What is in it for you (to use your emotions as tools)?
We all have emotions.
Most of us get tripped up by our feelings at one time or another and say, or do something, we later regret.
I know I have.
Just today, I was trying to order tickets to a concert at Disney Hall. I found myself getting very stressed.
Here is what I expected to happen:
• There would be a box into which I could enter my my information.
• A click would take me to a shopping cart.
• I would enter my credit card.
• I would click ok.
• The seats would be mine.
Here is what happened..
• There was no box into which I could enter anything.
• When I clicked on the “contact” button, I was taken back to the same screen I was on.
• When I called a phone number for Disney Hall, I got a recording directing me back to the same useless internet site.
• I was caught in cyberspace hell.
I got stressed...
Had I used my emotions as tools, I would have realized immediately that I was getting stressed and stopped what I was doing until I could reconsider what I was experiencing.
The message of stress is that expectations do not equal reality. This exactly describes what was happening to me.
The solution to stress is to bring expectations in line with reality. The reality is that Disney Concert Hall has a terrible website that is not intuitive or easy to navigate. Acknowledging this, I could have adjusted my expectations and reduced my stress.
I got angry..
At one point, as I was talking unkindly to the Disney website, my wife said to me, “I had no trouble ordering tickets.”, I raised my voice, used some inappropriate language (not at her), and gave up on ordering any tickets.
When my wife made her comment, I got angry.
The message of anger is that I perceived a threat that I believed I could overcome by throwing enough power at it. The threat was to my intelligence and to my ego. The power I threw at the threat was my language.
Before I became more adept at using my emotions as tools, I might have let my anger get the better of me and cussed out my wife.
Of course, there was no threat and no force was needed.
When I took a short break and calmed myself down, I calmly requested some help.
What is in it for you?
So if you ever find yourself getting stressed or angry, you can begin to use your emotions to help you realize what is happening to you and then use the information you have to make better decisions and avoid doing something that you later wish you had avoided.
Questions or comments:
Clearly, I am still learning to use my emotions as tools. I welcome any comments you may have about emotions in general or your emotions in particular.
This blog is a forum for any issues involving feelings.
Please write about any situations you may have experienced or witnessed in which you (or someone elce) reacted to their emotions and did things they later regretted. Also, please ask any questions you may have about emotions. I will answer as many questions as I can in future entries.
