Emotions aren’t always easy to deal with. In the following paragraphs, we will go through in further detail how they operate. If you take the time to learn about the processes that underlie feelings, you’ll be in a better position to handle them when they do occur.
The first thing that you need to grasp is the concept that feelings come and go. You’ll be joyful one minute, then you’ll feel terrible the next. Even if you have some influence over your feelings, you still need to acknowledge the fact that they are very unpredictable. You are setting yourself up for disappointment if you anticipate being joyful each and every moment of the day. You put yourself at danger of blaming yourself when you “fail” to be happy, or even worse, of beating yourself up because of it.
To begin exercising command over your feelings, you must first acknowledge that they are fleeting. You have to have the skill of learning to let these things go without the need to firmly connect with them. You have to give yourself permission to feel sad without adding any kind of commentary to the experience, such “I shouldn’t be sad” or “What’s wrong with me?” Instead, you need to learn to accept things as they are.
No matter how strong your mental fortitude is, you will nonetheless suffer sorrow, loss, or despair at some point in your life, albeit certainly not all three at the same time and hopefully not on a consistent basis. You will, on occasion, experience feelings of disappointment, betrayal, insecurity, resentment, and humiliation. You will have self-doubt as well as doubts about your abilities to become the person you want for yourself. But it’s good because feelings come and go; what’s more essential is that feelings come and go.
Your distressing feelings are neither negative nor pointless.
You can criticise yourself for having unfavourable feelings, or you might have a perception of oneself as having a psychologically feeble mind. You could even think that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Nevertheless, contrary to what you may believe, the feelings you experience are not inherently negative. Simply said, emotions are just feelings. Nothing more than that.
Being sad does not, as a result, make a person any less of a person than they were, say, three weeks earlier when they were joyful. Even if you are feeling down right now, it does not imply that you will never be able to laugh again. Keep in mind that the source of your pain is not the emotions themselves, but rather the way you interpret them and the blame game you play with yourself and others.
It’s not always a bad idea to embrace your negative feelings. Sometimes you have to go all the way down to the bottom before you can make it to the top. Depression may strike even the most resilient individuals on the planet. Elon Musk never anticipated that he would have a mental collapse; yet, he did so, and he was able to recover from it. Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression for many months after the death of his fiancee.
The terrible thing that happened to him did not stop him from running for president of the United States. There is often a function to be served by unpleasant feelings. They could function as a jolt to catch one’s attention. They might teach you something constructive about who you are as a person. Naturally, when you’re under their spell, it may be difficult to look on the bright side of things, but in hindsight, you may realise that emotions, even the sad ones, had a role to play in your ultimate success. This may be difficult to accept at the time, but it’s possible that you’ll come to terms with it.
The value of being able to experience unpleasant feelings
Your feelings are not meant to make your life more difficult; rather, they are trying to communicate with you. Without these, you won’t be able to progress. Consider the unpleasant feelings you experience to be the mental version of experiencing physical pain. You despise being in pain, but the reality is that if you didn’t experience pain, you probably would have passed away by now. Pain in your body is a potent indicator that something is wrong, and it should prompt you to take some type of corrective action.
It might be that you need to see a doctor, which could result in you having surgery, altering your diet, or engaging in more physical activity. You wouldn’t do any of these things if you weren’t in bodily agony, and your condition would become worse, which might ultimately lead to your death before its natural time. Emotions function in the same manner. They provide you a sign that you need to take action to change the way things are currently going. It’s possible that you need to cut ties with some individuals, find a new profession, or eliminate a limiting narrative that’s causing you unnecessary misery in your life.
The ephemeral quality of different feelings.
Regardless of how miserable you are, how much pain you are going through, or how dreadful you feel at any particular moment, this too must pass. Take a moment to reflect on some of the unfavourable feelings you’ve had in the past. Think back to the most difficult occasions in your life. During the most trying times in your life, you were undoubtedly so preoccupied with your feelings that you feared you would never be able to break free of them. You just couldn’t fathom ever experiencing joy again. However, even these instances came to an end. After some time, the storm passed, and the sun was able to shine through once again.
Your feelings constantly shift and change. Your feelings of sorrow and sadness will go away, and your anger will begin to lessen as time passes. Keep in mind that experiencing the same feelings over and over again is typically an indication that you have ideas that are disempowering and that you need to alter something about your life. How will be something we talk about later. If you suffer from severe depression that lasts for an extended period of time, it is recommended that you speak with a doctor.
The complexity of one’s feelings.
Have you ever had the thought that you would never experience happiness again? Have you ever had such a strong connection to your feelings that you believed they would never leave you? Don’t worry about it; many others experience the same thing. Your negative feelings function as a filter, and they distort the way you view the world around you. Every encounter is interpreted via this lens when one is going through a bad episode. Despite the fact that the environment around you may not change, the manner in which you perceive it will shift significantly depending on how you are feeling. For instance, when you are sad, you will not like the food that you eat, the movie that you watch, or the activities in which you participate.
You have a pessimistic outlook on life and a helpless, imprisoned sensation as a result of your perspective. On the other side, when you are in a good mood, it seems like everything in life is going well for you. You naturally have a nicer demeanour, the food tastes better, and you love every activity that you take part in. It’s possible that after reading this book, you now feel that the information you’ve acquired will prevent you from ever suffering from depression again. Wrong!
You will continue to feel sad, frustrated, depressed, or resentful, but it is my goal that with each occurrence of these emotions, you will gain more wisdom and be able to remind yourself that these feelings, along with everything else, will pass. I have to own up to the fact that it’s not hard for my feelings to mislead me. Despite the fact that I am not my feelings, I nevertheless give them too much credit and fail to see that they are just passing through for a little while.
I fail to realise that they are not me, which is the more essential point. Emotions come and go all the time, but I am here to stay. After the emotional upheaval has subsided, I often feel like an idiot for having given such serious consideration to the sentiments I was experiencing. Do you? It’s interesting to note that external causes may not be, and usually aren’t, the primary reason of a rapid shift in your mental state, yet this is a common occurrence. It’s possible to be in the same circumstances as before — with the same issues, the same amount of money in your bank account, and the same employment — and yet feel quite differently about things.
In point of fact, if you examine your history, you’ll see that this kind of thing often occurs. You may have a few hours or a few days of minor depression before regaining your “default” emotional state and returning to your normal level of happiness. Your surroundings does not alter in any way while you are going through this time of emotional strain. Your internal conversation is the only thing that changes as a result of this. I strongly recommend that you make an active effort to observe whenever occurrences of this kind occur and that you begin to recognise the deception that your emotions are playing on you. It is recommended that you take this a step further and write down what has happened in a diary. You will have a better knowledge of how to handle your emotions as a consequence of gaining a more in-depth comprehension of how they function if you follow these steps.
The pernicious influence of one’s feelings
It is not often possible to remain present enough to be able to monitor an emotion in the beginning because of the often-overpowering energetic charges that are associated with it. An emotion typically reflects an intensified version of a thinking pattern. Its goal is to control you, and most of the time it is successful unless you have a strong enough presence to resist it. The power of negative emotions might be compared to a spell. When you are under their spell, it feels difficult to break free of them and do what you want. Even if you are aware that continuing to focus on the same ideas is a waste of time, you nevertheless find yourself following the crowd. You continue to connect with your ideas because you are experiencing a powerful pull, and as a consequence, you are feeling worse and worse.
When something like this occurs, it appears that no sensible argument will succeed. The greater the degree to which these feelings correspond to your own narrative, the more powerful the draw. For instance, if you have the belief that you aren’t good enough, you can feel guilty or ashamed every time you assess anything you’ve done as being ‘not good enough.’ This can be a cycle of negative feelings. Because you have been through these feelings so often in the past, reacting with them has become second nature to you. Please refer to the section on “Identification” for further information on how the process of identifying with feelings really works.
The capacity of emotions to act as a filter.
Your mental and emotional condition may have a significant impact on how you see life, which in turn can cause you to act and behave in various ways. When you’re in a good mood, you have more energy to devote to whatever you’re doing. This energy will provide you with:
- More assurance in each and every one of your endeavours
- A willingness to think about new things that you might do to make your life better.
- The capacity to go away from or step beyond of one’s comfort zone.
- More space in your emotional life to endure through difficult circumstances.
- Innovative improvements, heightened creative capacity, and
- Simple access to more good feelings within the same emotional spectrum.
When you are in a negative frame of mind, you have less accessible energy, which provides you with the following benefits:
- A lack of self-assurance that seeps into all aspects of one’s life.
- A lack of drive that restricts the range of activities that you are ready to perform
- A hesitation to take on new tasks and go outside of your comfort zone
- A diminished capacity to endure in the face of obstacles
- A tendency to be drawn to negative ideas that exist within the same emotional range.
Permit me to illustrate my point with a true story from my own life. Both incidents took place at the same time and in the same general environment. My mental and emotional condition at the moment was the only thing that was different.
Excited about the potential of my new web business:
More self-assurance in all that I do; I get the impression that my thoughts are sound. I can’t wait to get started on my books, and I can’t wait to start writing articles. My door is always open when it comes to showcasing and discussing my work.
- A disposition that is willing to take into account alternative courses of action: I am willing to examine fresh ideas or to participate in the development of a new project. I’m able to conceive of methods to work together with other writers in the creation of a new coaching programme that I can make available to my audience.
- The capacity to break out of my comfort zone: As time goes on, I find that it is easier to challenge myself to go beyond my comfort zone. It’s possible that I’ll talk to folks I’m not familiar with or host “Facebook Lives,” for example.
- Extra space in your emotional life to persevere: I keep working on my tasks even when I don’t feel motivated to do so.
- I am open to new ideas, which may result in improved ideas and more creative output. It’s possible that I’ll think of fresh concepts for books, essays, and other creative endeavours.
- I am able to quickly access more happy feelings because I attract a greater number of pleasant emotions. While doing so, however, my mind is able to reject negative ideas in a more effective manner because I refuse to connect with them.
My lack of results is leaving me feeling a little bit depressed:
- A lack of self-assurance: I begin to have second thoughts about myself as well as all of the tasks that I am presently working on. All of a sudden, whatever I accomplish is rendered pointless or deemed “not good enough.” There are times when I find myself thinking things like, “What’s the point?” “I’m not going to make it,” or “I’m foolish.” It is going to be a huge difficulty for me to promote myself.
- I don’t have any drive to accomplish anything since I don’t feel like it. Negative ideas constantly bombard me, and I have no way to defend myself against them. My mind keeps going back to the same unfavourable ideas, playing them over and over again like a broken record. They seem to be quite real, and their presence colours everything of my experiences.
- I have very little energy left over to go out of my comfort zone and take on ambitious undertakings. This makes it difficult for me to take on new challenges.
a diminished capacity for perseverance, as seen by my difficulties in completing activities and my tendency to put off working on things that I’should’ be working on. - I have a tendency to allow more and more negative ideas into my head since I tend to focus on the bad. Although it’s possible that these ideas had crossed my head previously, they are far more persistent today. My identification with these notions causes me to experience further unpleasant feelings.
Both incidents took place just a few days apart from one another. My mental state was completely different, but the surrounding environment remained the same, which is what led to my acting in a different manner.
The attractive force of one’s feelings
Your emotions operate like magnets. They draw in ideas that are on the same mental ‘wave.’ Because of this, when you are in a bad condition, it is easy for you to attract more negative ideas, and the act of clinging to these thoughts causes the situation to become even more difficult. Your thinking and the feeling both feed off of one other, which results in a feedback loop that may be very destructive. The thinking pattern gives rise to an emotion that is a magnified mirror of itself, and the vibrational frequency of the emotion continues to feed the original thought pattern. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about how you can escape the magnetic power.
Destroying the attractive force of one’s feelings
Imagine that you had a horrible day at work and that it completely ruined your mood. Your current bad state is causing you to attract additional negative thoughts, so try to change it. Suddenly, you become obsessed with the idea that you are still unmarried at the age of thirty and begin to berate yourself for it. Then you condemn yourself for being overweight and blame yourself for it. You also recall that you will be required to report to work on the following Saturday, which brings to mind how miserable your job really is. Do you see how much simpler it is to get unfavourable ideas into your mind when you are feeling down? It is essential that you break the pattern of associating negative ideas together in order to forestall the occurrence of such a scenario.
Because of issues with my knees, I am unable to participate in a wide variety of sports. These injuries have been a source of emotional agony for me since I have always had a passion for athletics. To my great fortune, I very sometimes have knee discomfort; yet, when it does occur, it often causes me to feel frustrated or angry. When I was watching my thinking process one day, I recognised that the discomfort I was feeling in my knees had a bad impact on my mood, which in turn triggered even more negative feelings, creating a negative feedback loop. Because of the agony, I was forced to concentrate on everything that was going wrong in my life, from my job to my personal relationships. As a direct consequence of this, I would have bad feelings that would last for hours, sometimes even days.
The point I’m trying to make is that it doesn’t matter how wonderful your life is; if you spend the majority of your time thinking about the challenges you face, you will eventually get melancholy. You will need to learn to compartmentalise your problems if you want to experience less bad feelings. Don’t allow your imagination make things more dramatic than they need to be by associating unconnected events together. It is just going to make things worse for you. Try to keep in mind that your mind is the only place where unpleasant feelings may dwell. When seen one at a time, the majority of your problems aren’t nearly as significant, and there is no law that states you have to handle them all at the same time. Learn to take note of how you are feeling. Keep a journal of your bad feelings. Investigate the factors that bring it on. The more you carry out actions like this, the more particular patterns will become apparent. For instance, let’s imagine that your feelings of sadness lasted for a few days; in this case, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- What caused these feelings to surface?
- What kept them going strong for those two days?
- What kind of a lie was I playing on myself?
- How and why was I able to get myself out of my rut?
- What lessons can I take away from this experience?
Your responses to these questions will be quite beneficial to you and will be of great assistance to you in the future when dealing with similar problems.
Your capacity for feeling and expressing emotion
In the past, we saw that you were able to attract ideas that mirrored your current emotional condition. On the other hand, the reverse is also true. It is impossible to attract ideas that are out of step with the emotions you are experiencing at any given moment. Even if you made an effort to imagine happy ideas, your mind just would not be open to receiving them. Because of this, even if happy ideas may sometimes enter your head while you’re experiencing bouts of grief, you won’t be able to connect with them, and as a result, you won’t be able to shift the way you’re feeling in response to the situation.
Your emotional set point
Have anyone ever advised you to “cheer up” while you were sad or to “show appreciation” when you were in a state of grief? Did it help? It’s quite unlikely that it did. This is due to the fact that the emotional state you were in did not permit you to access these feelings at the time. In their book “Ask and It Is Given,” Ester and Jerry Hicks provide a paradigm that explains how different emotional ranges are related, as well as how we might climb the ladder from more negative to more positive states of mind. For example, according to this concept, pessimism or sadness comes first on the lowest rung of the ladder, followed by rage as the next step up.
What this implies is that if you’re feeling down in the dumps, any signals of rage are a sign that you’re moving up the emotional ladder. This makes sense. You probably feel like you have more energy when you’re furious as opposed to when you’re sad. Just recently, during a period in which I was mired in depression, I found myself experiencing sentiments of rage. I don’t know why, but I finally became fed up with the tales and excuses that kept going through my head, and I used that frustration as fuel to finally do the things that I had been putting off. As a consequence of this, I was able to gather steam and work my way up the emotional ladder. Be on the lookout for more energising feelings if you find yourself experiencing less desirable states of mind. Anger and other so-called bad emotions, such as despair, may actually be helpful in overcoming other, even more disempowering feelings. Only you know how you feel. Therefore, if it makes you feel better, anger should be accepted.
A mental and emotional toll is taken.
You probably already know this, yet you bring a lot of unneeded suffering into your own life. You bring suffering upon yourself every time you fixate on a concept or cling to a feeling for too long. Your response to the discomfort caused by physical injury is a good illustration of this principle. Whenever you are in pain, your first response is to try to make sense of it. When you do that, you lead yourself to think in a negative way. The mental agony you experience is a direct result of your affiliation with these concepts. The following is a list of some of the potential thoughts that may enter your head under such circumstances:
- What if you never get relief from this ache?
- What if the discomfort makes it such that I can no longer do X, Y, or Z?
- What if it gets worse?
- What happens if my doctor recommends that I have surgery?
- What if I am unable to report to work today?
There is a really critical project that I have to complete on time. Because I am short on cash, it is going to be a very difficult day for me. If things continue to grow worse, how will I be able to pay the medical bills?
This inner debate leads to misery but contributes nothing to the effort to find a solution to the situation. Even if you choose not to linger on any of the problems listed above, you are still able to operate normally and take the required steps. The issue is not having negative feelings; the problem is the mental pain that you produce as a result of having negative emotions. Another kind of mental anguish is that which is brought on by procrastination. Have you ever procrastinated beginning a task for days or weeks, just to finish it and find that it wasn’t a huge deal?
If so, how did you react? I have. Which was more draining: the actual work, or the amount of time you spent stressing about it? You may not have gotten enough sleep the night before, and as a result, you keep telling yourself that today is going to be a challenging day. You are beginning to feel fatigued even before you begin to think about all of the things that need to be done. Psychologists have discovered that emotional anguish takes up the majority of your mental and physical resources.
The fact that many of us feel fatigued at the end of the day is surprising given that spending the day sitting at a computer shouldn’t be very taxing on the body. The following is an excerpt from Dale Carnegie’s timeless book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, which includes the following: One hundred percent of the exhaustion that the sedentary worker experiences, even when they are in excellent health, is related to psychological causes,” which we understand to imply emotional elements.
People bring an incredible amount of suffering upon themselves by their own actions. As you go through the chapters of this book, you’ll see how ridiculous this endeavour is and decide to abandon it. People in your immediate environment will be fixated on events of the past, which they are unable to change. You’ll see people of your family and circle of friends becoming anxious over events that are beyond their control.
You’ll see folks going around in circles, thinking the same thing over and over again as they try to solve an issue that doesn’t exist outside of their head. Mystics have been telling us for thousands of years that the source of our troubles lies inside our own minds. They have extended the invitation to us to search therein on several occasions. Nevertheless, how many people are paying attention in this day and age? A significant portion of us are addicted to the difficulties we face. We don’t let go because we moan, play the victim, place blame on others, or talk about our problems without taking any action to remedy them. Refusing to interpret our feelings in a manner that is destructive and debilitating is the best method to alleviate some of this mental anguish.
The reasons why there are no difficulties.
If we take it a step further and examine reality from an objective standpoint, we may conclude that there are no difficulties. I will explain why:
Whatever you choose not to pay attention to will not be there
You are the one who gives an issue life by giving it your attention. From the point of view of your mind, something does not exist if you do not give it any consideration at all. Take this hypothetical situation, for instance. Imagine you lost your legs. There won’t be an issue, and as a result, you won’t have to go through any mental anguish because of it if you quickly accept that reality and refuse to give it any attention. You would just be living in the reality that exists (although obviously this is not the case most of the time).
The only thing that makes an issue real is time.
It is only possible for there to be an issue in the past or in the future. Where exactly do the days of the past and the future reside? Within your own head. In order to recognise that there is a problem, you have to utilise your ideas, and thoughts are something that take place in the past or the future, not in the here and now.
In order for an issue to truly exist, it must first be identified as such.
You are the only one who can create a problem out of a circumstance by giving it that meaning in your head. Aside from that, there shouldn’t be any issues. This idea could be difficult to understand at first, but it’s important to understand the philosophy behind it. In the next paragraph, we’ll take a look at the many factors that might have an effect on your feelings.
