I believe that all humans are amazing. Even if we have problems, that’s what makes us even more amazing. That makes us unique. To be for ourselves is a big challenge today. But I believe that one of the keys to actually be is to deal with our emotions.

But first, what is emotion? To simply put, it is a brain reaction to the stimulus. It has to do a lot with your past experience, predictions, comparing, and resolving the error.

And there is so much today which gives us actually negative stimulus: media tells how everything is going worse, posts on Instagram makes us feel that we live shitty lives compared to others and as such; the human mind is programmed for destruction.

So I was running for the position of managing the organisation nationally. And there was some certain election process, whereas one of the parts is for, against and in the general part. Even though I won (Yay!), there was a huge discussion of why I might not be able to fulfil this position, and it was my emotional instability. The comments stated that I need constant human support and that I am not able to deal with situations easily (and this position is a lot about decision making) without others.

I must admit that they were right, but I took it as feedback and got really into the development in this area but, trust me, it was bad. I remember one day getting off the bus and some random old lady came to me to ask what is the number of the bus which is arriving. I told her about my experience, and I was so damn happy. My whole day started to be brighter, I was even jumping when going to the office. I enter the office and my colleague says that my hair is a bit messy.

Could you believe it? I stopped talking, sat down, and put on some music cause all I wanted was to cry. Kinda big change, huh? All I want to say is that emotional control is a muscle. And if it is weak now for you it can be trained I know it because I did.

So where to start? All you need to do is to is:

• Notice that you are experiencing strong emotions
• Admit that you are emotional
• Experience the emotion, do not push it away
• Analyse where this emotion is coming from
• Find solutions over and over again

Understand that emotional control is a muscle

I so disagree when people say ‘Well this is me, I am a depressed person.’ You can change that! And the first thing is to stop saying that and build a willingness to change it.

Understand that you have emotions and when you have them

Believe me or not, we do understand emotions usually post-factum. And a lot of times we do not even admit that we feel some kind of emotion. How many times have you replied: ‘I’m fine,’ when someone asked how are you doing and you actually felt horrible.

Take a moment to experience the emotion and learn lessons from it

As human beings, we want to feel good. Therefore, once we feel negative emotion we tend to push it away as quickly as possible. This behaviour makes us ignore emotions, therefore, creates the perfect base for emotions to repeat.

Analyse

In any life situation business, we must analyse and reflect in order to move forward. Without understanding the deep causes there is no way forward. If you want something to change you need to start changing something.

There are usually three reasons why we get emotional:

• Our values were broken
• Our standards were not reached
• Past experiences

Find solutions

Any understanding is worthless without doing something about it. And most of the time first and second strategies (solutions) do not work, therefore, you need to continue with other tactics.

Ask yourself, can you control the situation, does it depend on others, or it is up to the universe?

• If it is up to the universe, just accept that you cannot do anything about it.
• If it is up to others, please go and explain to people. I am from a country where people do not tend to share their emotions or be vulnerable and this causes so many issues. Then I go and do it myself. Once people have such an example they start to open up, because deep down we all want to connect emotionally.
• If it is up to you, I am referring you to a list of the possible solutions (it is based on Tony Robbins book, Awaken the Giant Within –
  highly recommended to read it).

Controlling our negative emotions may not be that easy. It’s part of our dynamics as humans, but we can certainly tailor our habits and thinking so that negative emotions can’t take over our life. As for me, I choose to be happy. Life is too short to focus too much on things that make you sad and angry.

Gintare runs Be the Human Being. Gintare’s mission in life is to help others.