Managing my Emotion

“When you react, you let other control you. When you respond, you are in control.” — Bohdi Sanders, Martial Arts Wisdom: Quotes, Maxims and Stories for Martial Artists and Warriors.

The last story, I did a practice that helped me to understand what kind of emotion appears to me. ‘Identifying my emotion’ was the first stage for building a foundation of improving emotional intelligence. This time, I am going to beat the second stage; ‘managing my emotion.’ So, what activity did I do for controlling my emotion?

Positive talking with people

There are so many times we feel frustrated and disappointed, even if the matter is trivial. Failing in an exam, Losing of your favorite sports team, etc.. In my case, I feel irritated when I lose a competition in a computer game. It is really trivial, but sometimes I can’t stand when I lose to other people. That motivates me to play more game to win but it just backfires me. Because of my unstable emotion state, it is harder to focus on the game than usual. That is why I decided to have a time for a positive pep talk time after a loss with my friends who play the game with me. It was awkward to start suddenly a positive talk after we lost because we were not used to it. But after we started saying something positive to each other, wrath and depression we’d got slowly disappeared. “Our team fighting was good anyway,” “Your supporting was pretty good.” We complimented each other first. About 5 minutes later, we calmed down than before. After positive talking, we tried to find out what was the problem. This is not what I planned first. However, it happened naturally after we relaxed. By the time we are about to get into a new game, nobody is frustrated by the last game. They were looking forward to the next game, including me.

Why did I do that?

When I was looking for some articles about emotional intelligence, I found out an article talked about the power of positive thinking wrote by Remez Sasson. In this article, we can learn what is positive thinking, how does it work, and how to turn the mind into a positive attitude. When I read this, one advice from him hit me; “In case you experience inner resistance and difficulties when replacing negative thoughts with positive ones, do not give up, but keep looking only at the beneficial, good and happy thoughts in your mind.” And then, I thought this is the thing I should apply to manage my negative emotions. That is why I decided to have a positive pep talk time after playing the game.

The Power of Positivity

Honestly, after positive talking time, we didn’t magically win all the game. However, we also didn’t have a losing streak at least. Most importantly, we were not stressful even after losing. We kept complimenting each other and trying to fix the problem. The reason people play the game to get rid of stress, not to get more of stress. Up to this time, we just couldn’t manage our emotion. But this little talking really helped us. We truly felt the power of positivity. We succeed to turn our negative emotion into positive.

Next Step

I finally built a firm foundation for improving emotional intelligence. I identified what triggers my emotion and understood how to control my emotion. From now on, it is time to flesh out! I am going to learn EI from outside, not inside.

References

Sasson, Remez. The Power of Positive Thinking [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.successconsciousness.com/index_000009.htm