Master Your Emotions, Master your Destiny

Have you ever woke up and tell yourself you need to go for a jog without actually doing it because you just didn’t feel like doing it? Exams are just around the corner but you had not done your homework because you just felt like watching TV? If you are running a business and you know you just have to work a few more hours over-time to close a deal but you just felt like going home early to be with your family? Are there times when times when you know you had to do something, but you just didn’t do it because you did not feel like up to doing it?

Emotions Not logic dictate your actions

You know logically that you have to study for your exams. You know logically you have to stay in office a little longer to work out your deals. You know you have to go out to jog to shave off those fats. By doing these things, you will benefit yourself in the future. But, you grow frustrated becuase ‘something’s’ stopping you from performing. Notice what words are used when describing what’s stopping people from taking action. Do you know that in every excuse, there is a word called ‘feel’?

When people ‘feel’, emotions are dictating their actions and choice of words used. Emotions, not logic drive your actions. Many people struggle in their quest for success because they cannot control their emotions. Instead, they allow their emotions to run on a roller-coaster auto-pilot. Some days they feel good, some days bad. When they feel good, anything is possible in the world. When they feel bad, they can’t seem to do anything. Inertia is stopping them. That’s why you see for some people, after participating in motivational course, they remain all pumped up for the next few days. Subsequently, they go back to their unmotivated state becuase they are unable to sustain their motivation in their emotional bankbook.

How can you control your emotions?

Human beings are driven by 2 needs, the need to avoid pain and the need to gain pleasure. And there are 2 types of emotions. Resourceful emotions and unresourceful emotions. A simple example of resourceful emotion would be motivation and an unresourceful emotion would be disappointment. Therefore, how can you elicit resourceful emotions when you are experiencing unresourceful emotional states?

• First, you have to eliminate the unresourceful emotional state by associating pain to this emotion. For example, when you experienced disappointment, perhaps when you could not close a sales deal, you could link pain by asking yourself that in remaining disappointed, you would not be achieving any results but just blaming someone or yourself for the blotched deal.

• Then, switch to a resourceful emotional state by linking pleasure to this new emotional state. For example, after feeling disappointed, you could switch to feeling motivated to close as many deals as possible to make up for the unsuccessful deal. By closing more deals, you would have been much more closely to meeting your sales target!

Managing your emotions is an important key to success. Master your emotions well and you can master your way to emotional freedom.

So, my challenge for today is to start controlling my emotions with the help of consciousness and analyzing my own feelings.