Wouldn’t it be great if you could take control of your emotions and mood swings and surgically remove all sources of stress from your life RIGHT NOW and derive more pleasure, enjoyment, and relaxation from each day – all without needing to change a thing except your mindset?
All will be revealed in this ground-breaking article on how to control your emotions and mood.
Are you frustrated by the way that the little things in life drive you nuts? If so, don’t be surprised.
We in the Western world indubitably have the kind of mindset that encourages us to ‘fix’ whatever’s wrong by making changes to the external world, instead of focusing on why we’re upset in the first place.
We look for solutions externally – “I’ll be happy and stress-free when I get the pay-rise” – instead of changing our ATTITUDE.
Sound familiar?
Here’s the GOOD news … If you can learn how to alter this natural prioritization, you’ll change your whole life around.
You’ll become one of those rare people who are calm, happy, and smiling no matter what.
You’ll calm down, slow down, feel peaceful, and live your life happily with all your emotions under control– without your moods and stresses constantly getting in your way and tripping you up.
Yes, this really is possible – and no, you don’t need to do ANYTHING except take a look at how you’re thinking.
It’s the ‘lazy man’ approach to all-round excellence!
And since everyone here in the Amazing Self offices is a big fan of what WORKS, we thought it prudent to share this simple, but potentially life-altering mechanism with you.
(Side benefits to this change in attitude include a closer, happier relationship with family members and loved ones, more and better intimate relationships, higher job satisfaction, and – the biggie – MORE HAPPINESS on a daily basis.)
1. What’s Different About This Article Than Other Articles on How To Control Your Emotions and Mood?
This is not a ‘how to get paid more’ article.
Nor is it a ‘how to improve your relationships’ article.
This is also not a ‘how to improve your finance’ article.
Or a ‘how to lose weight’ article.
Those things are all EXTERNAL FACTORS, and focusing on them to the exclusion of your attitude will keep you trapped on the ‘I’ll just fix this situation, and then everything will be great’ gerbil wheel.
Instead this is a ‘how to be truly happy right now’ article.
It will teach you how to change the way you THINK, so you can take control of your emotions and mood swings and get on with living your life in tandem with HAPPINESS RIGHT NOW.
Following are powerful tips that I personally find tremendously helpful on a day to day basis.
Allow them entry into your headspace, and you WILL reduce stress, boost satisfaction, and flat out feel better on a daily basis – both inside and out.
2. If You Want Get Your Emotions Under Control Beat Your Aggression Into a Bloody Pulp.
Yes, yes, very ‘ironic’ to use such language for such a request.
But the truth is, you DO have to beat your aggressive tendencies into the bloodiest of bloody pulps.
And yes, you – yes, YOU - almost certainly have an issue with aggression on some level.
How can I make such a sweeping statement with such equanimity?
Easy: because aggression is a natural byproduct of STRESS. And who here doesn’t have a stressful lifestyle?
If you’ve ever ‘snapped’ and lashed out at someone you love without meaning to, you’ve got aggressive tendencies.
And it’s time to beat them over the head with a metaphysical tire-iron. Let’s face it: being an uptight, tense, aggressive person does nobody any favors – least of all yourself.
But with our modern, angst-laden lifestyles, such a mindset is practically unavoidable. Matter of fact, it’s even PREDICTABLE!
Typical aggression patterns tend to revolve around specific times and activities.
Some people can literally set their watches according to when their jaw starts clenching and their heartbeat starts jumping.
3. The most common ‘aggressive hours’ that makes your emotions and mood go out of control:
- in the car (especially at the beginning and end of the working day)
- arrival home from work
- standing in line
- during any kind of delay
- during any kind of misunderstanding during conversation with someone (sadly, aggressive tendencies manifest most strongly during conversations with loved ones – so our nearest and dearest take the full brunt)
Not only is aggression extremely unpleasant for those around you, damaging personal and professional relationships alike – but you’re literally doing yourself harm when you succumb to the anger-demons.
Here’s what happens inside your body when you allow yourself to ‘blow off some steam’
4. Aggression causes that forces the emotional burst.
blood pressure to rise.
your eyes to strain and bulge.
capillaries to burst in your corneas, cheeks, and hands.
your jaw muscles to clench, sometimes triggering pressure headaches.
your teeth to grind – some people quite literally grind their teeth to nubbins over the years, a condition known as bruxism.
your adrenal glands to start pumping out cortisol and stress hormones at flood level rates, leading to increased heart-rate, increased fat storage, shallow breathing, and eventual glandular burnout.
your mind to start raging round in a tight, useless circle.
your mental ability to control your emotions to go haywire.
your facial muscles to spasm and contract, causing involuntary frowning and premature wrinkling.
Let me spell it out for you: giving way to aggression wastes your time, energy, relationships, and physical and mental resources.
Don't Miss: 6 Simple Steps Let Go of Your Ego Easily And Live in Peace
Don't Miss: 16 Science-Backed Ways to Feel Good Every Day
5. Here’s What You Can Do To Control Your Emotions And Stop The Above Unwanted Things.
Here’s the solution to the problem:
Practice focusing ON THE MOMENT.
Instead of getting all bent out of shape about the fact that the stressful situation exists in the first place, ask yourself this question:
“Since this situation already exists, and I’m stuck in it, what can I do right now to improve the situation for myself?”
For example: let’s say you’re stuck in gridlock.
You, like everyone else on the planet, hate being stuck in gridlock. But there’s nothing you can do about it: the gridlock exists, and you are in it.
Instead of getting STRESSED about this fact, and setting your anger levels simmering along, ask yourself what you can do to improve the situation AS IT IS RIGHT NOW.
For example, perhaps you have an extraordinarily busy life where you rarely get time to yourself.
Perhaps driving – and even being stuck in gridlock – actually gives you a rare chance to be alone, marshal your thoughts, plan for coming events, or simply switch off your brain and operate on dreamy autopilot for awhile.
Perhaps you could take the opportunity to make calls that need your attention, listen to self-improvement audio tapes, switch on talk-back radio and giggle along with the local shock-jock, practice your deep breathing and affirmations or simply rest, unclench your jaw, and unwind.
If this is something that happens to you a lot, you can even decide to invest in some purchases that will improve the situation long-term: e.g., you could buy a CD of Gregorian chant to help you relax; a headset for your cellphone; a neck-pillow designed for commuters; a thermos that you can bring hot coffee (or warm herbal tea) along with you in.
6. Your Thoughts Are Just That: Thoughts.
Here’s the major problem with how a typical human brain operates day-to-day: We all take our thoughts at face value, and react to them as if they are FACTS, rather than THOUGHTS.
And if the thoughts are negative, we INSTANTLY develop negative feelings as a result of that thought. In fact, it’s impossible to have bad feelings without first having a bad thought!
Most of us just plain don’t realize that the thoughts inside our head can be disregarded and without anything terrible happening at all.
Of course, it doesn’t FEEL that way at first, does it?
Most of us believe that we have bad thoughts ‘for a reason’: as if our brain is trying to alert us to some dangerous sequence of events going on, and we OWE IT to ourselves to pay attention and start dwelling on the matter.
But the truth is, that’s a pile of baloney! Thoughts are just that: THOUGHTS. They’re not facts.
They’re not announcements from some sort of internal barometer. They’re merely a side-effect of being ALIVE.
And it’s our privilege to evaluate our thoughts as they come up and decide for ourselves whether each one is something we’d benefit from engaging with or not on a case-by-case basis.
Richard Carlson, author of the book ‘You Can Be Happy No Matter What’, suggests that it’s quite literally our THINKING, not our circumstances, that dictates how we feel.
For example, says Carlson, if you have a bad day at work, you might think, ‘Oh, today was terrible. It was just awful how I screwed up so badly. I wonder if I’m in trouble with the boss. I hope I don’t get fired.’ Is it then any coincidence that you INSTANTLY start to feel low, worried, and majorly stressed-out? NO!!
You’ve just gotten trapped in a negative thought bog. You’ve engaged with the wrong thought. You haven’t realized that your thoughts aren’t reflections of reality they’re simply interpretations of an event.
And you haven’t realized that it’s YOUR CHOICE, as the thinker of your thoughts, to decide which ones you’d like to dwell on and which ones you’d prefer to ignore.
It seems like what’s happening in our lives that dictates how we feel our emotions; but instead, it’s how we THINK about what’s happening, and how we choose to engage with those thoughts, that determines our mood.
Most of us think that negative thoughts occur because our brain is ‘warning’ us about some imminent danger – so we engage with those thoughts, dwell on them at length, and become totally immersed in a low, depressed mood as a result. It’s an epidemic of accidental thinking!
7. Here’s How To Control Your Thoughts And Control Your Emotions.
Here’s the solution:
STOP GIVING SO MUCH WEIGHT TO YOUR THOUGHTS.
The best way for you to live a happier, more relaxed life right now is for you to recognize that ALL thoughts are just that – thoughts!
That we have created!
That we can choose to engage with or disregard! Here’s how this might work: If a bad thought comes up – one that’s likely to make you feel bad – don’t freak out.
Don’t bend yourself into a pretzel. Just take a second to evaluate the thought, and decide whether engaging with it is likely to improve your mood, help you take control of your emotions or worsen it.
8. My Own Experience With This Technique.
When I first read You Can Be Happy No Matter What (the book from which many of these ideas are derived), I was fascinated by the concept. Fascinated!
I decided to give it a try for myself. And sure enough, the opportunity came along quickly enough one night, as I was lying in bed preparing to go to sleep, a sudden thought entered my brain. It seemed to come from nowhere.
One moment I was drowsing along, quite happy and relaxed and the next second: ‘My wife doesn’t kiss me as passionately as she used to.’
Now, I have no idea where this thought came from. But the second I began to engage with it, all sorts of examples and ‘proofs’ of why the thought was true began to pop into my head.
I began to worry about whether we’re becoming ‘less’ as a couple as time goes on … whether there’s anything you can do to slow down the loss of the so-called ‘honeymoon period’ whether she’s still attracted to me and before you knew it, I’d concluded one thing:
That I was going to need to TAKE THE MATTER UP with the man in question, just as soon as I saw her next. Yes!
Just because a random thought had popped into my head, all of a sudden I was upset enough about the matter to decide that I actually needed to talk about the alleged ‘lack of passion’ I had suddenly perceived in my wife!
This is doubly weird when you think about the fact that, until that thought decided to pop into my head, everything was FINE, and I was quite happy in the belief that we have a great relationship.
But this is how negative thoughts work and forces your emotions to go out of control spoiling your mood.
Negative thoughts are insidious.
They make a sudden entrance into your head and SCREAM to be dealt with RIGHT HERE AND NOW and unless you have some kind of protective shield in place (like the knowledge that thoughts ARE JUST THOUGHTS), your good mood can evaporate like ground fog in the morning.
It’s the way the human mind works.
We instinctively try to protect ourselves by treating all ‘danger signals’ as if they’re RED ALERT SIRENS screaming about imminent death.
Yeah, it’s a handy survival tactic but it’s still possible to take a good thing TOO FAR.
And reacting with full-blown moodiness to every bad thought that comes along is about as helpful to your wellbeing as locking yourself into the atomic bomb shelter every time an airplane goes by overhead.
It might be technically SAFER to do that but after awhile, all that effort can SERIOUSLY detract from your quality of life.
In fact, after awhile, you can kinda start to turn yourself into a bit of a Howard Hughes-type recluse-figure … lurking around in the shadows with Kleenex-boxes on your feet, peeing into Mason jars and ‘locking yourself down’ closer than Fort Knox.
And it’s the same thing with your MIND: some bad thoughts might need to be inspected a bit more but MOST OF THEM are nothing more than mental dust-bunnies.
And it’s up to YOU to look at ’em, think about whether engaging with them will IMPROVE your emotions or not and act accordingly.
As for me with my little ‘crisis’ that night … Well, here’s what I did:
About 20 seconds into ‘panic mode’, as I lay there with an absent-minded frown on my face, staring at the wall and coming up with all sorts of ‘facts’ that would ‘prove’ that my bad scary thought was right.
I sort of ‘came to’ with a jerk and realized something important: ‘Hey! This stuff isn’t REAL!
It’s just my thoughts again, doing what they always do!’ And with a sigh of relief, I pulled the plug on that train of thought and settled back down to sleep again. It really is as easy as that.
9. YOUR QUICK CALL TO ACTION: To control your emotions and mood.
To instantly minimize personal anguish, mental sweat-sessions, and the powerful gripping belief that ‘everything’s suddenly gone wrong’, there’s just one thing you need to do:
Recognize that your thoughts are JUST THOUGHTS. They’re not ‘bulletins from the interior’.
You’re not tuning into some sort of self-help intuition channel from your cerebral cortex.
Your brain is simply emitting thoughts at random. It’s what brains do.
So next time you have a thought that makes you feel uncomfortable, start to raise your vibration by asking yourself this question: ‘Is this thought something that will improve my life … or make me unhappy?’
If the former, carry right on and have a great time analyzing it.
If the latter, release the thought, and refrain from having any further dealings with it.
The bottom line: don’t try to CHANGE your thoughts or ‘think positively’.
Instead, either choose to engage, or disengage. The result? A balanced, sane, relaxed feeling – and an ability to ‘float’ through your day without upset or overwhelm.
Enjoy.
I will stop here. If you loved reading this step-by-step guide on how to control your emotions and mood than please do not forget to comment and share.
