Emotions

This being human is a guesthouse. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. 

Every emotion is useful if you know how to work with it. There are five basic competencies for working with your emotions: self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-regulation, self-inquiry and self-expression. These competences correlate with the five competencies for working with other people's emotions: awareness, acknowledgment, influence, inquiry and listening.

Self-awareness is the capacity to apprehend what is happening within you. This capacity to experience your inner condition is a basic survival skill as an organism, but human beings enjoy a special level of consciousness. You not only experience your inner states, you can reflect on them and make them an object of your awareness. When you say, "I feel (myself) afraid," there is a part of you that is afraid (the "myself" part), but not all of you. There is another part of you (the "I" part) that notices the "myself" part of you is afraid.

You can increase the intensity of your awareness at will. Like a theater set that is illuminated with more or less intensity, awareness occurs along a continuum. You can be more or less aware, more or less mindful. The less attention you pay, the less alert you'll be, and the greater the probability of living a mechanical life governed by emotional impulses. The less aware you are, the less able you'll be to develop the objective witnessing part of yourself that can perceive and respond impartially. Awareness is the raw material of freedom and responsibility; the basic tool for working with your emotions.

"Emotions need not be acted on when we see that to do so is counterproductive, but if they are treated with respect they can become invaluable pathways to important information (...) It's a mark of wisdom and maturity to understand that we have the power to be a nonjudgmental witness to our emotions, thoughts and memories without being controlled by them or driven to act in self-destructive ways." - Nathaniel Brander

Self-Acceptance is the capacity to accept your emotions without repressing them. This implies suspending your judgment. You acknowledge that any emotion is an automatic impulse that arises beyond your control. It is impossible for you to prevent an emotion. What is possible for you, and vitally important, is to abstain from acting impulsively.

It is helpful to remember that an emotion always has a valid foundation in the thoughts that underlie it. There's no such thing as bad or unreasonable emotions. What is possible is that the thoughts at the root of an emotion are inaccurate, unfounded or destructive. Before you can analyze these thoughts, you need to first open the cocoon of the emotion with gentleness, never with reproach. Once the thoughts are revealed, you can engage them critically. To work with your emotions, you need to treat yourself with the same kindness, understanding and compassion with which you would treat your child. When judgment presides, understanding hides. If you criticize your emotions, you'll never understand them. And without understanding them, you can't manage them.

Self-regulation is the capacity to regulate your impulses, the discipline to maintain control in the face of instinctual pressures. To regulate means to give direction to your emotional energy. According to Daniel Goleman, the capacity to subordinate immediate gratification to long term objectives is the most important psychological skill: "There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature, lead to one or another impulse to act."

In order to subordinate your actions to long-term interests, you have to take the driver's seat. You have to use your will to choose consciously what you'll do and what you won't do. This allows you to control (without repressing) the counter-productive impulses and motivate yourself to pursue ends that are important to you. Self-awareness and self-acceptance are critical for self-regulation. In order to regulate your impulses, you need to simultaneously separate from them and "embrace" them. Once you have done this, you can explore how to respond to the situation (which includes your emotion) in ways that are congruent with your values.

Self-Inquiry is the capacity to understand the stories that give rise to your emotions. When you experience an emotion you can examine its underlying beliefs in order to separate the useful information from the neurosis.

It starts with words...

If you want a happy life, it starts with your words.

You can’t be happy with yourself when you have just uttered unkind words to either a loved one or  a stranger. You can’t be happy if you've conjured up awful mean thoughts to someone who cut you off in the grocery queue or at the library.

You can’t force happiness into a guilty conscience.

The only way to win this battle is to slow down and take stock of why exactly you rush to judge, to feel bad, or to declare a sour mood on a perfectly sunny day.

Why do you feel that you should have a say as to how things were supposed to go in the first place?

Is it really true that the way you want something to turn out is always the best way for them to turn out?

Or is there perhaps a bigger mystery at work here that even you and I may not comprehend?

What to do instead: Chew your words and run them through 3 gates in your mind before you say anything. Start right now. The first gate asks if the words are kind. The second gate asks if the words are necessary. And the last gate asks if the words are true. If all your answer are a yes, then say the words. If one answer is a no, then hold your tongue.

If you want a happy life, it starts with your character.

You can’t be happy if you are judging the circumstances in your life constantly instead of accepting them. Accepting does not mean that you don’t care, or that you are uninterested in improving it. Don’t confuse the two.

Accepting means that you are clear about what’s real, what’s happening – instead of arguing with reality. When you come to grips with what is, you can then decide if you want to go along with it or if you want to create a new circumstance in your life.

What to do instead: When you catch yourself judging and analyzing everything – why your ride is late, why your boss skipped you for the promotion, whatever it may be, quickly pause and find one reason why the way things turned out is marvelous, terrific, and just plain perfect. Write that reason down. Remind yourself about it next time you jump to judgements and worst case scenarios about life’s little hiccups.

If you want a happy life, it starts with your beliefs.

What you believe, you manifest. What you believe comes to be. If you believe yourself to have power and will, you shall have it. If you believe yourself worthy of achieving your dreams and then go work for them, you will achieve them.

Likewise, if you think yourself unworthy of a home, good health, lots of money or happy relationships, you will then manifest poverty, illness and cancerous relationships in your life.

If you want a happy life, it starts with your humility.

You can’t be happy if you are full of expectations. What your husband or wife must do to live up to your expectation. What your children and pets should do to fulfill your expectations. What your company and boss and management should do to satisfy your expectations.

Ask yourself: Why should anyone live up to you and your big list of expectations? Your expectations are ego-driven and your ego will lead you astray in life. Watch out!

Nobody owes you anything and when you make them feel obligated by listing all your grand expectations – not to mention a list of past disappointments as a result of them not meeting those expectations in the past, you are only creating a web of unhappiness, a perpetuation of disappointment in your life.

You can never have inner peace as long as you are living in your cloud of expectations. So stop expecting and embrace humility.

What to do instead: First, drop all your expectations, past or present, personal or professional and when you do, feel the heavy weight lift off your back. Stand up tall and confident. Then start entering into agreements. Get yourself and the other person to agree to something that works for both of you. Get them to give you their word and you give them theirs.

No more superiority of expectation from you imposed to them. Instead, two intelligent people enter into a mutually beneficial agreement, and that is the most effective way to get what you want in life and thus be happy.

If you want a happy life, it starts with your reality.

And you can’t be happy if you are getting mad at every little or not-so-little thing that happens to you or for you.

Getting worked up sucks out the life force and the beautiful energy that you could put to use to a much better, calmer, happier state of being.

And there is no doubt about the regrets that always follow when you lose your temper, but even if you know it not to be good for you, you do it.

You continue to self-sabotage the good life you have because you confuse actual reality with the way you think that they ought to be.

What to do instead: You can argue with reality until you are blue in the face but in the end, you’ll lose. So skip the argument and start winning from the start. Take a deep breath and go for a walk when you feel your temper rising. Remind yourself to stay in your own business and not another person’s when you feel like meddling, and use positive affirmations to shine a light on this beautiful reality that is YOUR LIFE.