you. And when you start to notice that those emotions are coming on, you can recognize this and decide what you will do about them, rather than just letting them take control.
A good thing to try out if you would like a chance to get to know yourself better is to spend a bit of time each day, even if it is just five minutes, in quiet contemplation. You can take this time to use meditation (we will discuss that later on), sitting down and journaling, going on a walk or doing another activity that lets you be alone and with your thoughts. The point here is to think about your life, no matter where you are in it, and how it makes you feel.
It doesn't take much time each day to see this work. But looking at your life and understanding what emotions are there, you will be able to gain a sense of your own self, and even an introspective, that most people don't have. Our modern world does not encourage this quiet contemplation. We are too busy running from one place to another to get things done, and they never have enough time to finish it all. But this makes it impossible to recognize the things that may be bothering you, and with all that stress and anxiety, it is no wonder that so many people are ready to explode.
Protect yourself
After you have had a chance to begin your quiet time, you can also use this time to think about ways that you can protect yourself. First, you may be asking what this all means? It basically means that you should take some time to look at the external influences that are in your life and how they make you feel. Some of them are going to pop out right away as things that make you feel anxious, upset, or angry while others will take a bit more time to get there.
One place that you should look is the media that you consume. Things like magazines, newspapers, radio, news, and television can all place you into an emotional storm right away in the morning, but only if you let them. If you seem anxious and stressed, especially after reading or watching some news, it may be time to consider getting rid of bad news out of the day. This can save you time, which you can use for some of your own meditation or other quiet time, while also protecting yourself emotionally.
The company that you keep, or the people you spend your time with, can also influence your emotions. Are these people uplifting and ready to make you feel great, or are they the kind of individuals who like to complain and bring you down all of the time. If you are uncertain about how they are making you feel, take note of your emotions and thoughts when you leave their company. Do you feel up and as if you just spend your time well or do you feel like you are trampled and more anxious than when you got there? If the latter is true, it may be time to find a new company to hang out with.
There are so many things out there in our world that could be influencing your emotions in a bad way, and some of them are out of your control. It is hard to change your coworkers, and it is hard to tell the news to stop broadcasting the bad stuff, but you can make some decisions in your life that will eliminate, or at least reduce the effect they can have on your life.
Controlled expression
No matter how hard we try, there are going to be times when we feel emotions. These emotions are perfectly natural, and they are part of us being human. Just because you are able to control some of your emotions doesn't mean that you should become a robot. What this means is that you have enough control over the emotions to make sure they don't take over you. Yes, you may feel an emotion over a certain situation, but this does not mean that you play the victim and let the emotion dictate your behavior and actions.
Since we have already discussed some ways to reduce the negative things that come into our lives, the ones that will drain out all our energy, you should now have some more free time to work on ways that will help you to deal with your own internal moods. You may find that when you are anxious or upset, for example, spending a few minutes on a brisk walk can help you calm the anger down, or writing out your emotions in a journal can help you see that it is not that bad.
Learning how to move that anger into something that is much more positive is so much healthier for the body. When you feel a negative emotion, like sadness and anger for a short period of time and then you burn it off (using one of the tips from before), then you are ready to get on with your life and feel great. The issue is that most people don't have these outlets for their emotions. Instead, these emotions are allowed to drag on for days, making you fall into a pattern of negative emotions. This loop is so bad for you, and it will just keep drawing you back into that same feeling.
There are so many good ways that you are able to control your emotions though. You can stick with choosing an outlet for the emotion so that you can get it all out and then move on. You can think about the emotion and whether the situation actually warranted it or not. But the important thing is that you learn how to turn off the negative emotion, not to constantly think about the situation that dragged you into the state in the first place. If you can let go of that, you are going to feel so much better in no time.
Time travel
Another thing that you can try out is time travel. Time is one of the best ways to change your personal perspective to the feelings you have. If you find that you are getting caught up in a type of negative state that feels huge, it is time to stop. Close your eyes and take in a few deep breaths before you ask yourself a question: "Will this (issue, circumstance, or whatever), matter a month from now?"
Make sure that you are honest with yourself over this. Yes, you feel the emotion pretty strongly now, but it is unlikely that you are going to care or even remember it by the time next month comes around. So why should it matter so much to you now? If it is possible for you to feel a bit better in the future about this emotion, it is definitely possible for you to feel better now.
Now, you may be really upset about the situation at hand, or it could be something really big that is bothering you. You may go back to that question from before and decide that yes, I will still be upset about this in a month. If this does happen, it is time to go on to the next step.
Tools
When it comes to dealing with negative emotions, they are going to occur because there is a little blip that happens in our circuitry, or like when a fuse happens to blow in your home. Until that circuit gets back to work, all the stuff on the appliance is going to stop working.
Your negative emotions are going to have the same kind of control over you. They make you blow a fuse, and you will respond by going offline with a lot of negative emotions. It doesn't really matter which emotion you are dealing with, whether it is sadness, injustice, or anger, the cause will always start out the same. You let that negative emotion inside, and it blew a fuse in your system.
Learning how to properly deal with these negative emotions and gaining the tools that you need, such as the ones that we have talked about in this chapter, will make it a bit easier for you to stop the negative emotion and to also fix up the circuitry. You will still feel the emotions when this happens, but it helps you to stay in control and only allow the negative emotion to have so much freedom to cause issues.
Mastering your emotions can be hard. These steps will definitely help you to get going on the right path, but they are not the only steps that you should be taking. And it will take time to go from letting your emotions control you to being the one in control of your emotions. But if you get the right tools in place, make sure that you recognize those emotions, and find a good outlet for them when they do come, you will gain mastery over your emotions in no time.
