Managing Emotions
Managing anger is like managing sadness
Look in the mirror to remember who’s master
Detect thought crimes before they become cancer
Produce the feelings that you request for an answer
@PoemsByFriday
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This poem was inspired by a frustrating week. Every week there is something. Without fail.
I’m trying to challenge myself to not be so frustrated about it. I’m trying to teach myself the habit of calm all the time. And to behave in ways that preserve my peace. As opposed to habits that might threaten that piece.
In the first line I say:
Managing anger is like managing sadness
Anger is not an emotion that I feel very often. I don’t get angry often. Sadness is more like it if there is anything that I have to manage in regards to negative emotions or poor emotions.
But with this season of frustration, rigor, and challenge, I’ve gotten angry. And I’m trying to resolve that by approaching anger like I approach sadness. All I have to do is remind myself that these thoughts aren’t what I need. This isn’t necessary right now. Thinking these thoughts don’t serve me.
So let’s put these thoughts aside and create some new ones.
In the second line I say:
Look in the mirror to remember who’s master
By looking in the mirror I remind myself,
“You’re in control.”
You don’t have to be at the mercy of whatever is going on. You can redeem the moment. You can find a way through.
But it’s you who has to find that way. No one else. Help and aid and inspiration can come from others. But at the end of the day, it is by your own volition through which change will occur.
In the third line I say:
Detect thought crimes before they become cancer
That line explains how I try to think of intrusive thoughts. I just try to detect them and pay attention to them before they become a cancer. And the “cancer” is when the anger becomes or habit or the sadness becomes a habit. And it becomes an issue. It becomes a health issue. It becomes a problem.
And in the last line I say:
Produce the feelings that you request for an answer
Being in a moment of anger or sadness, I sometimes think to myself,
“I don’t want to feel like this! I don’t want to feel like this! I don’t want to feel like this! What’s going on! What’s going on! What’s going on!”
Like I mentioned earlier, I “look in the mirror to remember who’s master.” And so by adding the line “produce the feelings that you request for an answer,” I’m trying to articulate that I am the solution for my feelings.
You can decide that it’s going to be you that makes those feelings. Those feelings aren’t just going to happen. You have to generate those feelings.
So if you want to be happy think of something that’s happy. If you want to be refreshed, think of something that’s refreshing.
You can put yourself in places that produce moods and feelings and emotions that are more desirable. And that’s a very powerful strategy.
Nowadays, you can just hop on YouTube to listen to some oceans sounds, or jungle sounds, or wind chimes. Or whatever sound that you’re into. And you can put yourself in a desirable space.
What I think catches me off guard when I’m in that space is that when I’m done, I have to return to the panic, anger, sadness, or whatever describes the negative emotion state.
I just enjoyed a cocoon that I entered where I was able to escape those negative emotions, but now I have to go back.
So now I’m wondering if returning to that negative mind space is necessary. Because if it it’s going to be what it’s going to be, I might as well feel good.
I’m trying to wrap my head around that way of thinking. It’s a challenging way to think. Because if things are going on and you have problems, it’s very easy to get flustered and frustrated!
You didn’t want that to happen. You had a vision and that vision has been curtailed. Even if just in the slightest, it’s still trips you up. Especially if you’re tired or hungry, and you want to eat and you want to sleep.
You just want things to run smoothly.
Maybe I should expect things to not run smoothly? Because they often don’t!
When I remember school, for the most part it was smooth. There was a process. And when I got my first job out of school, everything was smooth too. So I kind of expected that entrepreneurship and building a business to have a certain level of smooth.
But I am the creator of that “smooth.” I have to put it all together myself. But lately, every new client, every new employee, every new variable, isn’t properly accounted for, and kind of shakes my weak system of processes and I get frustrated and flustered.
So I guess I need to think about designing a state for my life and business that keeps that in mind. And that’s a whole new mindset for me.
Because I have the default optimism that things are going to work out. But what I don’t have, that I need to develop, is managing my experience along the journey towards things working out.
Similar to compound annual growth rate. I expect that life will continue to become better over the course of your life. But there may be certain years that it doesn’t. Or where your quality of life declines.
So it’s going to be alright, but how do I prevent myself from getting to a place where I’m too laxed? Trying to balance both peace and ambition.
How do you maintain high levels of ambition while simultaneously maintaining high levels of peace?
Because I feel like my ambition is baked in haste and impatience. And often times, when I am able to achieve my goals quickly, I enjoy a great high. But then I “crash” in the sense of frustrating myself because I am expecting things to grow at an unreasonable pace.
I’ve just assumed things would go well. And they do go well. But I guess it’s in the middle where I get stuck.
It’s funny, I don’t ever celebrate the wins or enjoy the peace that comes with success. When I have a great day, I just move on to the next thing that will get me hyped and anxious.
So when it comes to emotions. It’s all me. But I’m having a significant challenge in thinking about emotions of peace coexisting with emotions of ambition.
I would love to hear someone’s thoughts on this.