Self-control 2: How to control your emotions and destiny?

Chapter 2 Introduction (2)
Therefore, as early as a few decades ago, a study in the United States showed that the elderly who remain optimistic for a long time are more likely to have the risk of disability or sudden death, while the elderly who release negative and pessimistic emotions from time to time have better health and more longevity.

Weird, isn't it?
Am I promoting a frightening point of view?
No, this is just the right embodiment of the opposing force of emotion.Researchers at the University of California have followed the lives of 1922 children since 1216. The result is that optimists are not healthier than pessimists.As adults, those who were overly optimistic and excitable died earlier than those who were slightly pessimistic or had regular negative emotions.Where is the reason?Looking at their histories with intrigue, the researchers found that the former had been adventurous, prone to drinking, smoking, and even more dangerous things in their own lives.They are overconfident, thus scorning the danger, and instead ruin the healthy time they should have had.People who are often pessimistic avoid many rash mistakes because of their prudence and conservatism.

In the book, I will analyze to readers how this irrational bad mood plays a positive role.We must know how to use this positive force, and we must avoid one-size-fits-all management of our emotions.But the premise is that you must learn how to distinguish them.

◎Two basic principles of emotion management
Charlie, the program director in California, forwarded me a letter from Australia before finishing this book.The letter was written by a Mr. Wade, who is 42 years old, divorced and has three children.In the letter, he described his difficult journey of raising children alone and his unique understanding of self-emotional management.

"At the time of the divorce, my oldest child was only 7 years old, and the youngest was only 2 and a half years old. I raised them all, and life was very difficult. It was a battle with the children and loneliness. I felt that I was full of anger every day, often On the verge of losing control. Within 6 months of just ending my marriage, I even hit my child several times, got detained by the police, and then sent to court and nearly lost custody of my child. I know deep down how emotional can be on a People, the lethality to all his happiness. Later, I also realized this in the long game with it, and realized the importance of managing and controlling emotions.”

Now, it is the fifth year after Vader's divorce.His experience can be written into a "battle with emotional father" textbook.Through constant adjustment and adaptation, Vader has become a stable and mature man.He was surprised to find how childish and impulsive he was in the past, but today he has corrected those shortcomings.He controlled his temper well, stopped doing anything impulsively, and became a very patient person.

He said in the letter: "When I learned that you have relevant training courses in the United States, I decided to write to you and tell you some of my experiences. They brought me encouragement. My experience is this: No matter how bad the situation is, no matter how long you lose control of it, keep going and wait for the next second. You have to believe that as long as you successfully get through this moment One second, the next second, the next minute, or even one day in the future, the situation will definitely get better. When you try and persist in doing this, you, like me, have some kind of mysterious power, it It will appear in our body and help us to set the pointer of emotion to a correct position."

Sometimes the biggest gap between people is not intelligence, but the management and control of emotions.Emotions are not good or bad, they are just people's reactions to circumstances.If you feel that emotion itself is bad and inaccessible, or you have preset a position on it, then I am sorry, but the value of this book to you should be very limited.You must first clarify the misconceptions you have had in the past, and tell yourself clearly: emotions are a neutral force.Everyone will have emotional reactions that tend to be A or B. They are normal, as long as they are not excessive, we don't have to shy away from them, and there is no need to be overly vigilant and intervene in them.What we need to channel are those emotions that are too inclined to both sides-irritability, depression, weakness, complaints or long-term excitement, arrogance, blind optimism and other real "negative" forces that affect normal life.

The management of emotions also reflects the emotional intelligence level of a leader-including the ability to regulate and control the emotions of his subordinates, which is the embodiment of excellent leadership.We have found that all excellent business leaders and department heads have excellent ability to perceive and control their emotions.A moody leader can leave his subordinates at a loss for what to do, and a leader who doesn't do anything when his subordinates' emotions get out of control can tear his team apart and face a spiritual crisis.And what you have to do is to take care of your own emotions while working hard to influence others and improve your team's emotions, so as to raise your emotional management ability to a higher level.

Through this book, we can master two basic principles of emotional management:

Use your actions to control your emotions, not your emotions to control your actions.

Regulate your emotions with your heart, not your ears.

In essence, the core of emotion management is to express emotions in the most appropriate way.It's no surprise that no one doesn't get angry and out of control.Emotions are like volcanoes that periodically erupt, releasing bad energy from within the body.Therefore, don't think that the outburst of emotions is a terrible thing. What we have to do is to let it be released in an appropriate way-to release emotions appropriately to the appropriate object in an appropriate way.

Readers also need to know that emotional intelligence and emotional management are so closely linked that they cannot even be separated.When we talk about a person's emotional intelligence in life, we are actually based on the person's emotional management ability.The characteristics of our emotions in five aspects, if we set values ​​for these five items separately, the total value added at the end is a person's emotional intelligence level.

Self-Awareness of Our Emotions - Knowing Yourself

Have a sufficient understanding of your inner thoughts and psychological tendencies, and have an intuition for emotional judgment, that is, when a certain emotion first appears, you can perceive it and monitor it in real time. This is a person's self-understanding and spiritual understanding basis of competence.

Self-regulation of our emotions - control yourself

You can control your emotional activities well and restrain your inner impulses.This ability determines that we can effectively get rid of anxiety, depression, excitement, anger, annoyance, and excessive emotional fluctuations prone to side A, quickly regulate our emotional state, restore balance, and make ourselves the master of emotions instead of slaves.

The Self-Motivation of Our Emotions - Guiding Yourself

Able to guide oneself to achieve the emotional state in the plan, to generate, mobilize and direct one's emotions in order to achieve a certain goal, to use the emotions in the body for one's own use, to demonstrate strong willpower, such as delaying gratification, appropriately suppressing certain emotions, etc. .And he is good at exerting creativity through self-motivation and self-control, stimulating and releasing potential, and realizing perfect regulation.

Our ability to recognize the emotions of others--to recognize and understand others

Can perceive other people's emotions in a timely and correct manner, and put yourself in the position of others to think properly and generate empathy.Such ability can help us enter into other people's inner world, generate correct understanding and communicate smoothly and effectively, instead of being unfamiliar with other people's emotions or even forming communication barriers.

Our Interpersonal Forces in Social Relationships - Coordinating and Controlling Others

Good at coordinating one's own interpersonal relationship, which is manifested in the ability to properly regulate and control the emotional reactions of others, and to make people produce the reactions they expect.This shows that other people's emotions are under his good control.He can make himself accepted and welcomed by people, and he can correctly display his emotions to others and have a real influence on them.

So, what exactly is the "self-emotional management course" we advocate to you in the book?

In fact, it is a work of emotional sublimation that can be done entirely by oneself.

Acceptance – as opposed to denial, accepting that certain facts happen and exist
Faced with some unacceptable facts, people's instinctive reaction is often to refuse.Our first step is to turn rejection into acceptance.Rejecting doesn't mean that you don't remember, but that you force yourself to believe that it's not true.For example, some people still show that they are about to succeed after a major blow, and talk to people about his grand plans and infinite possibilities.This is the embodiment of rejection, which is an extreme form of emotional defense, and it is difficult for ordinary people to correct it, or turn it around at will.You must first open up your psychological mechanism of acceptance, not from the outside world, but absorb these facts into your consciousness from within, and then establish a realistic logical basis before facing the next life.

Release – the counterpart to repression, is a more active effort

By releasing rather than suppressing, those things that threaten your mind are excluded from consciousness, or these things can flow out immediately after approaching consciousness instead of staying in the body.If you take repression -- people do it all the time, it creates a coercion that has to be channeled effectively, opening a window for them to come in as well as to get them out.

Substitution - Corresponds to the impulse, directing emotion to a non-harmful target

In fact, substitution and anger have the same purpose.When you feel angry or wronged, you need to find a target to vent your emotions, but the difference between the two is that venting anger often hurts people related to you, such as subordinates, students, partners or children.Some people are reprimanded severely by their bosses, and they are prone to vent their anger on their subordinates, and when they return home, they take their partner as an object of venting, and even hurt their own children.Therefore, in this course, we need to learn to find a suitable substitute for our bad emotions-it must be something that is harmless, that will not hurt, and that will not have vicious chain consequences.The key to solving the problem is to establish healthy alternatives, such as running, climbing, bungee jumping and other activities.Some people place a punching bag in their room, which is also a very good choice.

Sublimation – responding to aggression and translating emotions into socially acceptable behavior
When negative emotions are suppressed to the extreme, people will have aggressive behaviors, such as quarrels with colleagues and conflicts with superiors.Its consequences can be out of control and seriously affect your life and work.Our method is not to escape, but to sublimate.Build a habit of turning those horrible unconscious emotional urges into behaviors that are socially acceptable and even highly encouraged.For example, why not think of ways to prove yourself when you are being humiliated by your boss?Sublimate these angry grievances into motivation, make yourself stronger, so as to defeat your opponent with facts and prove him wrong.In this way, you can not only win people's respect, but also get a huge reward from this society.Look at the examples of those who have achieved great success all around us, don't you?

(End of this chapter)