Let’s talk about controlling your emotions, or rather the importance of it. Not everybody’s favorite topic, I know. A lot of us, especially I have found in social circles I overlap with, really dislike the word ‘control’. It brings up a lot of negative connotations. Many of us are looking for liberation, flexibility, freedom of expression, or just freedom. And ‘control’ pretty much sounds like the opposite of that.

I ask that you hear me out.

Usually, we are looking for something because we don’t have it. If you’re looking for freedom, you probably feel oppressed. If you’re looking for flexibility, it’s most likely because you feel stifled or contained. By that same notion, if you don’t have control of your emotions, its likely that they have control of you.

Not controlling your emotions is the birthing ground for anxiety, stress, depression, pessimism and a victim mindset. I frequently find that people in my life that have chronic problems with negative self-talk or a generally negative outlook on life are sitting in the day-to-day quagmire of being steam-rolled by their emotions. It’s like trying to keep your head above water when the water line keeps getting higher.

What I don’t mean

When I stress the importance of controlling emotions, I do not in any way mean to shut down, ignore, or distance yourself from your emotions. I can’t think of anything more detrimental to your health or success than that. Your emotions act as a thermometer and warning system for your body and mind. They tell us a lot about our current state of being. Warning systems are meant to be listened to. However, there is a vast difference between heeding a warning system and allowing it to decide the course of action by which solutions are found.

Think of controlling your emotions like running a ship

Let’s say you’re the Titanic (depressing analogy, I know, but bear with me). You have a transcriber (your nervous system) that is taking in data and messages all day and converting them to electrical impulses that are transmitted around the ship (body) and to other nearby vessels (our social circle). Those messages are a constant mix of good, bad, happy, sad, congratulations, observations, warnings, reviews, feedback, you name it (stimuli for want of a better word). It’s the transcriber’s job to sift through all that data, pass on what needs to be passed on, disregard what’s not important, and process everything so it gets to the right place. Your emotions serve as the messaging system in which that data is conveyed, each one like a little memo to a different part of the ship.

The transcriber shouldn’t be labeling messages as good or bad. You wouldn’t want a secretary changing the subject lines of your emails, would you? Nor would you want a secretary holding on to messages for an undue amount of time and delaying important information either. Not when the information conveyed could be the difference between changing course correctly or sinking in the middle of the Atlantic.

Not learning to control your emotions essentially hands over the keys to the bridge to the guy translating morse code in the closet. He’s great at processing vast amounts of correspondence and information but he knows not the first thing about nautical charts, crow’s nests, or steam engines. He can get you the warnings, but he doesn’t have the experience to decide what to do with them.

Not to bore you with the ship analogy, but that’s what the captain is for. I mean you. Your brain. You have the ability to take those warnings, apply context and previous experiences, and make decisions that are based on rational thought as much as they are influenced by your emotions.

What controlling your emotions means:

When I’m talking about controlling your emotions, I specifically mean not allowing them to make your choices for you. This still requires you to acknowledge them and feel them. Perhaps more so than the average person. You can’t control something you’re not paying attention to.

We’ve all heard that person say “yeah, i’m just in my feelings”, “I’m letting this get to me.”, “I know I shouldn’t stew on this, but I can’t help it.” This is what we want to work on: Feeling our feelings without letting those feelings control our day. That’s where eventually the mindset changes will occur and freedom will follow.

Feeling your Feelings

Remember when I said that I didn’t mean shutting down or distancing yourself from your emotions? Let’s go back to that. The key to controlling your emotions is in making room for them. You have to allow yourself time to process them and make peace with what’s happening in your life. If you do not address your feelings, they fester and begin to bleed through into other areas of your life. Your job is not to judge your feelings, comment on your feelings necessarily, or ascribe positives or negatives to your feelings. Your job is to sit with them in the moment and allow yourself to actually feel them before we ever touch on the matter of figuring out what they are trying to tell us.

The warmth in your chest that is love. The Icy dagger that is sometimes fear. A trip drum in your chest might be anxiety and the hot flush and shaking hands might be anger. Don’t try to rush your body through the process of physically feeling them.

Your challenge

In future talks we’ll go through practices for analyzing emotions and figuring out what our emotions are trying to tell us, as well as tools (like mindfulness and meditation) for how to make space in our day to day lives to reflect on those emotions and what may have influenced them. But for now, your challenge (should you choose to accept it) is to practice acknowledging your feelings on a day to day basis without judging them or analyzing them. and to allow yourself a few moments to really sit in them when they happen.

It doesn’t have to be a big to do or routine- I get it, we’re all busy. This might mean a mental “okay, I’m angry” when you feel it. But there should be no shame in the mental acknowledgment of “I’m angry”. Even more important is to acknowledge the positive ones: “This is Joy” as we often highlight the negatives in our life but don’t hold equal space for the positives. Take a second to pay attention to what that emotion physically feels like in your body. Then you can go about your day. But learning to identify what an emotion feels like is the first step to emotional clarity and control that we’ll be working toward in future talks.

We’d love to hear about your experiences! Remember, you don’t have to be perfect and you’re not going to get it right overnight or all at once.

All the best,

Mikaela

I hope you know it is with 100% sincerity that I say we are so sorry that we have not been as active recently on our social media accounts or our blog. It’s not that we have not been thinking about it, RavenWerks is forever on our mind. Honestly, more so than ever lately.  

But the truth of it is we have been getting sucker punched by the universe one after another lately and have been reminding ourselves to give each other grace. Between losses in the family, the move, the new job, the final stages of wedding planning, then the wedding (yay!), and an exploded water heater that has since turned into a mold-meets-asbestos demolition zone; we have just been taking everything one day at a time and reminding each other constantly to take the day as it comes. That sometimes just getting through the day IS the win. Not a win, or part of the win but the whole and only win. 

Which brings me, weirdly, to my topic for the day. I don’t mean to come at you from left field, because I feel like its not my usual sort of topic. It’s something that has been coming up a lot lately for me. With everything going on in my world I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on life, and the cycles it offers us.  

Life Has Seasons

Only so much can happen in a brief period of time before you must stop and ask yourself “What is the universe trying to tell me? What is this season of my life trying to teach me?” Sometimes, in seasons like this, I have to think about it for a while and search for the answer. Other times, someone might as well have screamed it in my ear. I feel like this has been one of those times.  

So, in case you are experiencing a season like me, I thought I’d share. Because I’m beginning to get the feeling that this is what she wants me to do. 

Discover the Freeing Power of Giving Yourself Grace to be Human

Sometimes, you just have to be happy that you made it through the day. I know that sounds backwards from the woman trying to build a huge multi-level all-inclusive safe-space, creative center, and nerd zone. I feel like I have a purpose. And I am passionate. About a lot of things.  

BUT what I learned this season is that it’s hard to convey passion about things you ARE passionate about when you are over-extended, burnt out, and drained. You end up feeling mad and disappointed in yourself because you don’t feel like you did something justice or gave it the room or attention it deserved. That to grow healthy roots for a tree we mean to nurture for a long time; sometimes you need to take a step back and nourish yourself so you can grow correctly. Even trees go dormant in the winter. Grow when you are able. grow in your spring. Listen to your body and acknowledge that life has seasons.  

I have learned that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is give yourself grace and move forward when the time is right to do so. I’m not saying don’t work for things or don’t try to work through things. Heaven’s no. growth happens in the area just outside your comfort zone and I want you to be all that you can be with reckless abandon. But it’s okay to do what you can and give yourself grace with the rest. 

A “Higher Calling isn’t Required

Finding your “purpose” or having a passion is great. It’s an amazing feeling to feel like you have “found your calling”. But you were not put on this earth to have a ‘purpose’. Your life is not a waste or somehow worth less if it takes you longer to find it. Some people never find it. Or when they find it, it’s not what they thought it would be. You don’t have to save the world, cure cancer, or even get a degree.  

Those things are noteworthy and amazing. But dial your DNA back a bit and look at humanity as whole. Just a few short centuries ago. Your purpose is to survive. Your purpose is to wake up , look at the sky, fill your lungs with air, smell flowers, feel the earth, eat food, and survive. You are not a machine. You are not a worker bee. You are not a cog in a clock or a gear in an engine. You are a living, breathing, human being. And that is magic enough.  

So, if you are in one of those seasons where you are treading water, and just trying to keep your head above water: that is okay. Take deep breaths and remember that floating sometimes saves a lot of energy.  I know that it can be hard in the fast paced, achievement based society we live in. Consider starting yourself the practice of “Mindfulness Minutes” first thing in the morning before the chaos of the day begins, or maybe right before bed if you’re a night owl. If you haven’t heard me talk about mindfulness and medititation, that’s okay! You can check out my intro post on the topic of mindfulness and medidation. Its got some resources for anybody looking to start.

It is okay to say, “maybe not today, because I am tired, or I just can’t yet; but there is always tomorrow, and I will try again tomorrow.” It is okay to ground yourself with the reminder that “I am just one person.” If you haven’t taken time yet today to go outside and breathe, go do it. Take some time, take deep slow breaths. And remember that Existing is enough.  

All the best, 

Mikaela  (and Taylor)