Coming up with a decent intro for this post was driving me nuts. I couldn’t find a good way to start and frustration came to say hi.
This led to boredom and even a slight resentment against frustration. Which obviously didn’t help me finish the intro.
So I had to take a break, apply the steps from below to get back on track and finish this text. Frustration went away and excitement came back, but let’s start from the beginning:
Your emotions are your friend, they’re there to help you. Even though it might not seem like that all the time, it’s just a problem of understanding how they work.
Think for a second about one of the best moments of your life. Why was it so good? What emotion did you feel at the time? The intensity of that one is what made that moment so memorable.
Your emotions are always trying to help you; it’s essential to not make them your enemies. Now, if it doesn’t always feel like this (especially with painful emotions), there’s a communication problem that we need to solve.
What are emotions anyway?
Wait, what? Emotions are emotions, right? I mean, emotions are feelings, concepts, something physical and yet abstract… kind of.
Yes, that’s true but not really useful.
Instead, as I wrote in the last post, try to think of emotions like messages. And we’ll call the sender your “Life GPS” (the one you want to be friends with).
As its name implies, the Life GPS is a system of the brain that is there to help you navigate through life. It works like this:
You set your destinations through your desires, wants and needs.
You set the map through your beliefs and rules.
Your actions make you move trough the map.
And it communicates with you through your emotions (messages).
There are a couple of distinctions between a regular GPS and this one:
The Life GPS was built for survival purposes, so it’s not fully up to date and has a bias towards overcommunicating painful emotions.
It doesn’t have access to the real world, so it doesn’t understand physics, the law or what’s good or bad. It uses your interpretation of life (beliefs, values, needs, etc) to guide you, so don’t expect it to be accurate all the time.
If you’re not paying attention to an important message, it’ll make it louder.
So, in order to use your emotions to your advantage, you need to learn how to use your Life GPS. For starters, you just need to do this two things:
Listen to the message
Act accordingly
Step 1 – Listen to the message
Listening is not always easy. Especially when the feelings are painful, we tend to avoid them and we don’t allow ourselves to feel the emotion in full.
If you feel hurt, feel it. All the way.
Avoid saying “It’s nothing” or “It’ll pass” because if you don’t listen to an important message it’ll become stronger. And remember that it’s way easier to work with a mild emotion (feeling a bit lonely) than with a very intense one (depression).
In other words, kill the monster when it’s a baby, don’t wait until it’s 5 times your size and has grown 6 heads.
Now that you’re listening, make sure to understand the message. Emotions are not rational, which means that sometimes it’s difficult to understand what the message is. That’s why I’ve created a tiny Emotion-Rational Translation Dictionary. Use it to understand the message they’re trying convey.
Step 2 – Act accordingly
Now you just need to follow (or not) the instructions your Life GPS is sending you.
Use your brain to assess the importance of the message and act accordingly.
The sadness you might feel while watching Titanic may not need any action at all, but a feeling of pure joy while working may be saying “Keep doing this kind of work for the rest of your life!”.
For example: You feel angry towards your boss because she didn’t keep her word. Your emotion is telling you that one of your rules has been violated and it won’t allow it. So you have 2 options:
Change the situation – Talk to her so she understands that breaking a promise is not an option, find a different boss/job, etc
Change your rules – Assume this will happen again and don’t believe any promises she makes, therefore you’ll not be prepared rather than angry when this happens
Sometimes, though, you might notice that something’s off:
You feel guilty after asking for a rise even though you know you deserve it and should feel proud of it.
During a fun dinner with friends you feel lonely instead of connected to them.
You’re excited to go to an afterwork and have some beers with your colleagues even though you’ll regret it the next day.
What’s happening here is that there’s a conflict between the rules or values the Life GPS is using to guide you and the ones that made you take that action (the map you’re using is not the same that your Life GPS has).
This happens whenever our values, desires and actions get out of alignment. Which is quite often for most of us.
So, whenever this happens, just review your values and re-evaluate your priorities to update your Life GPS so it becomes helpful again.
If you do that consistently, you’ll grow. And yes, your emotions will be guiding you instead of going “against you”.
Okay, I feel like a good example will help here. Imagine the situations from before, let’s see where the conflict could be:
I believe I’m not enough and therefore I don’t deserve the raise. (Belief conflict)
My friends only talk about work and social media stars. Yes, we laugh a lot but they don’t even appreciate the food I’ve prepared. (Value conflict)
The freedom of not having to worry about what I drink is more important than my long-term health (Value conflict) or I won’t have fun/I’ll look weird if I don’t drink beer (Belief conflict)
In those cases, “acting accordingly” means updating your beliefs (I’m enough, I can have fun without drinking) or match your actions with your values (I’ll find friends that share my worldview, I’ll prioritise my long-term health over short-term pleasure).
Notice that sometimes the challenge is to admit these truths to ourselves, since the mind is always making stories about what our motives are (to hide the real ones if they make us feel ashamed or bad).
Simply put: Befriend your emotions, listen to them and act accordingly; just as you’d do when your best friend gives you advice.