Negative Thinking and then fighting with your emotions is quite a task, you mind freezes. You think negatively and are not able to process your emotions and thoughts positively. In this Emotional Intelligence video with Michelle at Skillopedia, learn a 5 step plan to control your emotions the right way and avoid stress anxiety and nervousness in tough situations.
Michelle is a trained life coach and has delivered more than 200+ soft skills sessions. We hope you would enjoy today’s soft skills training session, to watch more such videos, visit http://www.learnex.in/
You are watching this video on Skillopedia, part of Let’s Talk Institute for Personality Development and self improvement. We have hundreds of videos to develop good communication skills, inter personal skills, personal growth, motivation skills, inspirational tips to develop self-confidence. Skillopedia is a well known name in the corporate training segment in Mumbai to deliver best personality development course for corporate employees and individuals.
Complete Lesson Transcript:-
Hi guys, welcome to Skillopedia the place to learn skills for the very real world around you and today we are learning to control your emotions. So has it ever happened that you are caught laughing at a text during a serious meeting? Oh my gosh, that has happened with me. Or found yourself reacting with anger at a driver who cut you off in traffic? That hasn’t happened with me. So whether you’re having a good laugh over a text message or feeling frustrated in rush-hour traffic you know that the highs and lows you experience actually decide the way you react publicly and that decides how people around you look at you. Sometimes you end up getting unwanted attention yes and sometimes you are someone in a corner who is just by himself or herself. Well people might call it mood swings, I think it’s something to do with your emotions and this is how our emotions are actually like a roller coaster and many times appear to be out of our control. But is that true our emotions are out of our control? Well the answer to that is no, they are not out of our control. We are well gifted with the ability to control our emotions and if you think that we cannot control our emotions you’ve been thinking wrong so far and it is quite important to learn to control your emotions as your emotions could be costing you your important relationships, your job and even your health, remember stress, anxiety, blood pressure, heart attack… Oh, we don’t want that. So by preparing yourself ahead of time you’ll find that the problematic emotion goes away before it interferes with your life. So let’s begin the roller coaster journey of controlling our emotions at Skillopedia with me Michelle.
So the first way to control your emotions is by selecting your situations carefully. Yeah, you can select your situations, isn’t it? So you must avoid circumstances that lead you to unwanted emotions like anger, anxiety or fear. Let’s say, if you know that you’re most likely to get angry when you’re in a hurry, okay angry and anxious and you become angry when others force you to wait, then don’t leave things for the last minute. Get out of the house or office ten minutes before you need to and you won’t be bothered so much by the people walking around or the cars or the slow elevators. Similarly if there is an acquaintance you find completely annoying then you figure out a way to keep away from bumping into that person. Another situation could be if you know you always get angry and agitated when shopping at a crowded mall, so then what should be your decision? Yes, I think you got it then you should shop when it’s less busy and you are able to take all the time you need to purchase your good choices. So similarly if you know listening to music before exercising puts you in a good mood and in an energetic mood then here you go listen to music before you exercise. So what I’m trying to tell you is by selecting the situation and preparing yourself appropriately you have control over how you respond to the situation. So this is my first strategy to control emotions.
The second step to controlling emotions is to change the environment or a situation according to your emotional comfort. Okay, let me explain this with an example, the emotion that you’re trying to reduce is disappointment just to say just for instance you’re always hoping for example to serve the perfect meal for friends and family but something goes wrong because you’ve aimed too high. So what do you do? You modify the situation, which means you change the situation by finding the recipes that are easy for you to cook so that you can pull off the meal. Okay, if for instance you know that you get nervous when you have the boss over for dinner. So instead of trying to prepare the meal yourself you could order it, right? So you are saving yourself from a lot of anxiety, nervousness and distress. Instead of worrying about how your boss will enjoy the evening, set a relaxing mood with candles, a warm fire, soft music… This way you will create a welcoming ambience and any nervousness will be warded off. Again you’re controlling the situation and in turn your emotions.
The third thing that you could do is, change your focus and attention from a situation that forces you to feel a particularly negative way. So let’s say that you constantly feel inferior to the people around you, okay? You know this about yourself, you feel inferior around the people who look great. So you’re at the gym and you can’t help but notice the people on the weight machines, who managed to lift three times as much as you can. So drawn to them like a magnet, you can’t take your eyes off them and you can’t help but feel jealous of them. So jealousy is another emotion that you need to overcome. So what do you do? Shifting your focus away from them and on to your own self will help you gain some of the strength you need to do your workout. So by changing your thinking you change your response.
Next what you could try to do is, you could try to change your thoughts or what you believe. Oftentimes our emotions are driven by what we believe. Okay, let me explain this better. You feel sad when you believe that you have lost something, right? Or you feel angry when you believe you have failed in achieving an important goal, or you feel excitement when you believe that something good is coming your way. So in all these cases your mind is believing something. So by changing your thoughts and your beliefs you may not be able to change the situation but you can at least change the way your belief is affecting the situation. Okay, let’s say that your husband or your wife, your significant other, your boyfriend or girlfriend forgot your birthday and you were hurt and you were disappointed and you started believing that they don’t care about you. As a result you will start feeling angry, but what you could do to control your emotions is you could change your thought and beliefs. So by thinking that maybe he or she forgot about it, they lost track of the dates, they didn’t remember the dates or they had some more important issues to deal with or they were otherwise just involved in a lot of things and possibly very busy. So by changing your thoughts in this case you would not change the situation, they still forgot your birthday but you would change the way it makes you feel and you will not feel miserable anymore. So isn’t it in your hands to feel great or to feel miserable.
The final step for controlling emotions is to change your response. So if all else fails you can’t avoid the situation, you can’t change the situation, you can’t change your focus, you can’t change what you believe and that emotion is just bursting out, then the final step is to take control and change your response. Your heart may be beating out like a drum roll when you’re anxious or angry, so what do you do? Do you just go and blurt out your anger on anybody? No, remember we are trying to save relationships. So if you want to save your relationship you take deep breaths and maybe close your eyes in order to calm yourself down and then think about the situation and similarly if you can’t stop laughing, which happens with me so often when everyone else seems serious or sad you need to gather your inner strength, you know and force yourself at least to change your facial expression if not your mood maybe you’re still feeling like laughing but then you have to change your facial expression otherwise you’ll hurt a lot of people there, who are sad. As an example, exercise, meditation or counting till 10 when you’re angry or upset can be used to change your response to a situation which would otherwise cause you to be very furiously angry. Reacting immediately to a certain situation can be a big mistake and it is guaranteed that you will say or do something that you will regret later. So before reacting take a deep breath, continue to breathe deeply for five minutes feeling as your muscles relax and your muscles un-tense and your heart rate returns to normal. Then you become calmer and then you take your decisions. I remember having read somewhere, “don’t react when you are angry and don’t make any promises when you’re happy”.
So now you know how using these five steps I have shared with you in this session you’ll be able to control your emotions. I hope this session would be of much help to you in trying to control your emotions. Let me know how you felt about it in the comments below and thank you for watching this session with me, this is Michelle signing off, see you very soon bye-bye.
This is very nice methods for me 🙂
Thank you