The Bottleneck of your Emotions

“You can't have your cake and eat it too”

In simpler terms, it means that you can’t have it both ways. We’ll come back to this in a minute.

In my last article, The Power of your Beliefs, we learned that we may carry many significant emotions from our childhood,  ones which are the foundation of our life stories are so repressed and bottled up deep in our minds that we happen to fall in the trap of its vicious cycle without even acknowledging that why we have this puzzled feelings again and again, which eventually can lead to struggles in certain areas of your life say, love, work, friendship, family or money. Do you go cold feet on your interview day for which you prepared so well? Words aren't coming out of your mouth? Any area of your life for which you always struggle repetitively? Do you feel circling in an endless loop? Do you feel paralyzed? Sometimes these emotional blockages are so hard to recognise, addressing them would be a light year ahead.

Modern life is full of challenges and emotions are marked with trickery. We are gobbled up by our emotions every day and sometimes we find it difficult to understand the story behind it. Let’s try to crack this error for personal fulfilment and professional success. Emotions are a human decoding style for the stimulus present in our environment. In simple terms, emotion is a broad concept and we often understand it as mood or feelings. 

• We feel good or bad dimensions of emotion such as joy, sorrow, happiness, fear, love, excitement, anger, hate, and many such feelings throughout our lives which generates a bodily reaction to it. 

• Our mood is a time duration in which we feel that particular feeling but has less intensity than emotion.

Emotions are very subjective as every human has a different level of capacity to feel and experience any emotion which has a physiological reaction and major exponent of your expression. You may get highly excited seeing a chocolate fudge during PMS but may not feel the same excitement any other day (girls can relate easily, boys please try google). Our emotions are influenced by many situational factors such as gender, personality and many other proximate/collective factors.

We as humans have a Feeling brain and Thinking brain, which we normally vocalize by saying thinking from the heart( Feeling brain) 💓 or thinking from the brain( Thinking brain). This is to inform you that our heart is just a pumping organ for blood & oxygen and we do not think from our heart 😁😂😂😉. And evidently, it is all in your brain. It is equally important that these two sides of your brain don’t clash frequently and remain balanced and in sync to function appropriately. “The one who can master the emotions can master the actions and once you master your actions, you can easily master your future reality.”

Now let’s go back to that first line. If you won’t address these underlying emotional issues, you may not be able to live a meaningful and happy life. The way we handle our emotions determines the quality of life we live and you can't have the latter without dealing with the former issue.

How do we form Emotions?

Emotions are concepts we form. A concept is a compressed version of our experiences throughout our life. Our brain collects all the information as simulations through our sensory organs and interprets this data to make sense of the world around you. 

For example:- a newborn baby will touch the hot utensil on the stove as he does not understand the concept of fire and heat, but over time when touching the utensils hurts and makes a burning sensation for a kid, he/she will form a concept and the emotion of pain surrounding hot utensils, so in short, we have multiple experiences around heat and pain throughout our life and brain works on survival and adaptation instincts to avoid these experiences. In the same way, we form many concepts and complex interconnections and whatever we instruct our brain through the years from the perspective( glass of society and environment)  of the emotions felt and we create our beliefs surrounding that variable. Our brain works in a very peculiar way and evolution of the human brain is an indigenous concept itself. Our brain simulates what is going on around us through our memories, thoughts and beliefs through which we experience our emotions.

Thinking Brain Vs Feeling Brain - Who drives our Important decisions?

Imagine that your brain is a Ferrari. I have used Ferrari because let’s stay rich in our thoughts and in the long run, you will know why I used this metaphor. When you are driving on the road of life, you get many intersections and cross borders which represent the important decisions you make which will decide where you are taking yourself. Isn’t it? 

Your Ferrari has two travellers - thinking person and feeling person. Your thinking mind is responsible for your conscious thought and is calculative of pros and cons of a situation. Your feeling brain is responsible for your emotions, instincts, impulses and gut. Currently, my thinking brain is calculating how I can survive in this pandemic and my feeling brain wants to run for a beach vacation and escape this drama. I hope you feel me.😃😉

Your thinking brain is rational and accurate, so your rational brain knows that certain habits such as smoking, excessive tea or coffee affect your health and have to be controlled but your emotional brain does not acknowledge and you have a hard time changing it as emotions drive action. It is because your rational brain is slow and systematic which takes efforts and consistency whereas your emotional brain is quick, is very instinctive, could be irrational and comes to a conclusion very easily. Your feeling brain is sitting on the passenger seat while your thinking brain drives the car. The thinking brain being practical, chooses to drive in a rational and straight manner whereas your feeling brain is shouting to take a different turn and creating a turmoil within you which is where you find your emotional blockages. 

Tip:- Whenever you know what is a rational decision but still unable to pull out in your life is because your emotions are conflicted. Recognize! Think! Act! Your feeling brain is that child whom you can’t throw out of the car, no matter how hard you try to keep your emotions shut. You will be trapped in the loop until you start recognizing and address these emotions constructively.

Build Your Emotional Intelligence

To overcome emotional blockages for happiness and success in life, emotional intelligence is fairly important as your intellectual ability. Emotional quotient (EQ) is the ability to understand, use, and manage emotions to communicate whilst being empathetic towards others emotions as well. We probably know people either at work or in our circle who are really good listeners who listen to your situation patiently and somehow magically know what to say and how to say even harsh truths so that we are not upset or offended.

Even if they don't have a solution, you feel more relaxed and optimistic just sharing it with them. These people are masters at managing their emotions, they know when to trust their instincts and are excellent decision-makers. Research shows that people with high EQ are more likely to succeed than people with high IQ and experience. It is one of the crucial skills for becoming leaders or being in the radar for exponential opportunities.

Below 6 points guide will help you develop a high EQ:-

1. Acknowledge Emotions:- Every emotion of your story starts from you, so stay put for a while and acknowledge your feelings with situations and people around you. How your emotions affect your thoughts and behaviour.

2. Differentiating and Analyse:- Ask questions “what am I feeling?”, “how am I doing?” and “what do I want?”

3. Accept and Appreciate emotions:- Your harshest critic is always going to be yourself. Pay attention and accept and choose to learn from your behaviours, rather defending and going back to a downward spiral.

4. Reflect on your emotions and its origin:- Because your emotions affect your thoughts and your thoughts affect your behaviour(action). Create a checklist and get things done. Take action. Create room for better things to prosper.

5. Handle your emotions:- Practice it with your every breath. It won't happen overnight but with mindful efforts every day one can achieve the art of handling the emotions.

6. And lastly, handle the emotions of people around you:- Be more empathetic and understand the “why” behind other people's feelings and reactions. It is a very important step for social skills and being a people person.

When we heal our emotional energy, we will have a deeper connection with ourselves, with people around us and we increase our capacity to have a more meaningful life as a whole.

Many fortune companies use emotional intelligence tests to hire employees and working in this arena of your life can be the key to achieve your many goals such as career and interpersonal relationships. Imagine the world if every one of us was emotionally intelligent, it will spare us from emotional suffering as we would understand our emotions and can manage it and being empathetic towards society and people around us. Just imagine the beauty of it.

A world, full of mutual understanding, acceptance, tolerance and meaningful connections.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant,” Albert Einstein once said. “We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Happy healing everyone :)