Overcoming negative emotions

Everybody’s success depends on the mastery of emotions.   Any emotion good or bad is natural. They arise as a result of situations and circumstances. While good emotions make us happy and elate us, negative or bad emotions cause us frustration and result in unhappiness.  Psychologists and sociologists are of the opinion that human beings are capable of demonstrating or feeling over 3,000 emotions.  In this booklet we explore 7 negative emotions and explore techniques to  overcome each one. 

Emotions are feelings and experiences that are associated with swings in moods, temperament and behaviour.  The word 'emotion' is derived from the French word émouvo’, which itself is derived from the Latin emovere. The prefix e- (variant of ex-) means 'out' and movere means 'move'.  Therefore emotion means out of move i.e. a diversion or excursion from the main or normal state.

Negative emotions lead to undesirable, unwanted and negative behaviours.  Getting rid of or snapping out of negative behaviour poses a challenge, particularly if that behaviour persisted over time and turned into an unwanted habit. The one way of getting rid of an unwanted habit that has become customary but mostly does not work is to try and stop the unwanted habit with just the force of ‘will power’. 

You are likely to have experienced it yourself and certainly you will have heard statements like this: “I must not lose my temper” ,” I get so annoyed when I am shy”, “I must stop overeating”  or “ I ought to be able to exercise more” and statements like these.  The fact that you give the habit just attention by will power and do little to replace it, guarantees that the undesirable habit will persist.  Also the reason this technique does not work, because the person does not understand the reason for the habit or behaviour in the first place. Find a better way to overcome or replace old, undesirable habits with new and desirable one.  Find a method of replacement that is more attuned and suited to your personality. 

YOU DO NOT JUST DISCARD YOUR OLD CLOTHES UNTIL YOU REPLACE THEM WITH NEW ONES, unless you want to go naked.

We are not concerned with psychological reasons or roots of why these negative emotion exist, rather accepting that they are part of our life and if there are unfortunate times that we fall prey to these emotions we have the know-how and strategies to deal with them.  There are a large extent of literature, concepts and strategies to tackle negative emotions.  While there are some good materials about, unfortunately a large number of tools and techniques focuses on two approaches:

Regression techniques: That dwells too much on the individuals past experiences and personal history. 

Defensive techniques: There are others that use or teach strategies for preserving self-interest often at the expense of others. E.g. Go and give him/her a good talking to! 

The regression causes the individual to go through trauma or negative experiences all over again.  The so-called defensive or self-preserving strategies results in anger, blame and self-centredness.  The negative effects of both methods imprison the individual you and furnish him/her with an outlook in life that brings misery, negativity, low self-esteem etc.

I view negative emotions as a temporary glitch, obstacle or imbalance in one’s emotional state.  Therefore I feel we can snap out of these emotions almost instantly no matter what caused the emotion.  Negative emotions are often the result of frustration with oneself, circumstances or other people.  Frustrations with self and the circumstances can be best dealt with using our own resources such as thoughts, feelings and our attitude towards that frustration.  In the first booklet, we discussed the power of our mind in controlling our life including our emotions.  I happen to believe very strongly that when the mind commands, the body obeys.  The mind dictates all of the body’s organs, emotions and behaviours.  Negative emotions arising from frustrations with other people can be eliminated by searching mutually beneficial solutions to foster rewarding relationships.

Let me share a personal experience:  Many years ago when I was studying for a post-graduate, one of the subjects I was studying was communication, as part of the course the lecturer asked us to prepare a 10 minutes talk and presentation.  We had 3 weeks to prepare.  I chose a subject that was very close to my heart and I was extremely passionate about it.  When the day came to present my talk, I totally fell apart, my mouth was extremely dry, my heart was racing at an alarming rate, the whole room was closed in on me, sweat running, words would not come out of my mouth.  The situation was so embarrassing that eventually the professor asked me to forget it and dismissed me out of the class.  The audience were my colleagues, every day we played together, ate together etc.  For months I was embarrassed about it.  I decided no more of this.  Later I found out that my pride and my habit to be perfect made me self-conscious of my English.  Since then I lectured at universities, run seminars for business executives, spoken at conferences and I teach public speaking to others. 

The 7 Negative emotions are:

1.      Fear

2.     Jealousy & Envy

3.     Hate & Hatred

4.     Greed

5.     Guilt

6.     Anger

7.     Revenge