Managing Emotions...

Emotions, the dictionary defines it as – “A strong feeling derived out of one’s circumstances, feelings or relationship with others”. It’s a small word but has a lot of weight. Emotions play a very crucial role in our lives. We all experience different emotions in our lives which keep changing every minute, hour and day. Positive emotions like laughter, joy, hope, excitement can bring well-being in our lives whereas negative emotions like hate, depression, anger, regret, jealousy can harm our mental health and physical well-being. But despite knowing all of this we still harbor negativity in us. This negativity could stem out of anything:

-          Unfilled wishes

-          Unfair treatment

-          Low self-esteem

-          Low self-confidence

-          Seeing more failure than success

-          Feeling disrespected or disregarded

-          Too many unrealistic expectations from family

When something goes wrong or doesn’t happen the way we wanted it to, we feel low, uncared for, unimportant and very easily fall into the victim trap. Emotions are strongly linked to memory and experience. If something bad has previously happened to you, your emotional response to the same stimulus is likely to be strong. Then the blame game starts. What we experience in our minds comes out in the form of our communication. We say hurtful things to our closest people which impact our relationships. Does what am I writing sound familiar to you? So what must be done to save ourselves from becoming lesser versions of ourselves? Here are some points I could think of which can be followed in situations where our emotions get the better of us:

1.       Accept the situation – Most of us are always living in our past and refuse to believe what is currently happening in our lives. If a relationship has gone wrong, some issues with at our workplace or anything else that takes place, we like to regret our actions or compare our lives before those incidents happened. Then we feel sorry for ourselves and feel victimized. We start questioning on why this has happened to us! This thought process clouds our thinking ability and makes us feel very emotional. So we need to first accept that things are not the same any longer and that this difficult situation is also a very temporary period which will pass through.

2.       Feel your emotions – Do not run away from your emotions. Every human being will feel different emotions at different times – sadness, happiness, loneliness, excitement, helplessness and so on. No person is born mortal enough to only experience happiness and contentment in their lives. Nobody can have only a rainbow and sunshine in their lives.  So if you are feeling stressed, confused and gloomy on a certain day, then tell yourself that it's completely alright to feel like that. It’s just a bad day and not a bad life. It’s alright not to feel like socializing for few days and wanting to spend time alone to figure things out.

3.       Engage yourself in some activity- If a particular situation is beyond your control then there is no point deliberating and wasting your time and precious energy scrutinizing the situation. Rather than that, we need to be patient till things turn for the better. Till such time we must engage ourselves in some activity like pursue a hobby or indulge in some sports activity. Divert your mind. Most of us want to feel great before we do things to make ourselves happy or take our thoughts away from difficult situations but actually, it’s the other way round. We need to get mentally and physically involved in extracurricular activities to feel better!

4.       Adjust your expectations- Remember you can’t be perfect in everything you do. Give yourself some breathing space. Do what’s realistic and do not get carried away by people’s unrealistic expectations.

5.       Form a support system- Speak your heart out to someone from your family or friends who can understand you and give you correct guidance. Stay away from energy drainers, gossipers and negative people who in no way can offer you correct advice. Seek professional help if required

6.       Pray and Meditate- Spend some time praying to the form of GOD you believe in. Praying gives you the strength to cope up with the situation and gives us hope that everything will be sorted out by the Almighty. Meditation and Pranayam help you in stress management and soothe your nerves and your mind which in turn will help you focus rationally on your problem and manage your emotions.

Follow the above and see the change….