Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.
Emotional mastery (part 3) – influencing our emotions
Submitted by RagsToRich on Thu, 2010-02-18 07:00
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The actual process by which the brain triggers the emotion feelings to send through the body is not something fully understood by anyone – not psychologists or neurologists. As such we’re forced to operate in the realm of pseudo-science. That means a few things – one of which is that if you just go out there and look for techniques for changing your emotional responses in situations, you’ll find tons of stuff and most of it either only works for select individuals or is very poorly explained.
It is not possible to just switch our emotions on and off like a light switch, however it is possible for us to influence our emotions in a couple of ways. This article is a follow up to my previous article on emotional mastery called the truth about emotional control, and will discuss techniques and methods for having greater control over your emotions.
When I say influencing your emotions I do not mean over-coming them or building emotional tolerance, both of which I discussed in the previous article. What I mean is the ability to actually change your emotional response to a situation. This can mean either a reduction of a certain type of emotional response, or an increase of another type of emotional response.
Reducing the negative (or positive) emotion which occurs in response to a situation
Sometimes it is necessary to reduce your emotional response to a situation. In fact in traditional Zen terms it is preferable to always reduce emotional responses to situations as Buddhists tend to believe that any kind of attachment, including emotional attachment, is certain to lead to suffering.
I haven’t quite been convinced of this just yet ;)
Regardless, reducing the emotional investment you have in certain ideas and in response to certain things is incredibly useful. Especially if you have some negative social habits, such as feeling sorry for yourself or feeling frustrated by a lack of validation.
You can do this by the Sedona Method releasing technique. This technique can be used both in the moment when you are experiencing a feeling, and separately when you are outside of the situation but want to reduce the potency of the emotions arising habitually.
Method for letting go of feelings – similar to the Sedona Method release
1. First you must summon the feeling as strongly as possible.
Think on the situation which causes the emotion to stir up inside of you, focus on the things about it which cause the feeling to be strongest.
If you are already feeling the emotion strongly then you can skip this step – for example if you are performing this method in the moment just following the situation which has caused the emotion to arise.
You will now be asking yourself a series of questions, it does not matter if the answer to these questions is yes, no or maybe – all that matters is that you ask them and answer them.
2. Ask yourself “could I welcome this feeling?”
What this means is that you offer acceptance to the situation and to the feeling, do not offer any resistance.
3. Ask yourself “could I let this feeling go?”
That means could you imagine a possible situation in which you could let this feeling go. If you’re having trouble with that then a good analogy is literally picking up an object, and then opening your hand and dropping it.
Of course it is possible for you to be able to let the feeling go, it’s possible to let anything go.
4. Ask yourself “would I let this feeling go?”
As in, would you prefer to have this feeling occur again and again, or would you prefer to live a life free of it ever occurring again?
Well, would you let it go if you had the choice right now?
5. Ask yourself “when?”
When will you let the feeling go? Next year? Next week? Tomorrow?
Or right now?
This question is an invitation to the mind to release the feeling right away.
You should feel now as if the feeling has diminished, you should feel a little more liberated.
Now return to step 1, and repeat the process.
Do not be concerned if the amount by which the feeling reduces is a little at first, the more you experience letting go, the better you become at it.
You can read more about The Sedona Method in my article on effective emotional release.
Increasing the positive or negative emotion which occurs in response to a situation
Emotions are a powerful motivator. A common theme in films and literature is the things that people will do for love, or greed, or in anger. If you are able to impart in yourself a strong enough desire, or a strong enough distaste, towards stimuli then you will find yourself automatically inclined to act upon or avoid it.
Using negative emotions – getting rid of addictive habits
As I discussed in my article on destroying bad habits, I have had a lot of success with creating an avoidance towards cigarettes using NLP. If you want to learn that technique I highly suggest reading that article.I’ve not as yet been able to replicate the same NLP technique by using positive sensations. But with the right determination, using the techniques discussed in that article you can create in yourself atleast a repulsion towards any thing.
Often it is impractical to use this kind of process as a motivator. Let’s say for example that you want to find yourself a job with better pay – to what would you attach your negative anchor? You could attach it to your job, your current level of responsibility, your office, sitting at home (not looking for new jobs)… but all of these situations would have drawbacks.
If you start to hate your current job even more it won’t necessarily increase the amount of effort you’re inclined to put into a new job search. Like-wise if you create a negative anchor with procrastination at home, although it may ensure that you become more active, it does not necessarily mean that you will be more active looking for a new job. It would be impractical, and slightly insane, to create negative associations with everything that is not the actions you want yourself to take.
So in some circumstance we require a method which allows you to cause more powerful positive emotion to be conjured up habitually by the body in response to a certain situation.
Increasing the energy of an intention – creating a positive drive towards your goals
The more importance with which your mind places on a thing is directly related to the energy which you have associated with an idea. This is what the power of intention-manifestation and the law of attraction and what-not is all about.
Whenever you think about the things you are really well motivated to do in life you will typically have highly energized ideas about what they are. If you enjoy, for example, computer games then your idea of a good computer game will be a highly charged idea of a computer game, perhaps the image itself will actually be glowing, perhaps there will be a lot of colours, you get the idea.
If you then compare that idea (if you don’t like computer games, just choose something you do really like and examine that idea) to your idea of something which you don’t really care either way about – for example a choice between French coffee and Spanish coffee – then you will be able to observe a large difference in the magnitude of energy injected into each of the ideas. Again, if you find that actually you do have a strong opinion the difference between French and Spanish coffee then choose another idea that you do not feel strongly either way about ;).
The idea concerned the choice between French and Spanish coffee is most likely quite a weak image: not much colour, not much sound, and it probably flickers out of your consciousness as quickly as it arises. Really think about it and try to understand what that idea is like in your mind. Remember that this idea has to be something you do not care about at all in order for this exercise to demonstrate to you the difference in energies of ideas.
Compare that to your idea of something which you really enjoy doing and you will notice it’s much like comparing a thrashing over-powering thunderbolt to a tiny spark of static.
This comparison of ideas gives you a good insight into the different levels of energy is you have associated with ideas, and thus some idea of what a more energized idea will be like.
It is this which the mind uses to determine how immediately important things are to you – and thus how strong the emotions are which will be released when the mind determines that this thing can be obtained.
You can actually increase this energy. By doing so you can change the habitual tendencies of your emotional mind in a positive way. If you invested a lot of energy into a concept that you love Spanish coffee, and likewise a lot of energy into the disgusting revolting taste of French coffee, then soon enough you'd find yourself very opinionated on the matter. This opinion would stem from emotions, and the emotions are released because the idea is energized.
To learn how to increase the energy of an idea you can read my article on becoming intensely driven.
Healthy body, healthy mind
There’s no doubt about it – you’re more likely to be in positive upbeat product moods if you have a healthy body. So before you begin any of the techniques above, you might want to take a good look at your diet and exercise regime.
If you’re snacking on junk, eating fast-food, and chain smoking, then it’s likely your mood could not be an accurate representation of your current emotional circuitry because it will be hampered and obscured by a mess of nutrition deficiency induced mood-sinks.
If you don't believe me, here's an easy experiment. Go out and buy 4 chocolate bars, eat them all as fast as you can instead of eating your normal breakfast, and observe your mood swing over the next few hours.
These results are astonishing - I actually did try this and observed it. You will start with a short energy boost and uplifted excitable mood, shortly followed by a drop in energy, shortly followed by a desire to rest, and then for several hours you will find yourself very irritable and easy to anger. Essentially I wrote off a whole day to a bad mood. Coincidence? Unlikely.
So arguably before you even begin examining the defects in your emotional system you should make sure that you have a healthy body which is nourished with the nutrients it requires.
What is the quickest and most effective way to begin getting all the nutrients your body needs to have a healthy mind?
Read up on healthy balanced diets and start integrating one into your life immediately. I discussed my current diet recently here.
The other thing you should be doing in order to keep your body-mind in healthy state is regular exercise. 30 minutes once a week absolute minimum.When exercise is a chore, it becomes difficult. When it’s fun, it becomes easier than easy.
The trick is not to force yourself to take up power lifting or lap swimming, it is to find something you really enjoy doing which is physically active.
I cannot recommend martial arts enough, but if that’s not your cup of tea then you might would to do some internet research on the other couple of hundred thousand different activities out there which you could be doing to keep in good shape.
One important note – don’t just rely on yourself to take up this habit. Get a friend in on it, and commit to going to a class together. Classes are by far the most effective way to ensure you maintain regular physical activity, the bonuses being that you make some new friends and get experienced guidance.
In the next and final article in this emotional mastery series I will discuss specifically the topic of self-esteem, what it is, and how to increase yours.
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Personal Mastery
Really enjoyed reading your article! Makes wounderful sense. Thought, if you don't mind have you also come visit my blog and leave an opinion/comment along with a link to your site here.
thanx again for your input
Charley Star
Blog @: http://gainingpersonalmastery.blogspot.com/
I'll stop by Charley. Rich
I'll stop by Charley.
Rich
thanks for the help to hear the heart better
Your Emotional mastery have bridge our hearts. Hot 'Wow!' came out of itself at a glimpse and that 'Wow!' was repeated after the reading your article. Thank you for...for my luck to meet you on a web.
As a painter I see the emotions as the nature. My artworks are my response to life. The creative work transform as positive as negative emotions into the miracle of light which always enlightens and has no shades - we need just to be wiling to listen at the silence and to hear the heaven for to ride the sunbeam.
While the emotions bloom out on my approach to Emotional mastery, your deep words calm down and portray the heart in detail. Your text enabled me to look at my metaphors consciously and thus sat back in awe - made me your student and fan. Thank you for the worthy pondering deeper verses. I am proud of adding your link to my blogroll and would be greatly honored with your reciprocal link.
Welcome to my blog. I hope you will enjoy my pictures and have a good time in my archives (my online art galleries).
Thank you once again.
Sincerely yours
Tomas Karkalas
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