Taking Responsibility for Our Emotions
Posted on May 02, 2017 by Ari Siegel, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
How can we proactively take control of our emotional lives and decide how to feel rather than reactively responding to the world around us?
Many people live reactionary lives, merely responding to the world around them rather than shaping it. This is true in many areas of life, but perhaps most true for many people’s emotional lives. How often have you heard statements along the lines of “That woman made me so angry!” or “You’re going to make me lose my mind!”?
In truth, the only person who can make you feel a certain way is yourself. We choose the emotional meaning we attach to situations or events; nothing can make you feel anything unless you decide that it will. Deciding how to feel is no simple matter, however. We are easily influenced by the situations, seemingly uncontrollable circumstances, and emotions of those around us. We often pick up negative patterns of others, whether in thought, emotions, or even word choice.
You can choose how to feel at any moment, even when being influenced by others. By learning how to control the words you use to describe experience, you can control your emotional experience. Then your emotions will be tools to serve you rather than yourself being a tool to serve your emotions. For example, if a person has a habit of getting angry in a certain situation, that person has just become a tool for anger. However, if that person learns to laugh at what once made them upset, they now have a tool to use to experience more positive emotions. In this way, emotions can become a tool to serve you as the master. It’s all up to you.
You owe it to yourself, and those around you, to live the best possible life you can. Your ability to improve the emotions you feel will positively influence your health in the short and long term, and allow you to live a more fulfilled life. Also, emotions are often contagious and being in better emotional states can improve the states of those around you.
Emotions are our lives. We see and experience events in life through the lenses of our emotions and our emotions affect the quality of our lives. Events are meaningless without the emotions
that add texture to your reality. Thus, the ability to control our emotions and guide ourselves to more positive states will directly improve the quality of our lives.
Emotional control is an important skill in any area of life. our ability to achieve goals hinges on your emotion of motivation. The quality of your relationships is shaped by your ability to feel empathy and love. Strong emotional control will allow us to marshal the emotional resources we need to succeed in any area of life.
