Managing emotions and our genuine feelings is not an easy task for human nature, such as pain, fear, anxiety, loss, anger, conflict and tension. We are quick to fire with the tongue and damage the atmosphere with our behaviour since our tendency to justify our opinions, stance and fight for our rights surpasses the unselfishness of considering the worlds of others.
We are either quick to react with fury and expression or dangerously quiet with our internal rage.
Self-regulation is part of being emotionally intelligent, a key area of personal skills. It encompasses managing your emotions, inner resources, abilities, behaviour AND thoughts and contains the ability to manage and control impulses.
Learning to self-regulate takes time and patience! It is a deliberate decision and choice to change an unfavourable behaviour, action and expression. It is a reshaping of your inner-being, which coincides with much hard work, deliberation and courage to make it work. This is the ultimate successful path to self-improvement and growth to becoming a better person.
To develop emotional strength (resilience) we have to carefully navigate our way within how our thoughts shape our life.
It does not matter how dire your circumstances are and how much you have lost or gained – your thoughts are going to steer you to – either success – or defeat! Your thoughts develop patterns as you - do the same thing, consistently, the same, over and over again. And then you start again and engrain the habit into your brain that it is like a merry-go-round!
If it developed into a favourable, joyful ‘thinking pattern’ of fulfilment and contentment – you would be experiencing the merriness of the round-about – and you would develop ‘Emotional Grit’ while laughing at the trials and tribulations life throw at you.
However, we are so engulfed in overpowering self-pity generated by an ongoing pattern of negative thoughts, hurt, pain and unhappiness – that we get stuck in the monotonousness of a roundabout of turmoiled negative thoughts that are going - nowhere! They torment us and deprive us of emotional courage and start a destructive cycle.
If we choose climbing on the positive merry-go-round of constructive thinking – we could position ourselves to develop ‘JustLive’s Emotional Grit©.’
"Developing Emotional Grit©" is a diagram with containers that can assist you with awareness of your 'thinking patterns.'
The container of 'thinking patterns' often develops from positive or negative experiences. They initiate from an experience that has content.
This 'Content' is either:
- truth; or lies; or real or stories/assumptions.
Within the 'content' exists:
- opportunity; &
- a chance to change; or not change.
This 'thinking pattern' container proposes the possibility of an individual developing strength or stagnation (not developing strength).
‘Thinking patterns’ will dictate what happens next. Will the pattern developed be constructive or destroy you?
How worthy are you as a person? How much do you love yourself? ‘Self-love’ will develop from your 'thinking pattern.' This sets up the perspective of how you will courageously approach things because you know you are worth it, and you are strong to move forward.
If you have a strong ‘self-worth’ you will know that on this life journey where you have lived events and experiences - that you deserve good treatment; you have a purpose; you are precious; unique; are valuable and you are entitled to be loved!
If you do not feel you are worth the journey – you will allow doubts; low self-esteem; low self-image; and degenerative thoughts to develop about your value. When you do not like yourself – you do not care how you treat yourself during the race of life, and emotional fatigue holds you back weakening your resilience.
When your 'thinking patterns' develop from the experiences that have occurred in your life, and how you feel about yourself – this will orchestrate and initiate 'self-talk.'
Inside this container, you talk to yourself and you either talk yourself 'positive' or 'negative' and this moves the trail of thoughts on and on like a train. And so your 'self-talk' steers you, it is often the instigator to erupting emotions. Your 'thinking pattern' becomes stronger - developed and strengthened by your 'self-worth' and 'self-talk' either building you up (stronger emotionally) or breaking you down (weakening your emotional strength).
This creates 'emotions and feelings' that either escalate positively or negatively. These emotions and feelings create an attitude inside us that manifests in either good or bad behaviour. Our emotions direct our actions and cause a 'physiological' reaction.
The 'physiological' reactions that we experience are physical bodily and mentally manifested. If we are happy - our brain experiences joyful emotions and secretes serotonin; dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins, making us feel good, full of vitality and healthy. This strong courageous physical motion – allows us to be emotionally strong – taking on life with vigour!
When we experience anxiety, stress, pain and fear - our brain experiences either over secretion of adrenaline (epinephrine), cortisol, and other hormones or it experiences depreciation of certain hormones such as estrogen and progesterone levels that drop. Whichever way the negative emotions and feelings have a direct negative effect on us 'Physiologically' making us feel sick, lethargic and depressed. This weak defeated physical motion – makes us emotionally weak – depleting our life and allowing us to feel powerless.
This in turn has a direct effect on the development of our 'thinking patterns.' Repeating the cycle.
What we experience 'Physiologically' affects our 'thinking patterns' - if we feel pain and depression we will develop a negative 'thinking pattern' and if we have experienced anxiety, stress and tension - our 'thinking patterns' will more likely move to be on a negative trail of destruction.
This diagram shows how one container affects the other in a circular direction, and how the vicious circle affects our life. We require much discipline, introspection and careful choice of how we are going to regulate our emotions, to develop emotional grit! It is important that we develop good 'thinking patterns' and habits in life, where we do good things, consistently good, over and over again with an objective of developing a sound mind, full of power and love!
Should you require help in regulating and dealing with emotions and living a balanced life, please contact me, since JustLive aims to assist you in goals that could change your life forever!
Elvira
JustLive Coach
elvira@justlive.co.za
“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Please revert to the Terms of Use and Privacy accepted in the www.justlive.co.za website with regards to content. Extensive research has been done for courses and articles and the necessary people recognised, but please when requoting and paraphrasing anything from JustLive documents honour the writer/s of the documents. Please honour the JustLive Copyrighted material and terms as per Terms of Use. Free distribution of JustLive coaching material and terms are prohibited – please respect the Copyright and effort put into compiling JustLive Life Balance Coaching Courses© and rather refer friends, family and colleagues for coaching to JustLive.