Channelling Emotions into Energy and Motivation

I am someone that a lot of people describe as passionate.

Passionate is defined as:

Showing or caused by strong feelings or a strong belief.

I can see why I am described as passionate…I show passion about my job, my romantic life, my position on an idea, my interests, my friendships, and my life overall.

I’m also an extremely emotional person, which adds to why I am so passionate. As my understanding of myself has evolved over time, I have learned how to channel my emotions into raw energy and intense motivation in order to accomplish great things. Although my energy and motivation come in the form of both positive and negative emotions, I always strive to funnel both forces into positive energy, and positive motivation.

So how does one harness the power of one’s emotions into something new? It’s easier said than done. There is a certain level of self-awareness that you need in order to accomplish this. I have noticed that with age, my self-awareness increases. That being said, increased self-awareness does not just happen, you need to be able to self-reflect. During your life, you have to pause, and look at an event or an emotion that has occurred. You then have to ask yourself, “What happened?”, “How did it happen?”, “Where did this come from?”, “Why did it happen?”, “Was this occurrence or emotion good? Why or why not?” It sounds like a lot of analysis, but it is good to ask these questions to yourself. It helps you to take a different look at your life, and really understand the different aspects to a situation and how you were involved.

One way I have increased my self-awareness recently is through writing about my life and my emotions. Previously, I would only sit and think about my life events and emotions; however, I have found that there is intrinsic value in writing your thoughts and feelings as opposed to just running through them in your head. The reason is that it can be easy to get lost in a whirlwind of thoughts in your head, and after awhile, it becomes difficult to keep everything straight. Writing your thoughts and feelings allows you to organize and process everything in a coherent manner. Having the inner workings of your mind on paper is a form of expression in itself, which can help lessen the intensity of certain emotions. Overall, writing your thoughts and feelings works kind of like a five-paragraph theme essay from high school: you introduce the idea, you explain the idea and provide supporting evidence for it, then you write a conclusion that sums up the idea and brings about a new understanding. This same approach applies to writing your thoughts and feelings. You can introduce the emotion which helps you understand where the emotion came from. Adding supporting evidence and describing it in detail helps you understand exactly what happened, and how it happened. And finally, the conclusion allows you to write out why something happened, whether it was good or bad, and why it was good or bad. All of these questions and sequences are very helpful, but when they bounce around in your head, it becomes harder to process.

Another way that I have increased my self-awareness is through meditation. I use the app Headspace to guide me through meditation every morning. Meditation teaches you how to be more aware of your mental state, and how it affects your emotions and your body. It is slightly unnatural to sit and understand how your body and mind feel, but doing meditation teaches that process, and allows you to understand yourself better. Meditation allows you to step outside of an emotion, observe it, understand it, and process it. You do not necessarily have to sit within an emotion when it happens. For example, if you are sad, it is OK to be sad and even to cry to let out that sadness, but meditation can teach you how to see the sadness, understand the sadness, and process the sadness. You do not necessarily have to be engulfed by the sadness. It can be there, sitting in your body temporarily. You cannot just remove the sadness, but being able to observe it as a third-party observer helps you to handle the sadness and move through it more quickly and healthily. Meditation teaches you how to reflect on your emotions, as well as be in control of them. Emotional people tend have their actions dictated by their emotional state; however, meditation teaches you how you can be the one to dictate your actions despite your emotions.

Once you understand your emotions, then it becomes possible to channel them into energy and motivation. I have used emotions to grow my personal and professional lives numerous times.

For example, I used my insecurities about dating and romantic relationships to fuel my drive and motivation to get into the gym and become fit. I saw being more fit as a way to be more attractive, and therefore be able to more dateable.

Another instance of channelling emotions, was when I built my first startup. There were a number of emotions that powered my will to create. The initial emotion that motivated the creation of my startup was anxiety about my skill set and résumé lacking behind my peers, therefore making me less competitive in the job market. Other feelings that powered my startup were pain, loneliness, and inadequacy from the heartbreak of a fling with a past romantic interest. All of these negative feeling ignited my energy and motivation levels, but they were accompanied by a vision and a dream to achieve greatness. Since I was able to understand the emotions that I was feeling through self-reflection, I was able to weave them together into a new shape and form, that ultimately led to the creation of a great product and company, which launched me into the career that I am in today. Energy and motivation for creation through heartbreak is not that uncommon. The fuel for the founders of Facebook and Napster came from heartbreak (as discussed and portrayed in the movie The Social Network). This creation was sparked from a set of negative emotions that sparked a drive and will for positivity.

I also used emotions to build my second startup; however, this startup was built on a more positive emotion: love. I worked on this startup partially because I liked the idea, but more so to provide an opportunity for me to work in the same city as the person that I loved. At the time, I was living on the opposite side of the country from this person, and I wanted so desperately to have an opportunity to move and live near my love. I jumped on this opportunity because it seemed likely to take off, and it seemed likely that it would be based in the city where my partner lived. I worked day and night to build, create, and grow my skills and the startup, all with the goal and vision to end up near my partner. Ultimately, the startup failed, but I managed to end up near my partner through other means. Love is a wildly powerful emotion and motivator.

Key Takeaways: Understanding your emotions in itself is very tough, but it is a great thing to work on for your learning, growth, and sanity. If you can increase your self-awareness to high enough levels, you can self-reflect through thinking, writing, and meditating to achieve a better understanding of yourself and your emotions. Once you have these understandings, you can channel the emotions into energy and motivation to accomplish great feats. Emotions are powerful. They are the DNA of passionate people, and passion is what drives us to accomplish great successes in life.