Deal with Negative Emotions, Positively

“Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.”- Joel Osteen

Negative emotions are inevitable. Everyday, we encounter circumstances that would arouse one or more of these emotions in us. The truth is, no matter how positive a person we are, we still get affected and we still can’t help but feel these negative emotions even if we don’t want to.

So, how do we handle these? What can we do so that they don’t affect us as much? In my personal opinion, I think that we should allow ourselves to feel them. Let ourselves get acquainted with those feelings– welcome them and accept them. And then, we detach from them. Allowing ourselves to feel the negative emotions is us recognizing that we don’t feel good about something.

Now, it is important to remember that after we come from that realization, we have 2 options: It is either we dwell on these emotions long enough that they make our lives miserable, OR we take charge and have the power over them by analyzing their root causes and come up of possible solutions to change them.

According to Gretchen Rubin, “Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.” I agree with her completely! 🙂

(photo source)

---

Date Written: June 23, 2016