Viewing emotions like this will only weigh us down further, so learning how best to deal with negative emotions, and how to harness them effectively, will allow us to use them as a driving force in achieving success.
Three steps to harnessing your emotions to achieve success
As a society, we tend to automatically categorise emotions into either positive or negative. Emotions such as joy, love and excitement are naturally classed as positive, while sadness, anger and fear are automatically assumed to be negative. These labels create the baggage that becomes attributed to these emotions.
In reality, no emotion is either good or bad. All emotions act as a useful feedback mechanism to let us know whether we are moving towards, or away from, what we want to achieve for ourselves. We need to learn to accept all emotions, even the uncomfortable ones and not fear them. Because fearing painful emotions just layers on more pain!
When we prevent ourselves from feeling these emotions, and from validating them, it is difficult for us to take action that may help us. We use emotions as information to guide us to take action that will move us towards what we want, and away from what we don’t want. Negative emotions that are the result of past trauma need to be released or they skew and confuse our emotional guidance system. Trauma occurs when events in the past permanently change our neurology in ways that limit us. We know we have trauma if remembering events from the past triggers painful emotions in the present.
Our emotional response cycles can take us one of two ways. Either, we learn from the mistake and perform better next time, or, we internalise the negativity and adopt self limiting beliefs as a result of the situation and the emotions triggered by it, which leads to a downward spiral.
Common responses and coping mechanisms such as avoidance, passing blame, and over analysing, are often preventing us from moving on from these emotions. This prevents success. We must accept our emotional responses as they come, and recognise that they are normal in order to use them to drive positive change. Finding an effective outlet for these feelings helps reduce the impact that they have on us; whether this is physical movement, creative hobbies, or journaling.
‘Negative’ emotions and success are not polarised concepts, as much as they may seem so. It is important to try and understand our emotional response cycle, so that we can better manage them. With an emotional response, initially something stimulates us, which is followed by thoughts about this stimulus, then emotion, then action. An experience has taught us something and that knowledge empowers us and our future actions and decisions.
The frustration and stress we may feel in response to making a professional mistake or oversight, acts as a driving force to prevent this kind of error in the future, as we do not want to feel these emotions again. In this context, the emotive response, although challenging at the time, is serving us in achieving our goals.
Dr Lisa Turner is a trauma expert and the Founder of CETfreedom, a spiritual and consciousness awakening organisation, specialising in training professional coaches and practitioners in trauma recovery. CETfreedom aims to revolutionise the coaching and therapy industry by ensuring that every practitioner has the Conscious Emotional Transformation (CET) method in their toolbox to help them guide others to leading a life free from emotional pain.
With a PhD in mathematical modelling and aero-acoustics, Lisa made the transition from scientist to spiritual teacher through her own journey to become free from her past, in which she was kept as a house prisoner for 5 years by a paedophile from the age of 15. Lisa’s book ‘I Loved a Paedophile’ is currently being adapted for film.
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