Why Tracking Your Emotions Can Change Your Life

It doesn’t really need to be said that life can be difficult. We all feel the weight of a rough day and the ease of a great day. Sometimes the shifts in those feelings are obvious. Maybe work was awful, you did something wrong, hurt someone’s feelings. Or maybe you got a promotion, spent time with a friend you haven’t seen in a while, you got a new client for your business. Any of these events cause emotional responses.

However, sometimes, the response isn’t quite so noticeable. Sometimes it creeps up on you without warning and you are unaware until you are fully immersed in a series of emotions you may not have been prepared for. Maybe there was a domino effect that caused a series of small triggers to go off or something happened and you were telling yourself that you were fine, until you weren’t.

There could be so many factors involved in emotional changes and it can be difficult to remain grounded while our feelings take us for a ride. There is a solution, though.

If you were to keep track of your emotions and make a habit of checking in with yourself throughout the day, you become more aware of every shift and don’t become prey to it to mental acrobatics. You can take back control.

But why would tracking your emotions be such a game changer? Here are just a few reasons why this practice is so beneficial.

1. First, you become more self-aware. By tracking your emotions, you become more conscious of how you feel in different situations. You’ll be able to notice when you have an emotional shift, or a reaction to something happening to you, or around you. This helps you to better understand yourself, your triggers, and your responses to different stimuli. This can help you to make more informed decisions and improve your emotional intelligence. And let’s be honest, improving our emotional intelligence is probably one of the best things we can do for ourselves, and for others.

2. You’ll be able to manage stress more easily. Our circumstances in life, whatever they may be, can be a significant source of anxiety. Whether it’s family life, school, work, or anything else that doesn’t quite go according to plan, we can be impacted by all of it. By tracking your emotions, you can identify patterns and triggers that contribute to your stress levels and work through how to handle it in effectively. As soon as you feel an emotional shift, you’ll be able to take a step back, find the source, and make whatever changes you can.

3. Tracking your emotions improves your relationships. Every relationship, whether friendly, familial, or romantic, has its ups and downs. Those feelings are much easier to manage when you start noticing what you’re feeling and what brought it on. On the other side of that coin, observing your emotions can let you know how you feel about having a specific person in your life. You can notice what you love about them, what you don’t love so much, the unconscious things they do that make you smile. Being aware of these things will help you communicate better with this person, reduce tensions, and increase the bonds you feel, leaving you with stronger and more meaningful relationships.

4. This may be the most important reason: keeping track of your emotions is beneficial to your mental health. You could probably gather that from the rest of this post, but it needs to be explicitly said. The way your emotions fluctuate can be a sign of underlying mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and many other afflictions. If you notice that you have rapid mood swings regularly or have a hard time pulling yourself out of a dark place, seeking advice could be the best thing to do. Going to therapy, talking out whatever is going on and getting an outside, professional opinion is so immensely helpful in trying to figure these things out.

Life can throw a lot of unexpected things your way and it can run your emotional state straight into the ground. Your emotions may just run rampant, and everything feels out of control. This is why it’s so important to start tracking your emotions.

So how do we do that? There are so many options. You can start with these practices:

· Set an alarm on your phone to go off every 2 hours to remind you to check in with yourself. You can either make a mental note of it or write it down. Regardless of what kind of emotion it is, notice the reasons why you feel that way in the moment.

· Journal about your day. It doesn’t have to be full paragraphs if writing isn’t your favorite thing. It can be just bullet points of significant moments of the day and how you felt about them. Not to mention, journaling is an incredible way to dump all your thoughts out before heading to bed.

· There are a lot of apps out there that are specifically made for tracking emotions. It’s doubtful that many of us go anywhere without our phones, so downloading an app makes it easy to make note of what’s happening in the moment.

Now you know the “why.” You have some options on the “how.” Your life can be so much easier when it’s not being run wild by all the emotions you may feel throughout the day. The freedom that comes with this practice is refreshing in so many wonderful ways. Now you have the tools. It’s up to you now to liberate yourself and live your life with a sense of calm and ease.

If you give this a shot, please leave a comment or email me at caseyannwrites@gmail.com and let me know if it was helpful!