Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity and Better Manage Your Feelings (Mastery Series Book 1)

Author: Thibaut Meurisse

• Feelings manifest as physical sensations in your body, not as an idea in your mind. Perhaps, the reason the word ‘feel’ is so often overused or misused is because we don’t want to talk about our emotions.

• Your emotions color all your experiences. When you feel good, everything seems, feels, or tastes better.

• Your emotions can also act as a powerful guide. They can tell you something is wrong and allow you to make changes in your life.

• Fortunately, unlike your ancestors, you’re (probably) not facing death every day. In fact, in many parts of the world, life has never been safer. Yet, your survival mechanism hasn’t changed much. Your brain still scans your environment looking for potential threats. In many ways, some parts of your brain have become obsolete. While you may not be seconds away from being eaten by a predator, your brain still gives significantly more weight to adverse events than to positive ones. Fear of rejection is one example of a bias toward negativity. In the past, being rejected by your tribe would reduce your chances of survival significantly. Therefore, you learned to look for any sign of rejection, and this became hardwired in your brain.

• Fortunately, unlike your ancestors, you’re (probably) not facing death every day. In fact, in many parts of the world, life has never been safer. Yet, your survival mechanism hasn’t changed much. Your brain still scans your environment looking for potential threats.

• In the past, being rejected by your tribe would reduce your chances of survival significantly. Therefore, you learned to look for any sign of rejection, and this became hardwired in your brain. Nowadays, being rejected often carries little or no consequence to your long-term survival. You can be hated by the entire world and still have a job, a roof and plenty of food on the table, yet, your brain remains programmed to perceive rejection as a threat to your survival.

• One single criticism can often outweigh hundreds of positive ones. That’s why, an author with fifty 5-star reviews, is likely to feel terrible when they receive a single 1-star review.

• The fear of rejection can also lead you to

• The fear of rejection can also lead you to over-dramatize events. If your boss criticized you at work, your brain might see the criticism as a threat and you now think, “What if my boss fires me? What if I can’t find a job quickly enough and my wife leaves me? What about my kids? What if I can’t see them again?”

• Your brain’s primary responsibility is not to make you happy, but to ensure your survival.

• This acclimatization is also probably why the new car or house you want will only make you happy for a while. Once the initial excitement wears off, you’ll move on to crave the next exciting thing. This phenomenon is known as ‘hedonic adaptation.’

• The investigation evaluated how winning the lottery or becoming a paraplegic influence happiness: The study found that one year after the event, both groups were just as happy as they were beforehand. Yes, just as happy (or unhappy). You can find more about it by watching Dan Gilbert’s TED Talk, The Surprising Science of Happiness

• Does that mean you can’t be happier than you are right now? No. What it means is that, in the long run, external events have minimal impact on your level of happiness.

• Thus, to gain more control over your emotions, it is fundamental you understand what your ego is and how it works.

• Now, let’s clarify what we mean by ego. We often say of someone that, “he has a big ego,” referring to the ego as something close to pride. While pride is undoubtedly a manifestation of ego, that’s only one part of it. You may show no pride and appear humble while still being controlled by your ego.

• The ego refers to the self-identity you’ve constructed throughout your life.

• Additionally, you accept things about yourself because people told you to do so. What’s more, you identify with your name, your age, your religion, your political belief, or your occupation in a similar way.

• As we’ll see later in this book, attachment creates beliefs, and these beliefs lead you to experience certain emotions. For instance, you may become offended when people criticize your religion or attack your political principles.

• On the other hand, highly self-conscious people can see through their ego. They understand how belief works and how excessive attachment to a set of beliefs can create suffering in their life. In effect, these individuals become the master of their mind and are at peace with themselves.

• Note that the ego is neither good nor bad; it’s just a result of a lack of self-awareness. It fades away as you become aware of it since ego and awareness cannot coexist.

• The ego likes to identify with material things. It thrives in today’s world. Perhaps, we can say capitalism and the consumer society we’re living in today is the creation of collective egos,

• Your ego loves the way you look because it is the easiest thing to recognize and quantify.

• The ego also derives its sense of identity from your relationships with others. The ego is only interested in what it can get from them. In other words, the ego thrives on the way it can use people to strengthen its identity.

• The feeling of needing someone is very much a play of the ego as well.

• Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people. ANTHONY DE MELLO

• Once you realize you don’t actually need anyone, you can start enjoying people’s company. You can see them as they really are rather than trying to get something from them.

• The ego tends to equate ‘having’ with ‘being,’ which is why the ego likes to identify with objects.

• The ego lives through comparison. Your ego likes to compare itself with other egos. The ego is never satisfied.

• The ego lives through comparison. Your ego likes to compare itself with other egos.

• The ego is never satisfied. Your ego always wants more.

• The ego’s sense of self-worth often depends on the worth you have in the eyes of others.

• Your ego wants to feel superior to other egos. It wants to stand out and needs to create artificial separations to do that.

• Understanding the way your ego works can help you better control your emotions. To do this, you must first realize your current story is the result of a strong identification with people, things or ideas. This intense identification is the root of many of the negative emotions you experience in your life.

• In short, most of your emotions are based on your personal story and the way you perceive the world. As you replace your current story with a more empowering one—while, at the same time, letting go of your excessive attachment to things, people or ideas—you will be able to experience more positive emotions.

• The first thing to understand is that emotions come and go. One moment you feel happy, the next you feel sad.

• To start taking control of your emotions you must accept they are transient. You must learn to let them pass without feeling the need to identify strongly with them.

• Remember this: the way you interpret emotions, as well as the blame game you engage in, creates suffering, not the emotions themselves.

• Your emotions are not here to make your life harder, but to tell you something.

• Bear in mind, if you experience the same emotions repeatedly, it probably means you hold disempowering beliefs and need to change something in your life.

• Negative emotions act as a filter that taints the quality of your experiences. During a negative episode, every experience is perceived through this filter.

• Interestingly, external factors might not be—and often aren’t—the direct cause of a sudden change in your emotional state. You can be in the same situation, with the same job, the same amount of money in your bank account, and have the same problems as always, but experience radically different emotional states.

• The point I’m making is, no matter how great your life is, if you spend most of your time focusing on your problems, you’ll become depressed.

• Don’t let your mind over-dramatize things by clustering unrelated matters. It will only make you feel worse. Instead, remember that negative emotions exist only in your mind. Taken separately, most of your issues aren’t such a big deal, and no rule that says you have to solve them all at once.

• For example, let’s say you felt sad for a couple of days, ask yourself the following questions: What triggered my emotions? What fueled them over the two days? What story was I telling myself? How and why did I get out of my slump? What can I learn from this episode?

• In their book, Ask and It is Given, Ester and Jerry Hicks offer a model to explain how emotional ranges are connected and how we can move up the ladder from negative, to more positive emotions. For instance, in this model, depression or hopelessness is at the bottom of the ladder followed by anger. What it means is that when you feel depressed, signs of anger indicate you’re climbing the emotional ladder.

• Whenever you experience negative emotions, watch for emotions that give you more energy. So-called negative emotions like anger can help you overcome even more disempowering emotions, like hopelessness. Only you know how you feel. Therefore, if anger feels better, accept it.

• Negative emotions are not the problem, the mental suffering you create out of these emotions is.

• Too many of us are addicted to our problems. Instead of letting go, we complain, we play the victim, we blame other people, or we discuss our issues without doing anything to solve them.

• If we exclude spontaneous emotional reactions resulting from your survival mechanism, most of your emotions are self-created.

• Your body, your voice, the food you eat, or how much you sleep, also play a role in determining the quality of your emotions and therefore the quality of your life.

• An evening ritual will also help you stay on track with your morning ritual. It will be easier to wake up every day at the same time without feeling tired if you have a morning and a nighttime ritual.