The journey to a happy and fulfilled life is closer to you than you think. Our environment has a lot of negative circumstances to melt us down emotionally right from divorce, war, and restlessness, midlife crises, workplace stress, insecurity, rejection and many more. Despite all these we still deserve to be happier, to be more comfortable in our own skins and to have nurturing relationships.
Imagine two objects one light and the other heavy both lay on the side of the sea each time the wind blows north the water fill the space of the two objects and take away the light object and the heavy one remain. In another moment, the wind blows south and bring the light object out of the water to the side of the sea where the heavy one is, again the water washes the light one back and the heavy one remain still. And the process continues over and over again. Now is it the nature of the water that is making the light object unstable or the nature of the object? This scenario is to remind us of our own negative emotions through which the world makes us emotionally unstable. When you take the responsibility to be mentally strong and happy nothing can make you miserable or get you into an emotional roller coaster.
In the above illustration I symbolize the light object to be our negative emotions and the heavy one our positive emotions. Each category of emotions has an effect on how we react to situations in our environment, break up can’t make you unhappy it is your thoughts about it that makes you unhappy. Therefore, if we expect happiness in our life we must let go the conventional world of perfectionism and attachment to things we cannot control.
Happiness is not a destination or a goal, but a journey. If you are waiting to reach a certain point in your life or attain something before you become happy reconsider such decision and embrace the present moment with joy, contentment, love and forgiveness in hope of a better future.
We have no control over the world but we can cultivate emotional intelligence to withstand everything. We need to empower ourselves without looking for an outside validation of who we are. Letting go your negative emotions is not to erase them completely from your life, that is not even possible. What you are required to do is let them arise without being influence by their power.
Letting go all negative emotions to be mentally strong is a tool that will help you make constructive decisions in the face of adversity and frustration. You no longer have to believe that high achievement equal happiness, approval of others as a point of happiness, you will embrace yourself and say yes I am good enough no matter what happens. Here are the negative emotions we must let go to be mentally strong and happy.
1 UNWORTHINESS
The feeling of undeserving makes us berate ourselves and hardly achieve any goal we set for ourselves in life. “I don’t deserve happiness unless”, “in order to be happy I have to”, I just can’t get a partner unless.” Does this voices of “I have to” “unless” sound familiar to you? The voice in our heads has so many standards to downgrade our value, therefore it’s up to us to train it the way we want it to work for us. Let go of the need to be perfect or measure up to all standards and projections. Cultivate an unconditional self-acceptance and a positive attitude towards life.
2 ANGER
Constantly feeling being hurt and the need to prove to others your powers, is a waste of energy. The best revenge is when you make your enemy find it difficult to understand your ranging success stories. Most at times we allow our mind to replay old stories of what other people have done or said to us. This makes it difficult to focus on our plans at hand at the present moment.
Let go the need to have people do or say things to you like you are a saint, practice a new way of evaluating yourself and others. There are other emotions which arises after anger. Such emotions are contempt, resentment and disgust. I will not talk about them in this article but I assure you if you let go anger they rest will automatically be powerless over your mood.
3 FEAR
The feeling of fear is the most unpleasant emotions. However, the good news is that there is light in fear. More to the point it is severe in exceptional people. Fear is a false reality, the stories that we tell ourselves leading us to the fear emotion are merely childhood programming, most of the things we fear never even exist. For example, the fear of what other people think or say. One of my friends made an attempt to find whether other people actually think about us as we usually believe.
He went to the market and stationed himself at place a lot of people sit to relax. Then he put a video camera that could capture him and the people behind him. He waited for some time to see the reaction of the people to his surprise majority of the people didn’t even care about what he was doing; they were busy with their own stuffs.
This information is so educating looking at how we spend time to worry about what others might think of us instead of taking action to enrich our lives. This case is also universal to fears that shrink our lives to only misery, despair and unhappiness. Research shows that 80% of the things we fear and worry about never come to pass. I encourage you to be mentally strong and let go all your fears that are based on projections.
.4 SHAME
The feeling of I am not good enough is very common in this era of the world. Shame is the belief that you are not good enough and is mostly characterized by an intense need to hide our true self. It also makes us feel a rage towards others if their behavior ever seems to be different from us because of our rigid attachment to things. A good wife always makes her husband happy, a good guy should be nice to women, a highly educated person should have a comfortable life. These unrealistic expectations are the hiding place of shame that kills our happiness and joy.
We become hard on ourselves sometimes and forget to celebrate what we have already achieved. The shameful voice in our head doesn’t recognize reality, all it does is a never ending loop of critical examination of us, you don’t have this, you have not done this, you are not like this and so forth. To be mentally strong and happy you must let go your need to compare yourself with others and certain idealized standards of life.
.5 SELF DOUBT
Evaluating of yourself negatively and feeling that you will never succeed in whatever you do is one of your inner saboteurs holding you back. Though you may not have all the training to do all things, we all have an intuition which guides us during times of uncertainty. You might not be aware of it but it does exist. if you don’t start anything, you wouldn’t know your awesome creative powers. Always be the leader of your life and let the need to be certain go.
6 GUILT
This emotion makes us apologize for who we truly are. Feeling that we have done something wrong is the hallmark of this emotions. I personally put guilt into two categories that is earned guilt and non-earned guilt.The former is when we’ve truly done something wrong whiles the latter is when our own mind judges us that we have done something wrong.
Most people hold back in life because of the second category of guilt. It all start at childhood nurturing if you had a parent who was too critical of you, then you are likely to have this type of guilt. A parent who is always fault finding can also plant this psychological demon in you because as a child you believe the mood of your parent has something to do with you. “She is quiet; I am sure I have done something wrong again”. This kind of self-talk at childhood kept on gaining ground from the day it started up to now. So anything that triggers it you fall prey to self-sabotage over and over again. To be mentally strong you have to watch how this pattern play in your life.
7 SADNESS
Some moments are bad and very disappointing however, we don’t have to let our mind be controlled by such moments. Most people have given up on life because of some loss or rejection in the past. Well, it’s true these experiences are hard but sadness is not the answer. We can learn new ways to celebrate life and let go what we can’t recover by our own strength. It is better to be mentally strong than succumb to negative emotions which can cause a spiral of negative circumstances in our life.
New York Times bestselling author and trusted pastor Dr. Charles Stanley shares practical guidance and encouragement on a topic that touches every person on earth—emotions.
God has gifted us with emotions since the very beginning—and he did so with very concrete purposes in mind—so that we can enjoy life, so we can connect with others, and so we can reflect God’s image in us. But too often, instead of making the best of this gift, our emotions make the worst of us.
Though we cannot see, taste, or touch our emotions, we are constantly affected by their forceful presence and the incredible influence they have over us. They can alter how we view our day, other people, and even the major events in our lives. Through our feelings, we have the capacity to enjoy amazing triumphs and deep fulfillment or experience crushing defeat and ruined relationships.
As Dr. Stanley deals with five key destructive emotions—fear, rejection, guilt, bitterness, and despair—he shares four simple steps for handling our emotions in a healthy manner.
click here to check the book .:Emotions: Confront the Lies. Conquer with Truth
very useful post, i hope to read your next article again. this post has opened my eyes to the fact that not all my negative thoughts actually reflect the reality, i must continue to push forward. thanks so much.