No! I don’t mean going for plastic surgery to change your looks and feel more confident thereafter! It is simpler than that.
In the previous article, I shared how emotions and mood directly affect our lives and our chance of achieving happiness and fulfilment. Therefore, instead of becoming a passive bystander to our emotions, we must master them and take control of our life.
So, what affect our emotions? Many people believe that emotions are mostly triggered by the external environment. Sure, most of us will be upset over a difficult colleague, over unfair criticism or even sometimes just simply by bad weather. Yes, our emotions are our feelings when something happens to us. Because of this, many of us believe that we cannot fully control the external environment and thus be at the mercy of our emotions. We can only feel better if the external triggers improve or change. That may be why we feel better when on vacation to take a break from work and stress. That may be also why we quit our jobs hoping for a change of environment. While these actions are certainly useful to improve our mood, they may not be practical and sustainable. Fortunately, there are also simple and realistic ways which we can directly influence our emotions to make us feel better. More importantly, these steps are available to us internally without having to change the external environment. So, let me tell you more about Tony Robbins’s 3 factors that affects our emotions and how to use them to stay happy and satisfied.
To control our emotions, we can simply change 3 factors – (1) our physiology or body language, (2) our mental focus and (3) what language or words we use to label our experiences. Let’s focus on the simplest one first – changing our body language to change our emotions.
For a long time, psychologists believe in the ‘Classical Cognition’ theory where the brain is the only element capable of thinking. The rest of the body do not influence thinking and simply execute actions commanded by the brain. In recent years, a new theory has emerged – ‘Embodied Cognition’ where our mind and body are actually inter-related and both are quite capable of thinking. Not only does our mind influence our movements, the state of our body also affects our mind as well.
Let me share an example: The traditional theory suggests that we do happy things when we feel happy while the new theory says that we may feel happy when we do happy things. One familiar example to show how our actions can lead our emotions – say we are feeling tired or drained, suddenly we come across a silly video of cats being scared shitless by cucumbers on YouTube and have a good laugh. Instantly, our mood is better and we feel more energised. Conversely, a negative state of body can put us in a negative state of mind. Slouching and dropping our shoulders make us feel sad and depressed. Frowning gets us worried. Sitting down for too long makes us feel tired.
So, how can we use our body to regulate our emotions? Here are some of my personal favourites:
1. Adopt a positive posture: Adopt an erect and alert posture. Stand tall, straighten your back, pull your shoulders back. The general idea is make yourself look ‘bigger’ and these postures will help you feel more confident and assured. Think King Kong.
2. Change your movement: Speed up or slow down depending on what state you are in. If you are feeling sad and depressed where you can’t muster any strength to do anything, get moving. Start walking faster, bring more energy and speed into your life. This will make you feel more alert. Do not be like those zombies in The Walking Dead. Conversely, if you are in a panic or anxious state – slow down. Adjust your body to calm down. Instead of rushing everywhere, slow down and take mindful steps, be aware of your surroundings. You cannot feel anxious when you are in ‘Zen Mode’.
3. Mediate. When you were depressed or sad, can you recall how did you breathed? Were you panting hard or it was slow and calm? You probably cannot recall. Right? When we are in a negative emotional state, we usually do not pay attention to how we breathe. So, if you are in those states, mediate and pay attention to your breath. Inhale and exhale slowly, using deep diaphragmatic breath instead of chest breathing. Consciously feel each breath. Physiologically, this will calm and relax your body. Mentally, mediating mindfully will train you to be more aware of your emotions and help take your mind off negative states.
4. Look up: picture someone who is sad, is he usually looking up or down? Down right? So, look up when you are feeling down. When our eyes look up, we naturally go into a thinking mode. This allows us to focus on thinking and less on the emotional feeling. On the our hand, when we look down, we go into a reflective mode that makes us more emotional.
5. Whistle or Laugh: There are some actions that we cannot do well when we are sad or angry. Like laughing, our minds cannot focus on angry thoughts when we are laughing. Similarly, we cannot whistle well when we are angry or sad. Just doesn’t work. Try it.
6. Exercise: This is simple enough – exercise has been proven to lift moods. The body produces endorphins, the hormone that make us feel good, when we exercise. To me, exercise is like super pill that includes the other steps we talked about – changing posture, speed and breathing.
Sound too simple? Yes, I agree as well. Thankfully, all these actions work, whether in the moment or over a longer term. So, I invite you to give a try. None of them require external help, hefty investments or specialised equipment. You can start today and be immediately successful in managing your emotions. What you will need, though, is the acute awareness of your state of body and the unwavering belief that you can influence your emotions using your body. So, start living right today, one breath at a time.
Walking on Fire 