THE POWER OF EMOTIONS Are you using your emotions to inform yourself or are you letting them control you?

Emotions are powerful. They can help you feel the depth of pain and the fullness of joy. But how are your emotions helping you right now? Learn to harness their power for continued growth and a new perspective.

Your mental and emotional baggage is primarily responsible for creating the discrepancy between what you say you want and what you actually experience on a daily basis. It's the dominant driver behind your choices and behaviors, and it can be the number one thing that derails you in your daily life.

Can you think of a time when nothing was going right for you, and you exploded at your children or partner the moment you walked through the door? Or, what about when you had deadlines or looming projects at work that kept piling up, and the pressure mounted until you got sick, quit your job, or completely exploded?

Can you recall a time when your partner's behavior was irritating you, and instead of having a calm, focused, and balanced discussion with the intention of resolving it, you instead said nothing, let it fester, and then sabotaged the relationship in one way or another? These are all examples of how your emotional baggage can derail you in everyday situations.

Your emotions, or feelings, are an integral aspect of who you are—good, bad, and everything in between. However, you may not have been taught how to handle emotional distress in a productive and compassionate way, so the end result is often explosive. When you learn to accept your emotions, lean into them, and be present with them in a healthy way, you can learn from them and begin to use them as a means to grow and evolve into a better person.

The Power of Emotions

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world, and vice versa. When you carry an inventory of unresolved negative emotions within you, you will filter your conversations, interactions, and experiences with others through your baggage, and react in a way that perpetuates more of the same in your outer world. For example, if you believe you are stuck in life and will never find a way out, the negative emotions associated with your beliefs will reinforce how you see yourself in the world. You will begin to see yourself trapped in every area of ​​your life.

Your emotions can be what derails you, or they can inform you. Emotional intelligence is the differentiator, the key component to better understanding yourself and those with whom you interact. When your emotions inform you, you can observe yourself and how you feel, assimilating it as information without being affected. You know it's emotionally charged when your emotions affect you to the point that you are burdened, you feel righteous in your position, or you are adamantly defending or protesting what is happening.

Of course, there are times when heightened emotions are a normal reaction to something. For example, if you see someone mistreating their pet, it would be normal to feel anger. When someone you love passes away, it's appropriate to feel deep sadness. When you start a new job that will challenge you, a little fear is perfectly acceptable because you're entering a learning curve.

With emotional intelligence, you'll be able to feel your emotions without reacting in a harsh and unrealistic way. You'll also be able to harness the energy of emotion to help you move through the experience and draw lessons or wisdom from them, while maintaining a level of awareness about how you're navigating the situation. If you continue to struggle with mental and emotional baggage, you'll be more likely to overreact without thinking, going straight to blaming yourself or others, and leading with a propensity for sabotage, gossip, judgment, and hostile behaviors. You'll be ruled by the voice of negativity.

STOP. “STOP”

1. Stop everything when you realize you're feeling charged. This will create some space between you and the situation.

2. Take a deep breath and enter a state where you can refrain from reacting.

3. Objectively observe what's happening in the moment and how you feel. Take a few minutes to recharge your batteries so you can become aware of your thoughts, words, and actions before moving forward.

4. Proceed with caution and awareness in a way that develops potential rather than perpetuating any drama. Interpreting Your Experiences

One of your biggest obstacles is that your first response tends to be negative when things aren't going your way. Some psychologists would suggest this is due to your programming or hunter-gatherer tendencies, while others would simply say it's because you had a bad day. Regardless of the source, instead of seeing things positively, you're trained to look for the negative in everyday situations.

Let's take a closer look at this. As a human being, you perceive your experiences through sensory perception (taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell) and then go through a process of interpreting your experiences. Interpretations are your way of assigning meaning to the events and experiences in your life, also known as "meaning-making." There are two types of interpretations: those that empower you and those that disempower you. Empowering interpretations will help you discover the gifts or lessons in each situation and help you powerfully move forward in your life. Motivating interpretations put you in a place of empowerment. Discouraging interpretations, on the other hand, will make you feel like a victim, tie you to pervasive negativity, and ultimately keep you stuck in the past.

An important thing to remember is that none of the interpretations you choose is more or less true than another. Your interpretations are very real to you, and the point to keep in mind is that you always have the power to choose the meanings you assign to the circumstances, events, and experiences in your life. Whenever you feel triggered by another person or something that has happened, first start with the S.T.O.P. acronym mentioned above. This will help you create a pattern interruption in the moment.

Before continuing, commit to consciously choosing a powerful interpretation that will allow you to make the most of your experience and move forward. The more you focus on finding the positive, the more positivity you will begin to experience in your life. This doesn't mean that bad things don't happen, or that you should pretend everything is amazing when it isn't. It's healthy to feel negative emotions rather than avoid them. The idea is that you can harness the energy of positive emotions and empower interpretations to grow and evolve, even while you're going through difficult times.