6 Tips to Help You to be an Emotionally Strong Person
Change your emotional home to change your life.
Every human being experiences a cocktail of emotions; both positive and negative. These are the emotions that control your thoughts. Your thoughts control your actions.
Sometimes I get confused with the phrase “You need to be emotionally strong.” It became a cliché, when people use it all the time, when things do not go their way.
So here is my take on it. As Tony Robbins puts it, “your growth is as big as your emotional home”.
Ask yourself what are some of the common emotions you experience?
It could be positive emotions like happiness, joy, enthusiasm, motivation, drive, calmness, etc.
Also, there are negative emotions like depression, worry, anger, fear, anxiety, etc.
Have you ever observed your pattern of emotions?
In other words, for the most part, how did you feel over the past week or the past month or two? Which emotional side were you leaning towards, the positive side or negative side?
Whichever side you take, that is your emotional pattern, in other words, that’s your Emotional Home.
This means, if you are a positive person, regardless of your environment, you will try to stay positive.
If you are a negative person, regardless of how happy your external circumstances are, you will find a way to be sad. It is because that’s the Emotional home you would like to live in.
If you think about it, your actions are determined and triggered by your emotions. For example, if you hate your job, ask yourself how you feel about it.
You may be feeling angry with your boss for his/her behavior, or frustrated with deadlines, worried about getting less salary or hatred towards the office politics, etc. With such an emotional state at the workplace, how would you be motivated to work? It would result in a downward spiral in terms of performance.
Following are some of the tips you can incorporate in your life to handle the emotional state:
1. See things Practically
As easy as it is to say, but everything comes with practice. We all encounter emotional imbalance at certain stages in our lives.
Most of the time we go with our feelings in the sense we would commit to doing something only when we feel like doing it.
This certainly is a pattern you would have developed over time and eventually, your actions will be based on your feelings.
How to do it?
Create a system or a ritual in your life. A ritual is something you do over and over, no matter how you feel about it.
Take examples of athletes and military personnel, the rituals they go through every day are not something that would be pleasant.
Those rituals are in place because they will help them to break the pattern. No matter how emotionally low the athletes are, they will go for a run so they can train their minds and body to win the championship.
Hence, plug in a ritual in your life such as time blocking — where you block out some time off your calendar for a particular job you have been procrastinating for a long time.
2. Stay away from Gossips and Complaints
As humans, we consciously or subconsciously attract like-minded people such as ourselves in our lives.
If you are a person who always complains about the life you naturally get attracted towards other people who complain about the same thing as you are complaining.
When you do not like your job, you will get along well with people who don’t like their job either. When you are having a relationship problem, you will have people around you who are having similar problems.
What you need to understand is, you are in a vicious cycle which will eventually sink your ship.
What to do instead?
The solution is very simple, Avoid people who gossip or complain about theirs or others life.
Sticking with such people will not elevate your emotional status quo rather it will only reinforce your current state of being.
3. Try making quick decisions and never change it
You can test yourself to see if you are an emotionally strong or a weak person. Check if you are able to make a decision quickly and never change it. If you are not able to do, then certainly you need some emotional stability.
I am sure we all have some wants to achieve, however, but our mind gives a million reasons as to how it's impossible. The funny part is the reason seems so accurate.
How to do it?
The mindset you need to adapt is when you make a decision, you stick to it over a period of time. Your mind will automatically get attuned to the new reality.
For example, when you hate your job, take a decision and commit yourself that you are going to change it. Start taking courses or improving your skillsets and lookout for new opportunities, your outside world automatically changes.
4. Embrace your mistakes
This will make a significant impact on your life. Embracing your mistakes will set you free from the chains of regrets and stubbornness. These emotions are nothing but fear and create anxiety.
Mistakes are part of our human lives. Without making mistakes, you cannot perfect a craft. If Edison did not make 10,000 mistakes we would not be sitting under the lights.
How to do it?
There is no one right way to do it. Let me give an example from my work, I have made some mistakes on a task I was assigned to do. A couple of times, my manager called me out and said he was not satisfied with the results.
After hearing the critical feedback from my manager, I was so angry at myself and was kicking myself. Then I decided to adopt a different mindset. I started to see the situation as is. Also, I made note of all the mistakes I have done without any judgment.
When retried the task, I made a note of the progress I made since last time. Although the progress was little, it gave me a bit of relief by seeing myself learning from my mistakes. Later, I reapproached this problem over and over with the mindset of learning. Finally, I got the breakthrough of how to do a particular task.
Trust me, I did not get any appreciation or accolades from my manager for this and then I realized, not every accomplishment of yours will be appreciated every time by people. Rather, you need to stack up your learnings and small wins in order for you to master your skills over time.
5. Question your beliefs
Your life is driven by beliefs. Beliefs are nothing but what you think is certain regardless of their rational reasoning.
If you think only good grades are going to get you a job, then you might certainly need to question the belief in the way by looking at people who had gone places without a college degree and are earning more than people who have a college degree.
If you think only bad people can be rich then you need to question your belief because everyone in this world can be rich when you follow certain universal laws and guidelines.
How to do it?
Beliefs not only drive your life but also drive your emotions. The best way to question your belief is to start writing down your beliefs about something you think about often. Then ask the following questions
1. What made me believe it's true?
2. From when on I started believing it's true?
3. Who made me believe it's true?
4. Which circumstance made me believe it's true?
Keep doing this exercise unless you feel differently about certain beliefs you have in your mind.
6. Start acknowledging and appreciating
This cannot be stressed enough. This is one of the common things that all the self-help books, coaches, and leaders lay emphasis on it. That is acknowledging and appreciating what you have rather than blaming and complaining about what you do not have.
Gratitude is the antidote for all the problems. According to the book the ‘Science of getting rich’, Dale Carnegie says, the more you are grateful for the things you already have, the more you receive.
Similarly, the more you are not acknowledging and appreciating things, the more will be taken away from you by the universe or life or God or whatever you can call.
How to do it?
1. Start maintaining a gratitude journal where write down 10 things you are grateful for every day
2. Cover the following areas of Health, wealth, money, relationship, and career
3. Start complimenting others for their positives
4. Start giving gratitude for the people who helped you to get by the day
5. Start appreciating small things such as the oxygen you are able to breathe, the sounds you are able to hear, the things you are able to see, etc.
Conclusion:
Unless you come to the realization that emotions control your life, you continue to suffer no matter what you try externally.
The external changes will have their own effects but if you want to get a lasting change, you need to change the emotional home you are currently residing in.
