One of the things I’ve always had trouble with for a big part of my life has been controlling my emotions. For years I was a slave to my anger without ever hoping to control it, and it was only a few years ago when I learned how to get over the anger deep inside of me and move on. But recently, with the progress I’ve had over other aspects of my emotions, I thought it would be fitting to pick up a book regarding controlling emotions.
Emotions
The book starts by explaining why we have our emotions in the first place, and how they were useful back when we didn’t have such high critical thinking. The main purpose being survival, emotions helped us react to dangerous situations, and avoid extinction. But these types of dangers aren’t present in our day to day life anymore, and it’s more important now than ever to control and harness these emotions.
Emotional Resilience
It then progresses to emotional resilience and calmness. And how external factors can affect the calm, and trigger emotions way out of proportion to the initial trigger. It explains why is it important to know these triggers, and offers “Plutchik’s wheel” as a way of finding the causes behind the general feelings and needs in our day to day life.
When we talk about emotional resilience and calm, we are really talking about the emotional triggers that push us over the edge. The vast majority of the time, these triggers will be subtle and external and not at all proportionate (or even related) to the response they will create within you.
Frameworks
Maybe you feel utterly destroyed, decide to give up, and are very close to tears or rage. Take a deep breath to gather yourself, close your eyes, and pause. Gather your inner reserve and force yourself at least to change your facial expression and keep it in. You’re still in react mode.
It then proceeds to make use of this new understanding, and how we can implement that in our day to day life. First, being responding vs reacting, which, in a nutshell, means taking a few seconds and understanding our emotions before we let them lash out, out of control, like a volcano.
It further explains how we can find the root cause of all these emotional triggers, and how we can avoid them by modifying the situation, shifting focus, changing thoughts, and even avoiding the situation altogether.
There are a few tools we can use to pinpoint the root cause in different scenarios:
1) ABC Loop: explain the main element of an emotional outburst that we can break down and analyze, what you did to cope, and loop backward.
2) Emotional Dashboard: Similar to ABC Loop, but focuses on thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and impulses.
With the help of these tools, overtime we can identify the source of our emotional outburst which can help us in the long run.
Self-Esteem and Immune system
In the next chapter we learn about self-esteem, and how it can insulate our emotional immune system from emotional triggers, needs, and pains. And how we generally affect this self-esteem by negative self-talk and setting wrong expectations for ourselves which can only lead to failure. And how important it is to stop these negative self-talk and replace them with positive ones to improve our self-esteem, as well as, having correct expectations and goals in life, to avoid trying to live up to standards that we can’t humanly achieve.
Perfection is simply unattainable for any of us. This is something we need to accept. You’re never going to be absolutely perfect.
One of the best examples given in this chapter is to expect ourselves to be able to do things even as time passes by. Maybe we could play the Piano at the age of 10, or we were good at soccer in our teens, it doesn’t mean we should expect ourselves to be able to do them in the same level (or at all) 10 or 20 years down the road. As time passes, we replace our old abilities with new ones, and this is ok!
Mindfulness
The book ends with a few tips regarding preventative care. Mindfulness, being grateful and savoring the moment to name a few. Appreciating every moment, letting go of the past, and accepting the future could make a huge difference in our daily lives, and they can remove the source of most of our worries in life.
Life will always be uncertain. Obsessing about tomorrow is self-defeating; there will always be another tomorrow after it.
One of my favorite parts of the book was the last chapter, where it explains that every situation in life, good or bad, is neutral. Adjectives are added through our point of view, and we are the ones deciding if an event is good or bad per se.
everything that happens in the world is neutral—every event and consequence thereof. Every event has a different effect on everyone, but the events themselves are neutral, without intent, and play no favorites. There is no bad or good; it is all subjective. It is created with you, along with all emotions and judgments.