#ThinkBig - Make Your Emotions Work For You

Today, every person wants to live happy life i.e. stress free or tension free. But do you imagine from where the tension or s...

Today, every person wants to live happy life i.e. stress free or tension free. But do you imagine from where the tension or stress comes? What is the best way to resolve the cause of tension? There are many books upon this topic and the simplest way to define tension or stress is inability to tackle negative emotions. Let us understand it with few examples, imagine a person who has a box containing only 500 grams weight in his left hand. If he stays with it for one minute, he may not be
uncomfortable but if he stays for two hours with it, the hands may feel tired and as the time increased, it will become difficult to hold it in left hand. He may try to switch the box from left to right hand or may try to put it elsewhere. Definitely, he will feel restless if he has no option unless to hold it in left hand. It is weight of box which irritates him and makes him restless. The physical things can be measured in weight. If we sit anywhere and try to concentrate or focus entirely upon anything, in first few seconds, it will not affect us but after few seconds or minutes (depends upon mental ability); it will start to irritate us or in other words, make us restless. There are emotions in our mind which are dynamic, constantly changing every second and even most of the times, out of our control. Every person wants his desired response from others and if unexpected responses are received then he starts irritating from the situation, in other words, negative emotions either make him angry or sad or stressed. Even if he receives negative responses most of the time in family, society, or at work space; the stress generates negative change in his behavior. The question arises, what it happens with most of the people? However, there are few who don’t take negative responses of others as a cause of tension or stress. How they do it? I went Dera Sacha Sauda located at Sirsa (Haryana) and where I participated in spiritual congregation of Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan. In his preaching  he explained the importance of will-power and disclosed that the persons with more will-power can easily manage their emotions and tonic to fulfill his dreams.

enhance will-power, is meditation. Being a perfect saint, he also teaches method of meditation which is a unique way to make your emotions work for you. Let us take one more example, suppose a person is going to his workplace and somehow he becomes late then what happens, his mind starts pushing him to get prepare quickly like walk fast, prepare to face negative situation if happens that is being late. The emotions are automatically generated and person tries to reach on time by spending more money on conveyance, making phone call to colleagues to escape from odd situation at workplace etc. At that time, he would require support of drivers making him reach office on time, colleagues to handle the situation and in such scenario, if anyone responds negatively or refuses to support him then the person’s emotions will push him to be angry and quarrel. If he does so, the people would start to dislike him and will keep distance from him. Once the work-environment becomes negative, it creates problems forever. In such cases, only will-power gives strength to cope with negative emotions like anger. There are emotions either positive or negative

which pushes a person to respond positively or negatively respectively in a certain situation. People with negative emotions generally feel more stress and be mad to a small extent or forever. On the other hands, people with positive emotions easily tackle every situation and their morale boosts for completely every work on time. In metro cities, where every person is surrounded with work-load, people move to find out the ways to de-stress. Scientifically, it is known that whenever a person perceives a threat, his nervous system responds by releasing a flood of stress hormones. The heart pounds faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure quickens, and the senses become sharper. The negative emotions generate the stress and the negative emotions are derived from our expectations from others. More we expect, more the chances to face unexpected responses, and more the chances to drive ourselves with the weight of negative emotions. It becomes essential to recognize the uncontrolled stress levels, normal emotional symptoms happen first are feeling overwhelmed, being short-tempered, unable to relax, general unhappiness, and anxious thoughts. Further, it is your ability to contain the stress which determines the happening of emotional symptoms. The ability can be improved with strengthening relationships, general outlook on life, and emotional intelligence. The more you know about the stressful situations, including how long it will last and what to expect, the easier it is to cope. For example, if you go into surgery with a realistic picture of what to expect post-op, a painful recovery will be less traumatic than if you were expecting to bounce back immediately. Long-term exposure to stress can lead to serious health problems like high blood pressure, heart attacks, infertility, early old-age, depression, and other consequences. In order to cope with stress, some persons are moving to adopt Yoga in routine life while others are balancing their diet. Fortunately, there are many ways to manage the emotions; a few can be explained here. Firstly identify the symptoms derived when the emotions become uncontrollable and figure out the things which can make you feel better. Secondly, try to distract yourself by not focusing on the emotions as sometimes, focusing on strong emotions can make it feel even stronger. Thirdly, build up positive energies and improve your outlook by focusing upon positive aspects of happenings. Further, try to regulate your anger whenever it occurs. Writing uncomfortable emotional experiences and releasing the feelings on paper can also help to control the emotions. Scientifically, it has also been proved that deep breathing also helps in
controlling the negative emotions. Every person working at higher levels in public or private organizations are leading teams by emotional intelligence. The ultimate way to get rid of mental diseases is either to control expectations or to have soft skills to tackle the negative emotions and be distressed. If any person learns to tackle emotions, then the emotions or in other words, his emotional intelligence becomes stair to 

About the author

Dr Lalit Kumar

Dr. Lalit Kumar is M.Com, M.Phil , Ph.D , University of Kurukshetra ,
has been working as Assistant Professor in Faculty of Financial
Management, Haryana Institute of Public Administration, Gurgaon
for more than 9 years.  As present, he has been assigned with a research
 project on “Implementing Accrual Accounting in Haryana” and Capacity
 Building Programmes for Cutting Edge Employees of Haryana Govt,
by Government of India. :)