How can you better manage your emotions? Our emotions are what make us human. They make our hearts beat, but sometimes they take our breath away, exhaust us and complicate our lives. Is it possible to live more serenely with our emotions? Yes, by following 5 simple steps.

1 – Managing your emotions: identifying your emotions

We can’t manage or understand something we don’t know about. That’s why identifying your emotions is so important.

To do this, we need to understand what fear, anger, sadness and joy are.

Fear puts our senses on alert, when we feel we’re facing danger. Fear pushes us to give our best to get out of a situation.

Anger, on the other hand, is a geyser of vitality. It pushes us forward. It arises when our limits are reached, and helps us to put our lives back on track.

Sadness is a withdrawal. Our shoulders slump, our heart rate drops. We need solitude to take stock of the situation and reorganize.

Joy is also a geyser of vitality. We become exuberant, because we need to share this joy.

When an emotion arises, I invite you to take 2-3 minutes to put a name to it: is it fear, sadness? Is it something you can’t define? How does it make you feel? Mentally? Physically?

How can you better manage your emotions? By knowing how to identify and name them.

2 – Listen to your emotions

Once you’ve identified your emotion, you can listen to it.

I invite you to go to a quiet place, sit down and breathe deeply. Then you can greet your emotion. It’s a little ritual I love. Call it by name: hello, fear. Hello, anger…

And stay with it. Breathe calmly and smile.

This may seem “light” to you, but listening is essential. Every emotion brings us a message. And as long as we don’t listen to its message, the emotion knocks at our door, and louder and louder.

How can we better manage our emotions? By taking the time to listen to your emotions and remain calm with them.

3 – Managing emotions: decoding them

Now that we’ve sat down with our emotions, let’s decode them.

Anger invites us to enforce our limits. Fear asks us to be vigilant, and sadness invites us to step back.

Find out what it means to you. What happened to make you angry? What triggered it?

Then find out what you need: what do I need now? What did I need in the past? Can I go back, change something?

Anger may tell us that we need to have a discussion with someone to assert ourselves. Fear may tell us to reconsider our plan of action, which is not solid enough, while sadness asks us to accept a lack in our lives.

How can we better manage our emotions? By understanding what we need to feel better.

4 – Expressing or letting go of emotions

Emotions are fleeting. Yes, they are bound to disappear, as soon as they are listened to.

It’s all the more important to listen to our emotions because we risk turning them into feelings. A feeling is a “mentalized” emotion. In other words, our mind appropriates it and makes it its reality. This is serious, because a momentary anger can turn us into an angry person. Temporary sadness can turn into depression.

Once we’ve identified, listened to and decoded our emotion, all we have to do is let it go.

Emotions can be expressed. For example, we can express our anger in front of the person concerned or someone we trust, taking care that it doesn’t turn violent. We can express our sadness by crying in the arms of someone close to us. And we can just as easily express our fear to someone who will listen.

That said, our immediate circle is not always made up of people who are good listeners and trustworthy. So we need to unburden ourselves of our emotions in other ways.

Anger, for example, disappears as soon as we distract ourselves: playing sport, watching a film, writing a fictitious letter… Sadness often only needs a good cry to be soothed, and fear needs a good dose of positive thoughts to regain confidence and self-esteem.

How can you better manage your emotions? By expressing them or letting them go.

5 – Managing your emotions: getting on with life

This is the last step, and not the easiest. Emotions tend to drain our energy, and sometimes we don’t know how to get on with life.

Fear can sometimes paralyze us completely. Anger can make us lose everything by resorting to violence. And sadness, if we can’t express it, can become a sticky friend.

How do we manage our emotions? By deciding to go on living!

For me, this is THE step we need to take. No matter what we do, they’ll always be there, just like our thoughts. There’s nothing we can do about it. All we can do is manage them better and live more harmoniously with them.

But there’s one thing we have total control over: our behavior!

Our emotions and thoughts must not rule our lives. They’re messengers, and yes, we make decisions based on them, but nothing more. They have no right to tell us to stop on the downside of life.

You know, it’s possible to be afraid and still act with courage. We can be sad and still laugh. And, we can be angry or jealous and still be kind to others.

The choice is ours! In fact, I’d say we have two duties: to listen to what’s going on inside us, to be observant, and to move forward slowly but surely.

Life is a path, not a destination. Let’s not think we’ve reached the end because our emotions are too strong. No! Let’s keep moving forward.

Make the choice to act according to the person you want to be and the life you want to live.

How can you better manage your emotions? Here’s an example

Our last experience at work went badly. We came out exhausted and our self-confidence took a big hit.

Today, we’ve managed to rebuild ourselves little by little. Joy has returned to our lives. But there comes a time when we need to get back to work.

Fear comes knocking at our door. It brings with it tension in our bodies: our hearts ache, our shoulders are all tensed up… We feel like we’re suffocating, and our brains keep replaying disaster scenarios before our eyes…

Let’s greet her: “Hello, fear. I understand why you’re here. You’re afraid we’ll have the same experience all over again. It’s normal to be afraid. I breathe deeply, look, I’m making room for you in my lungs. Come on, fear.

You know, fear, we need to get back to work. We need to earn money to live. So I understand why you’re here, but I’m going to do it anyway. I promise to be vigilant. Here’s what I intend to do to avoid a repeat of the past.

And, you know, if ever, again, it doesn’t go as planned, we’ll get through it and start again.

I decide to trust myself and trust life. I want to move forward, because that’s where my happiness lies.

Find out more about managing your emotions

I invite you to read these 2 complementary articles:

Discover Make your dreams come true: 10 good reasons to make your dreams a priority
Discover Accepting your emotions: 3 magic tips

I recommend this inspiring book on the subject:

A New Earth: Awakening Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

It’s a real awakening! In this book, the author explains how to wake up and why we awaken as a species to the existence of the pain body, how it controls us and how to get rid of it.
This excellent book finally gives me what I’ve been looking for, partly unconsciously, for a long time: a satisfying spiritual orientation and a path to follow.

Thank you very much for reading this article.

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

Take care of yourself.