How to deal with sadness, anger and fear? How can you better manage negative emotions so you can be calmer and more Zen every day? Here are my 3 tips to help you better understand and calm your emotions, so you can live a gentler, more peaceful life.

1 – Accept negative emotions and don’t reject them or pretend they don’t exist.

We haven’t learned how to deal with negative emotions. Instead, we’ve learned to reject them outright, or to pretend they don’t exist. Are you angry? No, I’m not angry. Are you sure? Yes, I’m sure. But that’s not true. Of course we’re angry or sad or scared. Because we’re human beings, we feel emotions, including so-called negative emotions.

In fact, we reject our negative emotions because it seems easier to do so at the time, but the problem is that as time goes by, these emotions don’t leave us and it becomes increasingly difficult to reject them or pretend to. That’s why it’s time to learn to accept them.

To do this, start with a simple phrase and a simple breath. In fact, the next time you’re angry or sad or scared, mentally say to yourself, “I’m angry, sad or scared.” Then take a deep breath.

This phrase will actually align you with what you’re feeling, and that’ll feel really good. What do you think?

2 – Be kind to yourself to better manage negative emotions

We’ve learned to be ashamed of our negative emotions. We’re told it’s not right, not beautiful, to be angry, scared or sad. So when we feel these emotions, we talk down to ourselves. We tell ourselves, for example, to stop our nonsense, that it’s not worthy of us.

And we don’t realize that we’re abusing ourselves and reinforcing the pain we feel. That’s why, to better manage negative emotions, it’s time to show kindness.

To do this, start by reminding yourself that you’re a human being and that you have the right to feel emotions, even negative ones. You can, for example, place a hand on your solar plexus and send yourself some gentleness, telling yourself again and again that everything’s fine, that you’re not unworthy and that it’s not nonsense. I wholeheartedly advise you to do this, because it helps me a lot.

3 – Question your emotions

We have a right to feel negative emotions, but we can also learn to feel them less and less. In fact, it’s one of our life goals. Because feeling negative emotions is painful, and we have the capacity to learn to free ourselves from them, little by little.

Because, yes, managing negative emotions doesn’t mean remaining passive in the face of them. On the contrary, it’s about being firmly resolved to feel as little as possible, in order to live the sweetest, most peaceful life possible. What do you think?

So, how do you go about it? First of all, learn to question your emotions. When you’re angry, ask yourself why you’re angry. Look for the deeper causes.

Then go further. Ask yourself how, in the future, you can stop feeling angry for the same reasons. In fact, look for ways to detach yourself from your negative emotions. What do you think?

Learn more about managing negative emotions

I invite you to read these 2 complementary articles:

Discover Hypersensitive: 3 tricks for managing your emotions.
Discover How to welcome your emotions: 3 things to do

In addition, I recommend this inspiring book on the subject:

You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh
This is a beautiful book. So small and yet so profound! I love it! The way the author describes the simplicity of how to enter the present moment, mindfulness and mediation is simply wonderful.
It is a pure Zen book. It is very practical and very useful in our day-to-day life. The techniques described in the book are so beautiful and you can apply them immediately. You can literally feel the love coming out of the book. It reads like a poem. There are also included very touching stories that we can all take a valuable lesson from. You can definitely say that the author himself is a deep spiritual Zen master with a lot of compassion and love towards this humanity.

Thank you very much for reading this article.

If you liked it, let me know in the comments.

Take care of yourself.