Last update: 16 March, 2018
Managing emotions intelligently means channeling them to preserve balance and harmony. By doing this, we exploit a positive force for ourselves and for all the colors around us, preventing the emotional world from depriving us of our vital energy.
When we manage to keep our emotions in balance, we are more productive, creative and happy. We keep our emotions from getting the better of us. We are thus able to give a constructive course to a subjective world, directing it in our favor and not against us.
"Emotional intelligence accounts for 80% of success in life."
-Daniel Goleman-
Balanced emotions allow us to design goals and achieve them, to establish healthy relationships with others and to give the best of ourselves. For this reason it is important to learn to manage emotions with intelligence. Succeeding only requires determination and perseverance. Here are four ways to do this.
4 ways to manage emotions with intelligence
1. Understand that there are no negative emotions
Emotions have a reason to be. Therefore, it is a mistake to categorize them as positive or negative. We just have to keep in mind that there are stimuli that lead to experience certain emotions rather than others. It is inevitable.
Fear, for example, is a response to situations that pose a threat. If we didn't experience it, we would easily fall into too reckless attitudes capable of challenging our integrity. Anger, on the other hand, represents a defensive response, the role of which is to prepare us to face an attack in case of danger.
Consequently, there are no negative emotions. To learn how to manage emotions, the important thing is to know how to interpret the message communicated by each of them, becoming aware of what happened and that can be safely addressed.
2. Stop and feel the emotions
Education and society hardly ever teach us how to manage emotions. They convince us that there are feelings and emotions that we don't have to experience. We are told, for example, that crying or being afraid doesn't solve anything.
Nonetheless, emotions do not arise by themselves, just as they do not disappear by themselves. Repressing what we feel is not the right way to handle them. Repressing what one feels simply delays its expression. What is repressed always comes back, and often in a dangerous way.
The first step is to understand that all emotions are legitimate and have a full right to exist and be expressed. If we accept what we feel, it will be much easier to manage emotions. Not accepting it stimulates a confusion that ends up producing an inner storm as a result.
3. Observe, observe, observe ...
The best way to manage emotions intelligently is to accept them, but also to understand them. To do this, it is essential to increase our observation capacity. Just paying attention to our emotions helps us channel them.
Daniel Goldman, the great theorist of emotional intelligence, argues that "attention regulates emotion." This means that when we focus on what we are feeling, we automatically modulate or we clarify that emotion.
To observe emotions, we must ask ourselves: what am I feeling? How do i feel? Next we must give the right name to that emotion we are experiencing. Is it anger or frustration? Refusal or fatigue? The more precise the identification, the more easily we will be able to understand the emotion.
4. Be critical with our thoughts
Even though it may seem to us the opposite, many of our thoughts arise mechanically. These are interpretations of reality that sometimes have a foundation and sometimes not. Sometimes they are the result of reasoning, sometimes not.
Thought is not reality, but a filter on it. It causes us to feel in a certain way in front of what is happening and on many occasions it leads us to make mistakes. Thought, for example, can make us see a difficulty as a source of disturbance, but it can also show it to us as a challenge, an opportunity. We get this only when we push ourselves to doubt those ideas and not simply get carried away by them.
Learning to manage emotions intelligently means being awake, alert and focused on our world. It may seem difficult at first, but the benefits will be great enough to pay off the effort.
