What happens when emotions set the temperature for your attitude?

I believe it’s easy to slip into smart talk about psychology when there’s a topic about “emotions”. But it’s hard to stick to useful and simple snippets of information that can be applied instantly. I remember a friend named Brian, who is a really smart guy, telling me that “Psychologist upset people”, love that explanation. But let me stick to the simple snippets.

This week I was privileged to talk with some bright people about the design of our attitude. During the conversation we manage to land on a concept that attitude has close relations with emotions.

In simple words, your attitude isn’t something you can figure out, you just feel it. The scientific part of the story is rather complex, but the short story can actually be useful.

The temperature of your attitude is set by emotions. Anxiety, as an emotion, can be like a winter to your attitude and freeze it. And in turn, arctic conditions produce survival mode thinking, that doesn't help out at all. On the other hand, emotions like calmness and confidence gives an edge to radiate an attitude of control and power.

“Don’t tell me what to think!” is an expression of attitude for someone who might be defined as a “Rebel”. But what's behind the rebel part?

In this case his attitude was lead by anger. This anger was triggered from past experience when someone smarter challenged him and he couldn’t deal with it so anger showed as a by product.

To get the most out of your attitude, check the temperature that surrounds you. We all have the little dark secrets that trigger certain unwelcomed feelings. For some it might be anger, for other fears and anxiety. Those are all survival feelings and don’t belong to high performing person.

I find myself a lot of the times overloaded with emotions triggered by all sorts of things, so I’ve learned a simple practice to lower the temperature and get back to a focused attitude.

• Fitness. Go for a run or to the gym and push yourself. It will release a ton of endorphins that will fight with the cortisol driven emotions like anxiety, frustration.

Thanks for reading.

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