The mind is the control center of our emotions. And its the most powerful computer you will ever use that didn't come with an instruction manual. Until I wrote one! So today come along with Mr Masters and let us begin with a question that will be as powerful for you today as it will be even 20 years into the future...
How Does This Make You Feel? Do you ask yourself that question?
I do, and I ask it every time with every person I coach. I need to know that whether I am building their business, their content or their self beliefs. And it often amazes me the lack of time that people pursue on this.
But today I am sharing with you, one of the ways that i do this. And you can do so as well, but for this to work well, you must eliminate every distraction. Lets begin...
Once you have examined and reflected on a situation, whether real or imagined in exact detail and with sufficient emotional intensity, by the time you notice that you have done that, you would have already changed your brains chemistry from how it was just microseconds beforehand. Isn’t that incredible!
Connections between nerve cells in your neurological pathways when you focus on something powerfully enough are stimulated and strengthened every time that you do so.
This Neuroplasticity, as it is known, means that you are actually changing your brain every time that you think cumulatively, intently and emotionally intensely. But what thoughts precisely are you choosing to strengthen though?
What thoughts are you habitually feeding your mind? Which emotions do you feel most of? Most strongly?
EXERCISE: Recognizing and Responding To Our Emotions
Write down all of the emotions that you experience within an average week.
Then write a number next to the emotion or emotions you experience.
The higher the number (out of 5) the more often you feel this way.
Next scale them in order of strength. The higher the number more strongly you experience this emotion.
Next, write down when you experienced this emotion as closely as you can remember to exactly what you were doing the moment before it was triggered for you.
Finally, jot down whether that emotion was ‘helpful’ or ‘unhelpful’ to you. Why?
How many did you come up with?
Were there some emotions you identified that you experienced more strongly or more often than others?
Were there more or less emotions than you thought that there would be? Is your ‘hardest’ lesson a problem, a lesson or a gift? It is all a matter of perspective.
Do most people you know spend longer focusing on their problems or the solutions? What is your ratio?
In order to get different and better results than the ‘average person’ you cannot take the same actions as most other people and expect to establish significantly better results.
So you need to be exact and detailed about the specific emotions that this situation or event or persistent thought has triggered for you and exactly how they (if a person) or that (if a situation) made or makes you feel. This in turn will help you assess whether this emotional reaction was actually appropriate and most of all useful.
In order to become as clear and specific as possible to be able to effectively hone in and examine the exact feeling or feelings that you have been or are being negatively emotionally affected by, as a result of whatever it is that you are experiencing. Ask yourself this:
‘What primary and secondary emotion/s did you feel? How did this experience or emotion/s manifest physically? Mentally? Behaviorally?’ But most importantly: ‘How did it make you feel?’
What emotion/s did that make you feel?
The more intense and the more pressing that the emotional pain the situation is currently creating for you, warrants a correspondingly strong response and examination. So it is not enough to say simply that you were ‘angry.’
You need to break down exactly what that anger meant or means to you. How does or did it display itself?
How does or did it manifest physically, mentally, emotionally?
You need to get to know your own current reactions to emotional pain and triggering events very intensely.
You need to become acutely familiar with exactly how your own current reactions are set up and triggered and what they do to you once they are.
And how we accomplish this is by intimately examining our own individual feelings. Our triggers, our responses, our ‘Rules.’
‘When X happened – I felt Y. I responded by Z.’
So for example;
E.g. If you feel or felt ‘angry.’ Get into detail around what anger looks like to you. How does it or did it manifest? Physically, mentally, emotionally? How did that anger make you feel? Did you get hot, breathless, excited or nervous? Did you lose control, did you lose focus? Did your fists clench and your heart beat faster? Did certain thoughts pop into your head? What did they say to you? What usually then happens? Do any of your other senses come into play? What happens to you the most?
How did it make you feel before the event? During? Afterwards? Were your feelings different?
Get to the core emotion. Was it just anger, or was it anger and resentment, feeling disrespected, shamed, let down?
What is that for you really is in this situation? What is your overriding emotion? What are the secondary emotions that you are experiencing or experienced?
Explore the way that your feelings affect your physical body, your mind and your behavior.
Are there patterns to how you commonly respond when you feel X emotion? Notice the impact that negative emotional reactions are creating for you when they are triggered and for your entire psyche. Notice how emotions and feelings often overlap and blend into one another.
Which would you choose as the overriding emotion? How does this make you feel emotionally? How does this negative emotion display itself for you?
Do you tense up under pressure? Do you cry? Do you tell yourself a story and blame other people? Do you rage when angry and raise your voice? Do you avoid the situation until you blow up?
There are a million different permutations of behaviors and heightened emotional reactions to any situation or experience. However, the only one that should be of any importance to you right now is actually only one. And that is your own!
Why? Because this is the only one of which you can fully learn to control, and of which you can and MUST take full ownership and responsibility for. You are responsible. Only you.
Responsibility being in this context: The ability to respond.
And what a gift that truly is, as with practiced repetition and with enough emotional intensity we can learn to respond differently and better to both mental and physical to internal or external stimuli. In turn enabling us to make better informed and more useful distinctions and decisions to attain different, better and more useful results in the future the next time we focus on or experience a similar situation, opportunity or challenge.
Which in turn, will negate others power over the influencing or triggering of our own negative reactions and responses. We will take back control.
Yours,
Michael Masters - The Info Architect
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Helping you Master the Elements of Mindset, Coaching, Content Creation, Writing and Personal Branding.
By Bulletproofing Brains, Businesses and Bank Balances.
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