You have all encountered this before. One moment everything is going well, then the next you are an emotional wreck. What happened? Simply put, some event has occurred that knocks your emotions out of balance. Usually it is a minor event that ranges from a snide comment made by a friend or a condescending comment that flashes on your social media feed. It could be a political leader saying something you do not agree with or an erratic driver flipping you the bird. These things happen and when they do, negative emotions like annoyance, frustration, and anger start to flow inside you. These negative emotions take you away from being the best version of yourself and being blunt here, it just plain sucks feeling this way. You need to find a way to deal with negative emotions before they get out of hand.
One of my favorites quotes is:
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.”
Reading this quote helps prepare me for the likelihood that today, like most days, someone will do something that will result in me feeling negative emotions.
To prepare for the inevitable, you should have a set of mental tricks available to you to help combat the situations that cause negative emotions. These tricks force you to address the situation immediately so that negative emotions do not linger or grow into something unmanageable.
Here are five of my favorite mental tricks that I use to manage my negative emotions.
1) Take complete ownership over your emotions.
The most important mental trick to learn is not a trick at all. It is the truth. No one on Earth has the power to make you feel a certain way. Only you have that power. Even if someone ridicules you, kicks your shins, and steals your lunch money, you still have the power to choose how you feel about the situation. You could allow yourself to brew in negative emotions or linger in contentment. This truth can be hard to accept. Life feels easier when you can blame others for your pain. Life becomes harder when you must accept that you are to blame for how you feel.
Here is another way to look at it. The feelings you feel are internal to you. Only you know how you feel. Other people can do or say what they want to, but if you choose not to allow the other person to affect you, it will not.
Next time, someone says or does something you do not agree with, tell yourself, “I will not allow this to affect me. I am in full control of my emotions.” And see what happens.
2) Turn it into a game.
Humans love playing games so why not turn a negative situation into one? To do this, you must reframe the negative situation into a personal challenge. This turns your attention away from the negative feelings and focuses it on finding a solution.
Try this:
When something occurs that causes you negative emotions, say to yourself, “Game On” and choose one of these games:
a) In the quickest amount of time, find a workaround to the situation you are in.
b) Find something funny about what has happened.
c) Imagine someone is testing you and the final exam is to see how you turn this situation around.
d) Imagine you are on a hero’s journey and you have reached the point where a hero must come back from a deep inner crisis. What is the great insight that you can take away from this lesson that will help you on your road back to redemption?
e) Imagine that your best friend was in your current predicament. Provide them with the perfect advice to save their day.
Reframing your situation using one of the games above will help you accept the situation you are in and move forward with your life.
3) Zooming out
Negative emotions cause you to lose perspective. You forget to see the bigger picture and end up over-exaggerating how large the situation is. Zooming out, is a way to pull yourself out of the current context of the situation so you can see how the event fits into the greater scheme of your life.
When something occurs that causes you negative emotions, ask yourself these questions:
Will what occurred even matter in 1 year? 5 years? Or at the end of my life?
How does this impact my life in the long run?
Is this so bad that I cannot go on?
Inevitably, asking yourself these questions, will lead you to the conclusion that you are making a big deal out of a small thing.
4) Analyze the Negative Emotions
The best time to better understand who you are is to watch yourself closely when you are feeling negative emotions. Take the opportunity to understand the feelings of anger, sadness, or frustration. What does it feel like in your body? Where does it physically manifest? What happens if you relax the area in pain? What is the real reason you feel angry or sad? What happens if you watch your thoughts in a detached way?
When you watch your emotions like a curious observer, you stop being a participant in the emotion itself and soon the negativity loses the power it has over you. If you spend time studying your negative emotions like a scientist, you better understand yourself and the triggers that set your emotions off. With this understanding, you can come up with new strategies to stop future events from impacting your life.
5) What could be worse?
When you are feeling negative emotions, you start believing that things cannot get any worse. This is wrong. Things can always get worse and once you realize how much worse things can become; you start to feel better. You see, as bad as you think you have it, things could be or become much worse. There is nothing like reading history and seeing the lives others in the past have had to endure to make you feel humbled by the life you live today. If you are not a reader check out The Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin. Just when you think that things cannot get worse, Dan somehow finds a way to convey, that we do not know anything.
So, when you are feeling low, think to yourself, how much worse can things be? How could my life become worse? Contrary to common belief, answering these questions will not make you feel worse about life, instead you become more grateful for everything you have today.
Finally, let me close out with this last thought. When all else fails, remind yourself that all emotions are temporary. Negative emotions will pass. It may take a day or a year, but it will pass. Sleep on it and chances are you will feel better tomorrow morning.