Emotions.
Also referred to as...
A state of mind.
Mood.
Instinctive or intuitive feeling.
Mental state.
E-motion.
Energy in motion.
E-m-o-t-i-o-n.
Energy in the body that you give a name and meaning to.
Psychologist Paul Eckman, in 1972, identified six universal emotions: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness.
To manage the energy in your body, you must be able to identify it.
Know which is which.
To be able to identify it you must take pause and check in.
What energy or sensation in your body are you feeling?
What do you call it?
Do you ascribe a specific meaning to it?
Do you make it good or bad?
These answers affect how you currently manage and experience your emotions.
To manage emotions is to be in charge of them.
To manage emotions is to make and keep them.
To manage emotions is to work on or alter them.
To manage emotions you must learn to first see them, understand them, and decide how you want to manage them.
When you start here, you can begin to decide... what triggers this energy within your body?
What words are said?
What have you eaten?
What actions are taken?
What stimuli is triggering you and causing this energy within you?
This process requires slowing down.
This process requires presence to who you are being.
To manage your emotions, you must decide who you want to become.
In a world of speed, many focus on what they are doing and how they are doing it. Others focus on this as well as who they are being as they are doing.
Being supports doing.
Being rushed, anxious, and nervous, impacts what you do.
Being calm, slow, and steady, impacts what you do.
Who are you being as you are doing?
Or perhaps the more important question...
Who do you want to be as you are doing?
As a cheat sheet, reflect on who inspires you.
Often, you are inspired, or in spirit of who someone is being, as they are doing what they do.
After you know who you want to become, which serves you in managing your emotions, begin to change your experience of the trigger.
How do you change your experience of the trigger?
Glad you asked...
Learn to see it differently.
Learn to use different language to describe the trigger.
Learn to give different meaning to describe the trigger.
Or, in the event sight is not of service... change the trigger.
For example, if eating a bunch of junk food causes you to feel tired, change what you eat.
In summary, to manage emotions, learn how to...
1. Identify the sensation in your body and the language you are using to describe it.
2. Decide how you want to manage that emotion.
3. Understand what is causing the motion of energy in your body.
4. Change how you experience the trigger.
