Emotions are your fuel; they motivate what you do, what you don't do, and how you see the world. Everyone has made bad decisions because of their emotions, and everyone has made good decisions. Sometimes, your emotions guide you correctly, but at other times, they can lead you astray. In short, emotions are complex and confusing, but invariably they tell you some desire a specific part of you has.

Knowing this, it is crucial to understand your emotions. When you don't - you find yourself in tricky situations where...

- You are having a one-night stand with your toxic ex because you feel lonely.

- You are quitting the gym because you feel hopeless.

- You are lashing out at your boss because they refuse to do any work.

You find yourself in situations like these and blame it on the emotions themselves. “If only I wasn’t so emotional," you think.

But you need emotions - blunting them is not wise. When you suppress emotions, you live in a very shallow way. You find yourself disconnected from the people around you, only chasing cheap dopamine.

People who have significantly blunted emotions are called sociopaths…

On the other hand, emotions have immense power. Powerful emotions generate potent actions, they are capable of pushing you towards goals you wouldn’t think possible. Think of the times you’ve labored away late into the night before a deadline. In a more extreme case, think of the mother who suddenly gains superhuman strength and lifts up the bookcase trapping her child underneath.

When we can harness our emotions and direct them toward a meaningful goal, we can achieve anything. This is the power emotions have, so you need to harness their power effectively.

Mastering our emotions doesn't mean suppressing them, but understanding them, working with them, and using their power for our benefit.

The problem you have is your lack of emotional awareness.

When emotions control you, the reason they "hijack” you is due to a lack of awareness of them. When you step back and look at the emotion objectively (rather than looking through the eyes of the emotion subjectively) you begin to separate from it.

This separation is crucial because it allows you to identify the emotion without letting it define you - you see the emotion objectively.

What are emotions?

Emotions are a perspective tied to a physical sensation. Thus, there are two questions you must ask to become aware of an emotion:

- What is this emotion saying? What perspective does this emotion hold?

- What is the actual sensation of this emotion? What does it feel like? Where in my body do I feel it?

To illustrate, let me share a personal experience.

I used to work in a coffee shop, I was mostly competent, but some days I wasn't quite "on it.” One day I was setting up, and my boss came in, it was five minutes past opening time, and I wasn't ready. After serving the morning rush, he pulled me to the side and gave me a list of criticisms. As I read through the list, a feeling of rage overtook me.

"How was that my fault?!" I shouted, feeling outraged and upset. I felt like I was being treated like a child in school, getting told off for being naughty.

We proceeded to have a tense back-and-forth until he threatened to send me home. Needless to say, this resolved nothing and only served to increase tensions between us.

Another time, a similar event happened. I wasn't giving my all to the job, and the manager was again frustrated with my lack of effort. As I listened to my manager express his dissatisfaction, I noticed the familiar feelings of victimization and resentment rising within me. I felt blood rush to my head, my chest well up, and I noticed the story forming in my head.

"You don't know the stress of working today… You don't know how much I do for you..." These were the thoughts running through my head.

Yet, as my manager finished his criticisms, I said...

"I understand how you feel."

I proceeded to speak calmly about how stressful my day had been and how I understood why he wasn't happy.

He listened to me because I showed him understanding first.

Now that I’ve illustrated the importance of becoming aware of and controlling your emotions, I want to help you understand how you can do this.

But first, it's important to note there isn't an agreed-upon theory of emotion. Many models explore the subjective feelings of emotions, but emotions are subjective and complex. What matters most is that you get experience with coming into direct contact with emotions, “stepping back” from them.

The most useful tool for understanding the sensation of emotion is the dimensional model. There are two axes, pain/pleasure and sedation/arousal.

I will explore each axis and uncover what it can tell you about your emotions.

Pain

The x-axis, pain, is the trickiest one for people to separate from. People craft elaborate stories around their pain and do anything to hide from it. Think back to how you and others react to pain, you could probably go on for days talking about your pain, how you’re right and they’re wrong.

One of the most important relationships you have is your relationship with pain. Most people spend their whole lives avoiding pain, chasing addictions to ease it. They seek solace in drugs, sex, and video games, but the pain always comes back.

The cost of orienting away from pain is a lack of understanding of your deepest feelings. Pain points you to what you care about most, and of course, there is no pleasure without pain.

Pain is the best teacher.

There are two types of pain you experience, meaningless and meaningful pain.

Meaningful pain is the pain you feel with your heart. The loss of someone close, the anger you feel at injustice, the pain of failing a new activity, the fear of doing something new.

Meaningless pain is the pain you feel when you lack purpose. The emptiness you feel from hedonism, the regret you feel for not going after what you wanted. This isn’t to say there is no point in feeling meaningless pain - its message is simply that you are out of alignment with your purpose.

Meaningful pain, although unpleasant, has a sense of wholeness to it. It can drive you forward. This is why meaning is so important.

I would love to go into how to find meaning, but it is beyond the scope of this article. Just know not all pain is made the same.

The issues surrounding pain are to do with avoidance. The stories you create about pain are just tools you use to numb it, but you need to feel into your pain to process it. Learn to differentiate pain from the story, this is how you see it objectively.

Forget who’s right and who’s wrong, it’s not important.

If you are interested in specific techniques for processing pain, I suggest looking into one of the following.

Both have reconnecting with the body as a core practice.

Arousal

The Y-axis is arousal. While there isn’t the same baggage and storytelling that goes with pain, it is still crucial to manage effectively.

There is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle where we have a calm but alert focus. Over the years, I have found how to maintain this best.

1. Right Action - This is one of the most underemphasized points, so I am putting it first.

If you act without integrity (lying, cheating, hiding things), you will find it very hard to relax.

This is why in the eight limbs of Yoga, the first steps are Yama and Niyama. Yama means restraints or moral vows, and Niyama means positive duties. You will find that when you act with integrity, a clear mind will come naturally.

2. Good Rest - You must rest well; this means sleeping, taking breaks, and not stressing yourself out. This is vital to maintain clarity.

Humans are not built to be on constant high alert; downtime is critical to process emotions and stay calm. On the other hand, without rest, you will lack the alertness needed.

Bill Gates said that his worst decisions in life were made after a night of insufficient sleep.

3. Good Breathing - It has been proven that breathing with your belly (instead of your chest) and long exhalation times significantly relaxes the nervous system. Use techniques like 4-7-8 breathing, wherein you inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, and exhale for eight seconds (try this now).

On the other hand, if you are too tired, an excellent way to wake yourself up is to take deep breaths; the oxygen will increase your alertness. (On a side note - looking at light is an excellent way to wake yourself up quickly)

How to Gain Control

Generally, the more polarised you are to any extreme on the axis, the worse decisions you will make. Even feeling too excited can lead you to make bad decisions.

- You may spend more than we have.

- You may reveal secrets you shouldn’t.

- You may go out clubbing when you have to get up early the next day.

If you want control, you must learn to return to the center of the graph. You must ground yourself. Here are four ideas for how you can do this.

Emotions usually have a vague bodily sense; you will feel certain emotions in certain parts of your body. Anger and panic tend to flare up in the chest, anxiety can cause your hands and eyebrows to tense. Physical relaxation of these areas can cause noticeable changes in your mood, so keep awareness in the body.

Sometimes feelings flood us, and it's hard to take a step back and relax. But, as with everything else, it becomes easier with practice. You will begin to condition a new response to challenging emotions. You will begin to turn inward to find little more than a sensation.

Becoming aware of an emotion is a big step toward the goal of emotional control. However, if you don't understand what the emotion wants, then you can be left feeling conflicted and confused.

You may discover you feel angry towards your partner and not understand why. You may feel upset when you achieve a goal. My point is that emotions aren't straightforward, but they always tell us something about ourselves.

All emotions seek expression.

All emotions have a message they want to express; if you suppress the expression or you don’t find a suitable outlet, the emotion will bottle up and come out in unflattering ways.

If you are familiar with the work of Carl Jung, you may have heard about the shadow. The shadow results from the emotions we reject the expression of because they don't fit our self-image, mask, or persona.

Example:

Consider a high-power executive named John. John prides himself on always being level-headed, calm, and in control, even in the face of work stress. This is his 'mask,’ the persona he presents to the world. Yet, underneath this mask, he often feels intense anger and frustration when dealing with colleagues and difficult situations. But since these emotions don't fit with his self-image, he suppresses them, pushing them away into the 'shadow.’

One day, John comes home from work, and his young daughter, excited to see him, accidentally spills a glass of juice on his work papers. Suddenly, John finds himself erupting in anger, completely disproportionate to the minor mistake. His suppressed frustration, having found an outlet, expresses itself in a situation far removed from its original source.

This outburst surprises and disturbs John, as it's so out of character for his persona. But it's a clear manifestation of his 'shadow' – those suppressed emotions that didn't vanish but lurked beneath his conscious awareness.

This example illustrates the importance of listening to your emotions. If we bottle them up, we will find something far more uncontrollable. Yet, to manage these emotions effectively, we need to understand their underlying message.

Understanding the message of an emotion

As demonstrated in John's case, each emotion arises in response to something we value or care about. It's helpful to think of emotions like a compass, leading us to what we value, even painful emotions.

- Guilt can show you that you've violated your moral code and hurt someone you care for

- Anger can show you that your boundaries have been crossed and you are being violated

- Sadness is the result of losing someone you care for

- Even emptiness and depression show you that you’re misaligned with your values

It's very easy for emotions to fool you, however. You can feel you know why you are angry; this is the protective story I mentioned earlier (the story we use to hide coming into direct contact with the pain of the emotion). But the truth is that when you dig deeper, you often discover another reason closer to your heart.

For example, you may be angry at your partner for not helping you unpack groceries, but when you look closer, you find that you’re actually annoyed at their inconsiderate attitude.

This is why emotions can seem so irrational.

In actuality, emotions are profound messages from your heart; when you ask why enough, when you dig deep into your heart, you will always find profound meaning.

How to inquire into your emotions

By creating these moments of downtime in your day, you'll foster an environment where empathy and new perspectives can emerge, leading to more intelligent decision-making and healthier emotional responses.

We are complex beings; we rarely have one straightforward opinion. We hold multiple perspectives within us, and this can be confusing.

Using a framework like the family dynamic can help you make sense of these conflicting and confusing parts of yourself.

When you embrace your conflicting internal perspectives, you become more mature and understanding. Within you, you have immature, needy feelings alongside mature and integral feelings. You must learn to accept every perspective that arises within you, but the perspective you choose to act on dictates who you are.

It's helpful to use the concept of family roles to think about the different perspectives that lie within you. The idea is that specific types of reactions come from specific past experiences. Confident, ambitious perspectives stem from experiences of success and achievement. Anxious and fearful perspectives come from past experiences of uncertainty and danger.

This isn't a tool to understand exactly where every conditioned response comes from, but to differentiate the different perspectives. We can integrate them to create internal harmony through observation as the "witness" or the "self.” When you take all perspectives into account - you make more informed, wise decisions.

Imagine you've been offered a promotion at work. You feel a rush of excitement and the gleam of ambition—the part of you driven by success and achievement is eager to take on the challenge. This part, let's call it the "Achiever," is like the ambitious older sibling in a family, always ready to reach for the stars.

But there's another part of you that feels anxious, maybe even a little scared. This part, the "Protector," is like a cautious sibling who's experienced disappointment before and doesn't want you to get hurt. The Protector recalls past experiences of uncertainty and failure and fears the potential stress that this promotion might bring.

Both these parts—the Achiever and the Protector—are essential members of your internal family. They both care for you but express it in different ways based on their past experiences. You might feel torn between these conflicting perspectives, but remember; this is a sign of your complexity, not a flaw.

To create internal harmony, you must acknowledge both these parts without judgment.

Listen to the Achiever's ambition and the Protector's concerns. Let the wisest part of you, the Self, weigh these perspectives and decide on the best course of action. Perhaps you'll take the promotion but also implement strategies to manage potential stress, thereby honoring both your ambition and your need for security.

By understanding and integrating these different perspectives, you allow for a more balanced, mature response that respects all parts of who you are. It's like a well-functioning family, where everyone's voice is heard, and decisions are made with the whole family's well-being in mind.

Earlier, I mentioned how emotions are fuel, and I gave examples of how this is the case. One of the most exciting parts of learning how to control and respond well to your emotions is being able to redirect them to achieve your goals.

I have given you all the tools needed to become aware of your emotions.

By understanding the perspectives of your emotions, you can align them with your goals.

Negative emotions, in particular, can be highly motivating - the pain of failure can push you to prove you can do it. Most successful people have been driven by the desire to prove they can accomplish their goals.

But don’t forget the positive emotions - tune into the excitement of achieving your goals, of living your life to the fullest. We can actively promote a feeling of vigor and drive through a deep understanding of ourselves and what makes our life meaningful.

Emotions are just energy at the end of the day. Learn to tune into that energy, and you will begin to see a life of beauty and meaning develop around you.

Thank you for reading.

- Jarvis