Category: Emotions

“Don’t worry, be happy.” ~ Bobby McFerrin

We have been culturally conditioned to consider worry as the antithesis of happiness and a thing of pure evil.

This understanding of worry perpetuates a misunderstanding of negative emotions and the role they play in our lives.

While worry might not be a pleasant emotion to experience, it plays a vital role in driving us towards appropriate action and – ultimately – happiness.

Human Nature Is Beautiful

It’s wrong to believe that positive emotions are good and negative emotions are bad.

All emotions are good.

Or, at least, they have the potential to be good, depending on what action they lead us to take.

Deriving joy from other people’s misfortunes might feel good, but it isn’t a healthy response to human suffering, and will ultimately lead us to destructive conduct.

Worry is an emotional response to circumstances. Or, to be more accurate, it’s a response to thoughts about circumstances.

You face relationship problems, and so you worry.

You don’t know how to make financial ends meet, and so you worry.

You have health problems, and so you worry.

Your mind doesn’t want you to suffer. It generates the emotion of worry so that you can take action to fix a potentially harmful situation.

Without worry, you might ignore your problems rather than find solutions for them. Evasion can be deadly, and so your mind steps in to ensure that you have the emotional reminder that something needs to be done about the problems you’re facing.

Worry isn’t harmful. It’s a beautiful, healthy response.

Provided it’s for the right reasons and to the right degree.

Healthy Worry

While our emotions can play an invaluable role in our survival, we often develop unhealthy emotional associations that jeopardize our well-being.

Remember, your emotions are the result of your thoughts about reality. If you have the mental habit of focusing solely on problems and concluding that you’re in a crisis, when you’re not, you may experience worry even when there’s no real cause to worry.

Why is public speaking such a frightening experience?

We speak to people on a daily basis, but speaking to a group of people while standing on a stage and commanding their attention makes us worry about screwing up, being laughed at or mocked for our presentation skills.

The calculations that we make in assessing a public speaking experience are inaccurate. They amplify the threats in a way that generates high (and unhealthy) amounts of fear and worry, leading to poor performances or missed opportunities.

Healthy worry is when we feel inclined to learn more and do more so that we can achieve our goals and avoid falling into unfavorable situations that we are able to avoid.

Unhealthy worry is that which paralyzes us from taking action and is often the outcome of a wild imagination that makes the world seem hellbent on making us suffer.

To condemn yourself for experiencing any sort of worry isn’t a healthy attitude to negative emotions, since they’re on your side and can assist you in moving your life forward.

How Worry Leads To Happiness

In order to harness the power of worry to experience happiness, here are 3 steps for you to take:

1- Listen to your emotions: What are you feeling? And why are you feeling it? Your emotions are trying to tell you something, and you must figure out what the message is so you can take appropriate action. If you’re worried, what could your body be telling you? What problem must you face?

2- Develop an action-bias: Rather than simply think about your problems, shift your focus on what you can do about them. What actions can you take to fix the problems you’re facing? Who can you ask to help? What do you need to learn more about? Push yourself to take action to fix your problems, rather than allow your worries to engulf you. After all, that’s what your mind and body want you to do.

3- Accept what you can’t change: If you absolutely can’t do anything about a situation, then there’s no need to worry. Worrying about things you cannot change means that you’re living by a mental model that doesn’t match the reality you’re living, which is generating emotions that aren’t supporting you in taking appropriate action.

Happiness comes from embracing who we are as human beings (without condemning ourselves for experiencing negative emotions), to act appropriately in the face of the challenges we face in life and to accept reality for what it is.

And worry is one of the many emotions in our human arsenal that can help us take appropriate action and achieve happiness.

There’s been a longstanding debate about the nature of decision-making and whether we base our decisions on rational reasons or emotional impulses.

Some say we should consult the mind and ignore the heart if we want to make the right decision.

Others say that we should follow our hearts and ignore the paralyzing calculations of the mind.

And still others say that there’s always a blend of rational and emotional elements to decision making.

I’ll save you the suspense:

All your decisions are driven by your emotions.

Sounds insane?

Then we need to revisit what “rational” and “emotional” mean, and what role they play in our lives.

The Role of Reason

Have you ever smelled something with your hands? Saw something with your nose? Tasted something with your ears? Touched something with your eyes? Heard something with your tongue?

I’m willing to bet the answer is no to all these questions.

You don’t smell with your hands. That’s not the purpose they serve in your life.

And when it comes to understanding the importance of reason to our survival and happiness, it’s essential that we identify the role it serves in our lives.

Reason allows us to make sense of the world.

We use our senses to gather data, and our rational faculty helps connect the pieces together and form an understanding of how the world functions.

We use past experiences (and other people’s experiences) in developing our understanding of the world and what we ought to do to make progress in life.

But reason only sets the destination.

It is emotion that drives us to action.

The Motion Of Emotion

You can “know” that junk food is bad for you and still eat it with pleasure.

Why?

Because reason has described the landscape and your destination. But if your emotions are set on a different direction, you will go in that direction.

Emotion is the ring that connects reason with action. Without emotion, we won’t feel compelled to do anything, no matter how much information we know about the importance of that action.

To be honest, the question of whether we decide rationally or emotionally is flawed in itself.

It assumes that reason and emotion are at war with each other, and you must choose between them.

But emotion is an extension of reason and it serves an equally valuable – but essentially different – role in our lives.

“Hold on!” I hear you shout (yes, I have good ears).

“If emotion is an extension of reason, then why are they in conflict? Why does reason pull us in one direction and emotion push us in another?”

A very sensible question and the answer is a very interesting one…

Mixed Signals

Just to recap:

There is absolutely no inherent conflict between reason and emotion.

So why do they often pull us in separate directions?

Because every emotion has its own reason, which we often neglect.

The conflict isn’t between reason and emotion, but contradictory reasons, each with a different emotional value attached to it.

What we tend to do is look at the “rational” factors and overlook the reasons that drive our emotions (because we consider emotions to be irrational).

But every emotion stems from a reason, and the cause of the conflict between reason and emotion is the mixed mental signals we’re giving our bodies.

Since reason doesn’t drive us to action (that’s the role of emotion), we go by what we feel most inclined to do.

Every time.

Anger doesn’t develop out of thin air. It’s the result of a thinking process. When you feel angry and want to lash out at those who have caused you to be angry, you don’t think – there and then – that your anger is uncalled for.

You believe that you are justified in feeling angry and those you lash out at deserve what they get. Somewhere inside you, you don’t believe that your anger is irrational. It makes perfect sense.

But there’s another reasoning thread – with a lower emotional charge attached to it – that asks you to consider the law, social etiquette, other people’s feelings, etc.

Which “reason” do you believe you will act by?

That’s right. The emotionally charged one.

Making The Right Decisions

If you’re not happy with the decisions you’re making in your life, don’t blame your emotions.

They’re on your side.

They deserve to be loved and respected.

But you need to identify their root and resolve the conflict between contradictory reasons.

Conflicts often arise when you were brought up to live by certain beliefs and values without questioning them. While you were developing your own reasoning, you were acting according to the values you were taught to accept.

You value your own happiness, but are taught that selfishness is a bad thing.

You believe having fun is good, but are taught that it’s irresponsible.

You think that you can be moral and wealthy, but are taught that money is the root of all evil.

Such conflicting opinions will naturally lead to mixed signals.

If you want to make the right decisions, you have to consciously address all your beliefs and listen to what your emotions reveal about the beliefs lurking in your psyche.

That’s the only way you can dissolve the false dichotomy between the rational and the emotional.

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC

The people around us and the circumstances we face can make us feel upset, angry, frustrated, depressed, annoyed and any other possible negative emotion humans can experience.

And when we experience these emotions we tend to latch on to them.

Why?

Because we believe we’re entitled to experience them.

We have every reason to experience them.

We have the right to experience them.

If you ever thought you had the right to be upset or angry or depressed, then you know what I’m talking about.

But rather than holding on to your right to be upset, ask yourself the following question:

“Do I deserve to be upset?”

If you don’t (and you don’t), then you shouldn’t insist on being upset.

Sure, someone you know might have done something to hurt you, but do you need to continue hurting yourself? Do you deserve to subject yourself to such hurt?

Rights are intended to lift us up rather than pull us down. When they end up pulling us down, we can choose to abandon them. We have the right to a miserable life and the right to be ignorant and the right to be poor. But it doesn’t mean that we need to exercise these rights.

The same principle applies to our emotions. While we may have the right to be upset, we shouldn’t exercise that right when it damages our lives. We don’t deserve to be upset and to linger in that feeling.

I sometimes find myself latching on to feelings of anger and frustration, but then realize that I can’t afford to waste my emotional energy on such feelings, and to compromise the opportunity to be happy. I realize that the negative feelings I’m experiencing are within my control and I can let go of them as soon as I let go of the idea that I have the right to experience them.

Don’t insist on upholding your right to be upset. You don’t deserve it.

A lot of personal growth advice seems to be based on the assumption that positive emotions (happiness, joy, excitement, etc.) are good and should always be experienced, no matter what circumstances you are living in; and negative emotions (sadness, anxiety, depression, etc.) are evil, harmful and should never be experienced, no matter what your circumstances are.

I happen to disagree. Strongly disagree.

This attitude towards emotions expresses a deep misunderstanding of the role emotions are meant to play in our lives and fails to appreciate the importance of negative emotions in our personal growth.

The Role of Emotions

I’ve seen several personal growth “experts” giving their readers tips on how to be happy, and they boast that you can be happy without a reason to be happy! They try to get people to shrug off negative emotions by shifting their focus towards positive aspects in their lives. They think that they are doing their readers a favor by helping them experience positive emotions and ridding them of negative emotions.

But the question we need to ask is: Why do human beings have the capacity to experience negative emotions?

To help understand the purpose behind negative emotions, we can consider the role of pain in our lives.

Many people consider pain a bad thing, in and of itself. However, pain is a good thing for human beings. It helps keep us alive and our body parts intact and properly functioning. People who lack pain sensors can cause damage to their bodies, without even realizing it!

Pain is a message that tells you that there’s something wrong in your body… and you need to do something!

The pain you experience isn’t the problem. It tells you that you have a problem. Without this message, your problem will go unnoticed, and if it’s neglected, it can cause considerable damage to your body.

Emotions play a similar role. Positive emotions tell you that you’re doing something good and you should continue to do more of it, and negative emotions tell you you’re doing something bad (or avoiding something good) and you need to take action to correct it. Therefore, both positive and negative emotions are important! They convey different messages but with the same intention: To get you to take action for your own well-being.

When you try to silence negative emotions, you’re not doing yourself a favor. You are, in fact, harming yourself. You are shooting the messenger because you don’t like what it’s telling you. You don’t want to take the actions that will support your life. You think that by ignoring the message the problem will go away. If you stick your head in the ground, then you’ll be safe.

But that’s never the right approach to take in life. You need to listen to what the message is, and look for where the problem lies in order to address it properly.

It’s Not Always Healthy to Be Happy

If you are consistently acting and thinking in ways that support your life, then it’s natural to consistently feel happy. However, you shouldn’t try to feel happy by evading the issues you need to deal with. Such happiness is not healthy. It’s an unnatural way to condition your emotions, which will not support you in your life. In the same way that pain-killers can work to numb the pain, happiness that overlooks problems without allowing you to properly deal with them numbs your consciousness, which will allow your problems to grow.

Negative Emotions Help You Grow

Since negative emotions tell you there’s something wrong you need to correct, you should never adjust to negative emotions and feel comfortable experiencing them. Negative emotions tell you that there’s something you need to do for the message to go away. Otherwise, you’re harming yourself and your body will punish you for not properly taking care of it (it doesn’t really want to punish you, but that’s how it feels when it’s trying to tell you something that you don’t want to hear).

While physical pain is more accurate in pin-pointing where the problem lies, negative emotions can sometimes be difficult to decipher. They can tell you that you need to think differently or you need to act differently to move your life forward.

The questions you need to ask yourself, when experiencing negative emotions, are: Why am I experiencing these emotions (i.e. what is the problem my emotions are trying to tell me about)? And what can I do to solve the problem?

You need to shift your focus from the emotions themselves, to the problem you need to tackle. Negative emotions aren’t the problem. They simply point to the problem.

By using negative emotions as sensors for what you need to do, they help you to take the right actions and to move your life forward. That’s one of the best opportunities to grow in life, which you will deprive yourself of if you try to ignore negative emotions in any shape or form.

Guilt is a natural response a person with a healthy conscience experiences when he believes he has wronged someone, or did not live up to the standards he has set for himself. It acts like a pain sensor that is intended to bring your attention to a matter you need to resolve: you need to do something about what you did or you need to do something to achieve the standard you have set.

And just like pain, guilt is not the end but a means to an end. It brings your attention to a matter so that you can take action on it and not simply suffer the guilt.

The Extremes of Guilt

A healthy feeling of guilt helps you to direct your attention to the issues you need to deal with. No more and no less. Not feeling any guilt may strip you of the motivation to right your wrong, whereas an excessive feeling of guilt will hinder your ability to act.

You must avoid both extremes of guilt (too little and too much) so that feeling guilty can contribute to your growth – which is why human beings experience it in the first place – rather than allow it to act as an obstacle in your life.

Your Sphere of Influence

Since guilt is an emotion that incites you to take action, it is only appropriate for the issues in which you can take action. In other words, you should not feel guilty for matters that are outside your scope, even if it is a wrong that you did.

If the consequences of your action cannot be reversed or mended, you can only learn from what you have done and use the feeling of guilt to ingrain the lessons into your future behavior (if applicable). There are many parents who realize that the way they treated their children during was not ideal, and so they feel guilty for the way they acted as parents.

However, they should only allow their guilt to direct them towards the actions that they can take, such as apologizing or trying to heal a wounded relation. It should not lead them to desire reversing time and undoing what they have done. This is outside their ability and they should not feel guilty for not being able to correct their mistakes.

Release Unnecessary Guilt

If the idea of having treated someone unjustly makes you feel guilty, you should bear in mind that you are treating yourself unjustly when you latch on to unnecessary feelings of guilt. Having high standards for yourself that are unrealistic to accomplish in a single step will not be reached more easily when you are suffering through guilt. It only hinders your progress.

Whenever you feel guilty, identify the cause of the feeling and determine what can be done to correct the situation. Resolve to act on your knowledge if you can take any action, and release any feelings of guilt when you are unable to realistically do anything to correct your mistake.