Importance of our emotions
Displaying emotions is a manageable art. You cannot appear to be thick-skinned and have no feelings at all. Display of positive as well as negative emotional responses to situations is very important for our relationship with people. Display of positive emotions can earn goodwill. It has a soothing effect on our friends and family.
At the same time, appropriate displays of negative emotional responses like aggression, displeasure, anxiety and criticism are also a part of our emotional repository and a part of our being. These are demonstrated by every human being in some measure under different circumstances. But, over-sensitivity and lack of self-control both spell doom – they invoke responses disproportionate to situations.
People respect those who are calm and composed even in a crisis. Novelist Ernest Hemingway has aptly said, ‘Courage is grace under pressure.’ It is therefore very important to have control on our feelings. Let us control our feelings before they control us!
Deadly Emotional External Tripwire
We have no control on the point of time, when an emotion will be triggered. We also have little control on the form that the emotion would eventually take. This can be attributed simply to the fact that our emotions are generated as a response to a situation, and the reference point is external, over which we have no control. Each situation acts like a tripwire – invoking a reflex action from our side. There are simple methods that can help us, once we hit the tripwire.
Use rational mind to control your emotional mind
Nature has given us a rational mind; use it to control the emotional mind when you hit an external tripwire. When animals react to external inputs, they seldom know where to stop. That is why we use the expression ‘barking like a dog’ for someone who blabbers unendingly. If a door without a latch bangs whenever there is a breeze, a dog will bark every time it bangs – no matter how many times it happens during the night.
However, it would be different for us. We humans would examine the door once and on noticing that there is no latch, would make a mental note of the fact and thereafter, stop reaching out every time the door bangs. The next day, we would take action to get the door repaired.
Convincing yourself out of a situation or reconciling to a reality is the key to controlling emotional turbulence.
The Dwell Time
We have no control on unforeseen situations which generate emotions but we do have control to some extent on how long that emotion is going to last. This is what I would call ‘dwell time.’ Dwell means to live in a place. Let that emotion – if it is a negative one not make a permanent home in your head. Shake it off as early as it is possible.
If somebody says something unpleasant, you feel bad, but don’t sulk and make your life miserable. The art of handling yourself and living well is to reduce the ‘dwell time’ of negative emotions. There is an old saying —“Main tujhe saat janam taak maaf nahin karoonga” (I will not forgive you for the next seven generations). By saying this you are not cursing the other fellow, you are cursing yourself! Will you keep sulking for that long?You have to be crazy to do that.
Virender Kapoor…author, thinker and educationist
An IIT Bombay Alumnus, Kapoor is an author and a motivational speaker. Any questions for the author? Mail us at times.nie@timesgroup.com
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