Master Your Emotions!

Do you sometimes feel like your emotions are running your life?  Do you react rather than respond?  Do you get triggered easily?  Do you push difficult emotions away only to have them pop up and bite you (i.e. surface at an inappropriate time) in the end?  Do you feel that your life would be easier if you managed your emotions rather than the other way around?  If so...read on.

First a little education about emotions and how they work.  Our emotions are created by the thoughts we think, what we tell ourselves about what is happening around us.  This can be concsious, or quite frequently an automatic thought - something we've conditioned ourselves to think about a given situation.

Emotions act something like waves in the ocean.  You may have noticed that a wave starts from flat sea, builds up to a peak, then subsides.  Emotions act much like this.  If we feel an emotion building within us and simply allow ourselves to feel it, it will peak and utltimately subside.  This is the natural way of emotions.

However, when we get caught up in the thoughts that created the emotion and perpetuate them, we fuel the continuation of that state of emotion.  Conversely, if we feel the emotion beginning to build and then shut it off before it flows through it's cycle, it will build and build until it overflows - frequently at an inconvenient time.

So, how do we "master our emotions", as advertised in the title of this piece? 

1. Allow your emotions to come into existence, build and subside without becoming fearful and fueling them, or trying to suppress them.  Simply notice what is happening and let the feeling move through you until it subsides.
2. If you notice that you are having emotions that are inapproprate or out of proportion to a given situation, pay attention to what you are telling yourself just before you feel that emotion.  Examine those thoughts for if they are appropriate to the current situation.  You may find that you are really reacting because the situation reminds you of something that has happened earlier in your life, not what is happening now.  Change your thoughts in those situations to something that more accurately represents what is currently happening.

Emotions are wonderful sources of information for us; they tell us that we need to pay attention to something.  Mastering your emotions is not about suppressing them, but rather it's about allowing them to ebb and flow naturally, and noticing what they are trying to tell you.