Emotions of power

Carl Jung observes that, “There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.” Tony Robbins believes that so many suffer from the delusion that emotions are entirely out of their control, that they are just something that spontaneously occurs in reaction to the events of our lives. Often we assume that emotions arise in response to what others do or say to us. There is the misconception that we have no control over these mysterious things called emotions.

Out of their need to avoid feel­ing certain emotions, people will often go to great, even ridiculous, lengths. They will turn to drugs, alcohol, overeating, gambling; they will lapse into debilitating depres­sion. Robbins believes there are four basic ways people deal with emotion: avoidance; denial; com­pletion; learning and using.

Avoidance

We all want to avoid painful emotions. As a result, most people try to avoid any situation that could lead to the emotions that they fear—or worse, some people try not to feel any emotions at all. If, for example, they fear rejection, they try to avoid any situation that could lead to rejection. They shy away from relationships. They do not apply for challenging jobs. Dealing with emotions in this way is the ultimate trap, because while avoiding negative situations may protect you in the short term, it keeps you from feeling the very love, intimacy, and connection that you desire most. And ultimately, you cannot avoid feeling. A much more powerful approach is to learn to find the hidden, positive meaning in those things you once thought were negative emotions.

Denial

A second approach to dealing with emotion is the denial strategy. People often try to disassociate from their feelings by saying, “It does not feel that bad.” Mean­while, they keep stoking the fire within themselves by thinking about how horrible things are, or how someone has taken advantage of them, or how they do every­thing right but things still turn out wrong, and why does this always happen to them? In other words, they never change their focus or physiology, and they keep asking the same disempowering questions. Experiencing an emotion and try­ing to pretend it is not there only creating more pain. Once again, ignoring the messages that your emotions are trying to give you will not make things better. If the message your emotions are trying to deliver is ignored, the emotions simply increase their amperage; they intensify until you finally pay attention. Trying to deny your emotions is not the solution.

Competition

Many people stop fighting their painful emotions and decide to fully indulge in them. Rather than learn the positive message their emotion is trying to give them, they intensify it and make it even worse than it is. It becomes a “badge of courage,” and they be­gin to compete with others, saying, “You think you have got it bad? Let me tell you how bad I have got it.” It literally becomes part of their identity, a way of being unique; they begin to pride them­selves on being worse off than anyone else. This approach must be avoided at all costs, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where the person ends up having an investment in feeling bad on a regular basis—and then they are truly trapped. A much more powerful and healthy approach to dealing with the emotions that we think are painful is to realise that they serve a positive purpose; and that is learning and using.

Learning and using

If you want to make your life really work, you must make your emotions work for you. You cannot run from them; you cannot tune them out; you cannot trivialise them or delude yourself about what they mean. Nor can you just allow them to run your life. Emo­tions, even those that seem painful in the short term, are truly like an internal compass that points you toward the actions you must take to arrive at your goals. “Without knowing how to use this compass, you will be forever at the mercy of any emotional tempest that blows your way.”

Many therapeutic disciplines begin with the mistaken presup­position that emotions are our enemies or that our emotional wellbeing is rooted in our past. The truth is that we can go from crying to laughing in a heartbeat if the pattern of our mental focus and physiology is merely inter­rupted strongly enough. Freud­ian psychoanalysis, for example, searches for those “deep, dark secrets” in our past to explain our present difficulties. Yet we all know that whatever you continually look for, you will surely find. If you are constantly looking for the reasons why your past has confined your present or why you are so “messed up,” then your brain will comply by providing references to back up your request and generate the ap­propriate negative emotions. How much better it would be to adopt the global belief that “your past does not equal your future.”

Benefits of emotions

The only way to effectively use your emotions is to understand that they all serve you. You must learn from your emotions and use them to create the results you want for a greater quality of life. The emotions you once thought of as negative are merely a call to action. In fact, instead of calling them negative emotions, let us call them “Action Signals.” Once you are familiar with each signal and its message, your emotions become not your enemy but your ally. They become your friend, your mentor, your coach; they guide you through life’s most soaring highs and its most demoralizing lows. Learning to use these signals frees you from your fears and allows you to expe­rience all the richness of which we humans are capable. To get to this point, then, you must change your global beliefs about what emo­tions are. They are not predators, substitutes for logic, or products of other people’s whims. They are Action Signals trying to guide you to the promise of a greater quality of life.

If you merely react to your emotions through an avoidance pattern, then you will miss out on the invaluable message they have to offer you. If you continue to miss the message and fail to handle the emotions when they first turn up, they will grow into full-blown crises. All our emotions are im­portant and valuable in the proper amounts, timing, and context.

Realize that the emotions you are feeling at this very moment are a gift, a guideline, a support system, a call to action. If you suppress your emotions and try to drive them out of your life, or if you magnify them and allow them to take over everything, then you are squandering one of life’s most precious resources.

Source of emotions

You are the source of all your emotions; you are the one who creates them. So many people feel that they have to wait for certain experiences in order to feel the emotions they desire. For instance, they do not give themselves per­mission to feel loved or happy or confident unless a particular set of expectations is met. “You can feel any way you choose at any moment in time.”

What you are doing is not producing the result you want, and you have to change your approach. Remember that your perceptions are controlled by what you focus on and the meanings you interpret from things. And you can change your perception in a moment, just by changing the way you are using your physiology or by asking your­self a better question.

• BY CAPT SAM ADDAIH (RTD)

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