3 Simple steps to understand your own emotions
We think that there is nothing difficult in reading emotions: we know when we are sad, we know what makes us happy, we recognize what situations make us uncomfortable, stressful or annoyed. It turns out that emotional intelligence, or the ability to interpret your feelings and emotions, is not an easy art at all and you have to work on it for a very long time.
A few easy-to-understand tips can help us to take concrete steps to understand what we feel well enough to make more conscious decisions, which have a major impact on the quality of our lives.
1. Locate the emotions in your body
Emotions affect specific physical feelings. Abdominal pain, headache, tightness in the chest - these are just examples. Try to observe where specific emotions give themselves. At first, do not try to fight this feeling, just locate it. You can put your hands in this place, sit down and give yourself a moment. Emotions felt consciously can not hurt us, they do not affect us badly. Those feelings that we do not understand determine our decisions - not always good, because they are influenced by a specific feeling that appears suddenly.
2. Be aware of the quality of your emotions.
The following questions may seem "strange" in the context of emotions, but they are legitimate because they help to determine their form and strength. Try to answer them:
How "big" are they?
It's about the strength with which they affect you. They are targeting you, can you control them, overwhelm your mind and body?What is their shape?
Close your eyes and try to visualize the emotions. Do you think they are a circle, a square, a rectangle, or maybe they have a vague outline? If you were to sketch, paint your emotions, what shape would you give them?How deep do you feel them?
Do you feel them on your skin or deeper in your body? In every inch of your body, or in specific parts of it? Where does anger, joy, disappointment, sadness accumulate?Do they change their place?
Are they moving slowly or violently? In which direction?
3. "Mark" emotions.
Think about how you could call your emotions:
- Anxiety
- Anger
- Feeling guilty
- Gratitude
- Fear
- Jealousy
- Stress
As a reminder: When you feel that there is some emotion in you, take a moment. If you can, sit down calmly, locate it in your body, describe it and determine the strength with which you feel it. Such a process is a simple way to control emotions enough so that we can make sensible decisions, even if we are unable to control our nerves, anger, sadness or stress in 100%.
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