“NEVER underestimate the power of the tongue.” Try to stop and think about the first three words you’re going to speak before moving forward with your statement. How do you speak to yourself? Does it have an affect on how others communicate with you?
Emotional Management
For most of my life, I’ve held prominent conversations with myself in my head. There are multiple reasons why I do this but usually its because I can’t say what I want to say out loud because of discomfort or inappropriateness. Past experiences have taught me to weigh my options before a sometimes emotional outburst surfaces; think, …if you say this it could damage this person/relationship permanently. Other times it’s because I am aware that what I want to say is negative, it’s angry or discouraging. There are moments where I slip, fall and even crumble giving into the thorns of my heart, pokes of my ego or bruising of my feelings. For example, you work with people who you spend a significant amount of time with but you don’t know them that well, at least until you offend them. Usually it’s a bad joke that came out wrong or a misinterpreted email that leaves you feeling as though you should defend yourself. The energy may be misdirected or just undeserving but your thoughts are barraged with how to pay that person back for how they made you feel. Right then and there you’ve made a decision to exert negative energy into a situation that may not have room to grow. This can be hard on most people since we often lead with our emotions. Formulating a response to things before taking time to digest what we just heard.
Emotional Intelligence
After reading Dr. David Walton’s book Emotional Intelligence it really left me in state of shock realizing that most people are incapable of hiding how they are feeling. Being honest, I felt a little bit more at ease knowing that a lot of people struggle with something that I know to be normal and that’s not being able to hide that I am upset, happy or sad isn’t a handicap. Self-knowledge and understanding others is where it all starts, being able to have some control over how you express your feelings and how you interpret the feelings of others can be helpful in establishing emotional intelligence. Once you have a better understanding of how to manage your emotions understanding people becomes more practical. This book helped me to look at the relationship I have with myself and how that affects my interaction with others. What I can tell you is that I am still working on bettering myself and how I express myself to establish healthy living. Most of us categorize healthy living as what we eat drink or consume physically. Living healthy also involves energy, stress and behaviors which influence our emotions and how we express them. Personally I know that it’ll take more than reading one or two books on emotional management to change behaviors but we must all start somewhere.
How do we stop the Negative cycle?
Keep looking, whether it is at yourself and how you could help things get better or having an operative view of things to shape the positive outcome you wish to gain. Nowadays it’s very easy for people to consume themselves with negative scopes of things whether it is finances, family ties or career placement. It’s hard when there’s not enough money in the bank account for bills, but what hurts us more is focusing on the fact that in this moment we don’t have enough instead of expressing gratitude for what we will have in the future. In a previous post I talked about going Offline and the hindrances that social media presents to us such as comparisons or feeling inadequate based on someone else’s journey. All of these factors and more play a crucial part in how easy it is to be consumed with negativity. Bad days will happen, unfortunate circumstances will prevail but you will be okay and one day it may not even be a problem for you. Changing your thinking will change how you process and one day shape how you respond. Still, most days I know how to filter my responses but sometimes I fall short and that’s okay too. As long as you hold yourself accountable for what you know you want to and can change, it helps. Remember a lot of negative response are attributed to pain, criticism, hurt feelings, ect.
5 Ways to curb your Negativity
- Distance yourself from negative people, places or things.
- Take up a new hobby that makes you happy.
- Re-program your mind to see the good in things vs. bad.
- Set goals.
- Express gratitude.
And if none of the above work for you, go back to what made you realize you had negative feelings all together and start from there. Re-set, re-align and re-focus your energy into figuring out what’s making you happy or not and where the sadness is coming from. Again, I am personally responding to things that have held me and my emotions hostage for years. This is all in an effort to live a healthier life for me. Healthy living can be a multitude of things, I’ve just chosen to start with my emotive state since I found myself spewing negative ideas, suggestions and insecurities. Focusing on self care and being self aware is what my 2019 has been about, how about yours?
Until we meet again…. Vashon Wade 2019
Vashon Wade 