COPING WITH EMOTIONS

If ever you wish to maintain lasting peace and happiness and build up efficiency as a sure route to success, you would need to develop the ability not only to manage your negative emotions but also to make your positive emotions to work for you. Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. Some of the negative emotions like anger, fear, anxiety, worry, sadness, etc., if left unattended to can gallop unbridled, throwing us into untold misery and troublesome situations. Hence negative emotions need to be managed and not allowed to cross certain limits so that they can be our slaves and not we, theirs. Putting some sort of restraint on negative emotions alone is not enough if we wish to attain optimal performance. We need to sow, and nurture with care some of those positive emotions and make them work for us. In the absence of such states of mind as hope, enthusiasm, persistence, perseverance, creativity, etc., we can achieve nothing. Any action, if not accompanied by the right level of emotions, can fall flat. It is thought coupled with emotion that acts as a springboard for action. And any action, if not supported by a sufficient level of emotions, can turn out to be robotical and mechanical. Hence we need to manage not only our negative emotions but also learn to put our positive emotions to work for us.

What does managing emotions mean?

Emotions are states of mind that are natural. Thoughts and feelings keep on coming to our mind at will - we cannot in any way stop them! However, whether or not , to entertain negative emotions is something that is within our ability. As individuals, we ought to strive to know the feelings that we presently experience, to name those feelings and to trace the sources from which they arise. In case we fail to do so, we need to introspect more closely and study our thoughts, feelings and actions so that we are in a better position to know them for what they actually are. Once we know our intense feelings and the sources from which they spring up, we are in a better position to impose our discretion and rationalization on our emotions. As a result, we will be able to decide whether to continue with our emotions or bring a sort of restriction on them so that they are expressed appropriately and effectively.

Emotional management, however, does not mean total suppression of emotions altogether. When, and only when, we have a positive attitude and enough self-knowledge, we will be in a position to make the right decisions about what to do with our emotions. As Sterrett (2004) notes, we shall get into trouble if we do not control our emotions enough or if we over control them. Indeed, doing so would imply that we do not know how to deal with them positively or that we are indifferent to the consequences that these unguarded emotions would infringe upon us and others. Thus, emotional self-control, as Goleman (1998) puts it, implies keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check and not over controlling them. Emotions as such are an important aspect of our lives. What is required is emotional restraint, i.e., some sort of tempered balance and wisdom. It does not mean stifling of all feelings and spontaneity. If we opt to do so, it can only be at the cost of our physical and mental well being. Those who do so run the risk of raising their heart rate. As Gross and Levenson (1997) note, when emotional suppression is chronic, it can impair thinking, hamper intellectual performance and even interfere with smooth social interaction.

Total suppression of negative emotions has further repercussions too. As Goleman (1998) very rightly observes, bad moods too have their own advantages and value. Anger, sadness and fear, he says, can become sources of creativity, energy and connectedness. Anger, for example, can become a source of motivation when it stems from the urge to right an injustice. Shared sadness can knit people together. It is again fear that ensures that we keep to the pavement lest we be run down by speeding vehicles on the road. Emotional management does not in any way mean total stifling of all emotions. A life totally devoid of emotions would be a dull wasteland of neutrality, cut off and isolated from the richness of life itself. When emotions are muted, they create dullness and distance and when left unchecked, they become pathological and lead people to depression, overwhelming anxiety, raging anger and manic agitation. Unless we keep emotional distress under check, we will not experience emotional well being. After all, it is emotions and impulses that impel people to action. As the tendency to act is implicit in every emotion, we need to bring certain restraint on it so that it may be expressed appropriately and effectively.

In addition to bringing in certain restrictions on our negative emotions, we need to cultivate and nurture our positive emotions and get them work for the accomplishment of our goals. Optimism, hope, enthusiasm, persistence, freedom from an inferiority complex, motivation, creativity, etc., are some of the positive emotions that are important in the achievement of our goals. They need not only to be nurtured but utilized well, if we are to do our best in life. These are good predictors of success in our attempt at excellence. Thus we need to pay close attention to our emotion as we relate to our life. We need not only to restrain our debilitating emotions but also make ample use of our positive emotions by getting them to work for the accomplishment of our goals. Unless we do so, all our efforts at excellence can go down the drain.