Wednesday 26th September 2007
Slave to our emotions
We’re all emotional beings and everything we do is determined by our emotions, whether it’s joyous, sad, angry or glad there’s no stopping our emotions. Its brilliant having them, they influence our decisions and give us passion to do what we do but we need to be aware to not let them control us.
How good does it feel on the first day of your long awaited holiday or when someone gives you a wonderful compliment, your feel good emotions run high and how lousy do you feel when you’re unsuccessful for the job you dearly wanted or when someone has upset you.
Too often when something bad happens in our life our initial reaction is to soften the blow by either shutting out the pain or going into an emotional spin of self-pity, self-destruction or depression.
Most of us are pleasure junkies we will do anything to avoid pain, discomfort or adversity, we want everything to work out perfectly (and why not). The thing is “sh*t happens” and at times it’s unavoidable and you have to learn to suck it up and move on.
There have been so many times over the years I have heard people say (whinge) how unfair it is when something didn’t go as planned, whether they have put on weight or they weren’t as successful as someone else. They start to feel sorry for themselves and resort to their “comfort castle”, they find their security blanket in eating junk food or go into some kind of hibernation in the hope the problem just disappears. This only masks the pain and doesn’t address the problem, it just doesn’t disappear, at some stage you have to get over yourself and confront the issue, learn from it and move forward.
Being able to control your emotions is the tremendous skill it’s a very commonly found in people who are successful. Why? Successful people still feel the same emotions the same discomfort but they have this awesome ability to handle it more efficiently. They don’t become slaves to their emotions, somehow they are able to dust themselves off get back on their feet and start again. Unlike most people who tend to dwell in self-pity city and suffer from analysis paralysis (over analysing) thus become to afraid to try again.
We all would love to be successful, talented, charming, liked, be in great shape, victorious, a winner (you get the picture) and if it doesn’t happen straight away we look for excuses or someone or something to blame. Remember there is no such thing as an overnight success and nothing worthwhile in life comes without a struggle. Anyone who has achieved any form of success will tell you they had to put in some hard work to get there.
There is only one person who determines the outcome of whether you will be or won’t be successful – YOU!
What I am saying here is things can be pleasant or unpleasant depending on how much you let your emotions control the situation. Too often we let the negative emotions bring us down and kill momentum when if you took a positive from the situation, draw on a feel good emotion to re-ignite your passion you will discover moving on isn’t that difficult and you may even achieve success.
So next time you strike adversity don’t become a slave to your emotions, learn from the experience and don’t apportion blame, take responsibility for your actions and have power over the outcome.
“Emotions are much like waves, we can't stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf”.
Jonatan Mårtensson
Love to hear your comments
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