While navigating through the paths of our lives and completing the daily tasks of our days, we experience a wide range of emotions. Temporary emotions can overwhelm our minds because of an unexpected, typically superficial, stimuli.
To subscribe to the idea of Hedonism, we as human beings welcome positive emotions that make us feel good and prefer not to experience negative emotions that make us feel ashamed. Ethical Hedonism is the idea of seeking the greatest pleasures possible and minimizing pain. Pleasure feels like happiness, and on our continuous quest for happiness, we feel frustrated when our feelings aren’t pleasurable.
Recognizing that our feelings — positive, neutral and negative — aren’t permanent, rather they’re recycled, can help alleviate times when you feel like you’re out of control or can’t handle what you’re feeling. How many times throughout your life have you felt different types of elation, disappointment, heartbreak, pride and joy. Moments of joy are short just like moments of sadness can be short, as long as we allow ourselves to feel and process them. Count your emotions per day. They’re fleeting.
Observation
During times when your emotions feel unmanageable, take a step back from you and observe them, rather than react or be consumed by them. Then ask:
- What is the driving source?
- Is the source valid?
- Can I change my thought process as a response to this source?
- Will this be relevant in a week, six months or a year from now?
Through the power of observation, you can open yourself up and better manage unpleasant feelings. Don’t expect emotional management to eliminate negative feelings. Think of emotional observation and management as coping mechanisms that put you in the driver’s seat of your introspective life.
Even when we’re emotionally idle during mundane moments, a listless mind can wander to the past or future and create anxious feelings. Without mindfulness or a stimulus, you can indirectly experience negative emotions that may not even be warranted. Through observation, you decide to move forward to eliminate those feelings with mindful thinking or let them be and recognize “no feeling is final.”
“Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)
By letting go of the arduous, never-ending endeavor of obtaining happiness and fighting its opposite, you can freely ride the waves of emotions and live well.
Wellness
To thrive emotionally, embrace negative feelings and share gratitude for the positive. Living healthily will only improve how you choose to respond to life.
- Surround yourself with people who challenge your way of thinking and inspire you.
- Rest well. Whether, on double and single mattresses, you deserve a proper night’s rest to healthily sustain your mind, heart and weight.
- Engage yourself in diverse books, movies and songs that enlighten and provide new perspectives on how to peer through the lens of life.
- Meditate. Training your mind to focus on breathing and tune out external stimuli can help manage chaotic, unwanted emotions you unexpectedly experience.
