Development of skills to manage emotions and emotional states. article on the topic

Do you often fail to agree with your loved ones or work colleagues on any issue? This may be due to home renovations, discussion of a business project during work, or differences in views on the current political situation in the country. In most cases, emotions arise on the path of mutual understanding and harmony. Indeed, managing emotions is the cornerstone of constructive communication to achieve the desired outcome!

From this point of view, it is possible to segment society into those who know how to manage their feelings and emotions, and those who are not able to cope with them. As a rule, the first ones achieve significant success in any area of ​​life. In turn, those whose emotions prevail over reason are conditionally divided into two categories: those who are aware of the problem of controlling emotions and those who ignore it.

An emotional person who does not control his emotions

and is not going to work on himself, most likely, he will be forced to regularly enter into various conflicts in society, meaningless arguments with friends and difficult relationships with his relatives.

This article will be useful to those who have realized such a problem in themselves and would like to figure out how to learn to control and manage their emotions.

How to manage emotions

Having decided to transform this area of ​​his personality, a person begins to look for various methods and tools to solve this problem. And here yoga can become one of the best tools for managing emotions. In the modern world, yoga is often perceived as a discipline designed to improve a person’s physical health, while the emotional sphere remains uncontrolled.

However, often a person is provoked to emotions even during classes, which can lead to a diametrically opposite result, which in theory should be.

Let's see what the ancient texts say about this aspect. In the Mahabharata, book five, we meet the teaching of the hermit to the king:

“A man’s body is his chariot, O king, the soul in him is his charioteer, and the senses are his horses. Drawn by those good horses, well tamed, the wise man quietly rushes along the path of life, as if on a chariot, alert and successful. These same feelings, if not curbed, can lead their owner to death, just as untamed horses, not being controlled on their way, lead to the death of an inexperienced driver.”

Thus, the priority is to curb your feelings in order to achieve your goals. By the way, one of the translations of the word yoga is curbing.

How to learn to manage your emotions and feelings?

In general, it is common for every person to experience positive, negative and neutral emotions throughout his life. And each type requires self-control, learning to correctly perceive and reproduce, so as not to encounter misunderstandings in society and the consequences of strong disturbances in the body. Psychohygiene teaches that you need to cope and correctly perceive not only negative, but also all existing emotions.

The power of thought

Many books have been written about how to control yourself and not give in to emotions. But three techniques are recognized as the simplest and most common: positive thinking, concentration and visualization. Managing your thoughts will help you restructure your attitude towards various influencing factors and reactions to them.

Do you know how to manage your emotions?

Not really

Psychologists give the following practical advice on these three points:

1. Positive thinking - when a negative thought appears, a person needs to replace it with a positive one in every possible way, even if it does not relate to a specific circumstance or event. Positive thinking brings with it positive emotions, self-confidence and other consequences that improve the quality of life.
2. Concentration – every day a person needs to set aside 10-20 minutes to concentrate on any object that gives pleasant impressions and emotions. In this way, you can train the power of thoughts, the mind, and, accordingly, you can find lasting joy.
3. Visualization - what a person visualizes in his head is the result of emotions and feelings. No wonder Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge.” A person needs to spend time presenting himself as who he wants to be, for example, a calm and balanced man, a successful and loving woman, etc.

The ability to manage emotions is the best thing a person can learn, and you need to start with managing your thoughts and imagination . If you see the positive side of everything bad, regularly focus on your goals and visualize their achievements, you can ultimately realize your plans.

Self-discovery and meditation

If you know how emotions control the brain, what their uncontrolled expression leads to, you can understand the seriousness of this situation. Meditation is another effective technique, thanks to which you can bring all emotions and feelings to the surface in order to realize and get rid of them.

You need to meditate in the following way:

• You need to learn to feel your body, observing those areas where emotions are concentrated - the chest, throat, solar plexus, under the ribs and in the stomach.
• Every situation that evokes strong emotions needs to be visualized. Next, you need to evoke the emotions that accompany this event.
• At this stage, you need to feel where on the body these emotions give a reaction. For 2-3 minutes you need to fix your attention on bodily sensations, without interfering with them in any way.
• Next, you need to understand exactly what emotions are hidden under the sensations in the body.
• Now for 3-5 minutes you need to contemplate your emotions, without trying to drown them out or strengthen them. Whatever they are, you need to accept them and love them.
• Any emotion is a component of a person’s life, this needs to be understood and accepted. Each of them hides a certain meaning, for example, protection or warning. At this stage, a person needs to find the meaning of the emotion within himself.
• At the end, you must definitely thank your emotion, focusing on your body, surroundings, sounds, space.

At the end of meditation, a person must first take a deep breath, then stretch and open his eyes. Particular attention should be paid to musical accompaniment, which helps to concentrate on your body and sensations.

Practical advice

To manage your mind and emotions, you can practice using several time-tested and experience-tested exercises. Namely:

• replace non-verbal signs and gestures of sadness with manifestations of joy, namely, a raised chin, chest forward, even breathing and a smile on the face, since the physical state is connected with the mental state;
• any obsessive negative thoughts can be replaced with a child’s squeaky voice, which will reduce the degree of seriousness and hostility; you can also parody this thought in front of the mirror and turn on cheerful music louder;
• a look at the world and events from the point of view of a comedian, you can tell an unpleasant event in the form of an anecdote, write it on paper, which will help you find the bright side in it;
• Any boring and uninteresting task that must be completed can be presented in the form of a competition that will end with a pleasant reward.

It would seem that such simple exercises, but how dramatically they change a person’s psycho-emotional background in situations where negative thoughts, events and deeds are suppressed.

Psychological techniques

The inability to manage emotions is just a matter of time if you stick to a few psychological techniques that teach self-control. Namely:

• memories of your achievements and cool events in life at the moment of feeling unpleasant emotions;
• shifting experiences “for later”, deferred excitement quickly calms strong negative emotions;
• accepting the worst events, which will make it easier to endure troubles and difficulties (using the example of the samurai who thought about death and coped with serious tasks);
• awareness of emotion, correct formulation using the formula “I feel X (emotion) when I do Y/when Y (behavior) is done to me in position Z”;
• looking at yourself in the mirror for an objective perception of the situation and yourself.

You should not resort to all techniques at once; it is important to choose the most suitable one for yourself and concentrate on it. Over time, such actions will turn into a good habit that can extinguish overwhelming emotions at the right time.

Techniques for managing emotions through the body

The science of yoga gives us various exercises to manage our emotions. First of all, we must say about hatha yoga. This discipline includes complexes of asanas, shatkarmas, various kriyas and breathing techniques. There are several basic body-oriented techniques for managing emotions in yoga, which will allow you not only to control your emotions, but to learn to live a life free from imposed experiences, stress and other negative conditions of the modern world:

• Proper nutrition
• Yoga asanas
• Shatkarmas
• Santosha - satisfaction in everything
• Meditation
• Observer state

Let's look at each of these techniques in more detail.

Accept or run.

It is difficult to control everything that happens in life, but there are situations that can really be controlled. For example, leaving home on time. You won’t have to be angry about late transport, traffic jams or be afraid of displeasure from your superiors. Therefore, it is easier to get up earlier so as not to rush.

Family dinners can also cause anxiety and stress. You shouldn’t avoid them, but you can plan something important for yourself that same day so that you can leave early without feeling guilty. You should avoid unpleasant feelings for the sake of your emotional health .

But there are events or situations that you should not refuse. For example, trying to avoid public speaking at work will only increase negative emotions due to feelings of unfulfillment or missed opportunities. Sometimes you have to face your fears in order to overcome them.

It is useful to be able to determine which situations will bring more benefit if you actively participate in them, and which ones can simply be avoided.

Take a personality type test

Proper nutrition

Human nutrition plays a special role in this section. Food that evokes extreme feelings arouses corresponding emotions in a person. Taking into account the repeated repetition of food intake, certain habits develop to experience certain sensations. As a rule, this aspect eludes a person, and he does not see the connection between uncontrolled emotions and nutrition.

For example, the habit of eating sugar-containing foods often leads to sexual addiction or excessive sensitivity in a person. It is advisable to gradually balance your diet, ideally with simple vegetarian food. Knowing what problems a person faces in this matter, we recommend gradually increasing the percentage of fresh fruits and vegetables in the diet.

Imagine the worst case scenario.

Sometimes people are obsessed with fears, unable to find a way out. Thoughts about getting fired, about your partner no longer loving you, about not having enough money to pay off your debts. They spin a spiral of fears and paralyze.

Instead of feeding these thoughts, it is better to try to ask yourself what will happen if the worst happens, and try to find a positive or optimal way out of the situation.

• If I get fired, I will finally be able to implement my project.
• If my boyfriend doesn't pay attention to me, I'll ask him what's wrong. And if he doesn't love me anymore, I'll have to accept it, deal with the pain and move on.
• If I can't pay my debt, I'll have to sell my car or ask my family for help.

Yoga asanas

When starting to master techniques for managing emotions through the body, it is best to go from simple to complex. Asanas are a very good tool for self-transformation, which develops patience, endurance and observation. By cultivating such qualities, we do not just block emotions, we replace them with better models of behavior.

Shatkarmas - cleansing techniques

An important link at this stage is the complex of shatkarmas - actions to cleanse the body of waste and toxins. It is known that toxins greatly affect not only our physical health, but also our mental state. The shatkarma complex also includes techniques for calming the mind. For example, contemplating a candle flame relieves tension from the eyes, prepares a person’s mind for deeper practices that affect the emotional sphere of life, and puts a person in a blissful state. Often people ignore this area of ​​knowledge, please do not forget about cleansing!

Development of skills to manage emotions and emotional states. article on the topic

Development of skills to manage emotions and emotional states.

Adequate behavior in stressful situations.

Children are emotional. But depending on their age and life experience, they are able to demonstrate their own emotions more clearly. Laughter, crying, screaming, squealing, hysterics, shining eyes and much more are all manifestations of emotions. Thanks to this, we see the attitude of children to people, events, and the world around them, since they are accustomed to not hiding their emotions.

However, children's emotionality is spontaneous and impulsive. To understand this, it is necessary to remember that the nature of emotions is dual. It is based both on the characteristics of a person’s biological inclinations and on the basis of his social experience. If the natural part of the emotional sphere in adolescence is already sufficiently formed, then its social base, as a rule, is very insufficient. Practice shows that modern trends in family and school education are associated with special concern for the formation of the child’s cognitive sphere. Thus, the emotional development of children occurs spontaneously. The impact of society on the emotional sphere most often comes down to familiarizing the child with the norms and rules of socially approved behavior. Such a system does not give him the opportunity to live independently, understand and overcome emotional extreme situations, and therefore does not fill the piggy bank of his own emotional experience.

The inability to recognize and manage one’s own emotions (both negative and positive) makes a child defenseless against stress, fear, and guilt.

The inability to understand and evaluate the emotions of other people creates serious difficulties in communication and mutual understanding both with peers and with parents and other adults. Such emotional incompetence often causes stress.

There is a fairly common misconception that only weak people are susceptible to stress. This is wrong. Anyone can find themselves in a stressful state. Illiterate, inept behavior of a person in a situation of negative stress is dangerous because it leads to a persistent negative psychological reaction called depression, as well as to changes at the physiological level. The consequences of physiological stress are neuroses, neurasthenia and hysteria.

Health problems can arise due to inappropriate behavior. In such a situation, a person becomes unable to effectively overcome life's difficulties and associated stress. These problems can be solved through specially organized, systematic training of children in ways of competent and conscious behavior in emotional and stressful situations.

What to teach a child to promote adequate development of his emotional sphere. It is necessary to help the child master those practical skills that will help him feel calm and confident in any situation of communication and interaction. Here are some skills that are useful for your child to learn:

1. Realize and analyze your own emotions and emotional states.

2. See and understand the emotions, emotional states and feelings of other people.

3. Correlate your emotions with the emotions of others, see similarities and differences in the emotional reactions of different people in the same situation.

4. Voluntarily regulate your own emotional states.

How to teach children to recognize and understand emotions? To teach a child emotional balancing, the teacher himself must have basic knowledge of fundamental emotions.

Joy is a strong and deep positive emotion. The expression of joy is easily recognizable. Joy enhances receptivity, increases communication motivation, and promotes self-confidence.

Interest is a selective attitude of a person towards an object due to its vital significance or emotional appeal. A child's interest is spontaneous. Once established and deepened, interest can become a need.

Surprise is a short-term and very vague emotion. On the one hand, the facial expressions of surprise are very bright (wide-open eyes and mouth), on the other hand, surprise easily turns into both positively and negatively colored feelings. Usually the following emotional chains are built: surprise - joy - interest; surprise - shame - fear.

Disgust causes a reaction of anger and seems to justify it. Understanding that they are disgusted with you is painful for a child and leads to distress or aggression.

Anger is an easy to read emotion. Despite all the unattractiveness of manifestations of anger, it should be remembered that the inability to show just anger can lead to impaired clarity of thinking and psychosomatic illnesses.

Fear is an emotion that appears at a very early age. A constant feeling of fear inhibits a child’s development, but the absence of a feeling of fear

threatens his safety. When fear reaches extreme strength (panic fear, horror), so-called stereotypical behavior may arise - flight, numbness, defensive aggression.

Shame is a social emotion. Shame is the fear of being judged. This emotion is formed in the course of mastering the ethical norms and rules of behavior of a particular society, a particular culture.

Guilt occurs when moral and ethical standards are violated. Guilt is self-condemnation. While shame is short-lived, guilt lasts a long time. Guilt is a deep social emotion.

Stress is a state of mental tension that arises in a person in the process of activity in the most difficult, difficult conditions. Stress can have both positive and negative (distress) effects on a child's functioning. With the help of stress, the body mobilizes itself for self-defense, to adapt to a new situation.

Distress is an emotional state that manifests itself as unbearable tension. This condition can be accompanied by a whole complex of negative emotions. Prolonged distress exhausts a person; it can cause frequent ailments and weakness, and even severe chronic diseases. A child susceptible to this condition may look lazy and little emotional, but such “laziness” and external indifference are only a need to save energy.

In order to teach children to manage their own emotions and act adequately in stressful situations, it is necessary to create special conditions in which they can practice solving problems related to emotions and emotional interaction. Of course, we cannot (and do not have the right) to provoke real situations in which a teenager will experience the whole gamut of emotions, both positive and negative. There are special game training tasks for this purpose. Such activities will help increase children's resistance to stress, and will also give participants the opportunity to experience and analyze a number of emotional states.

When working with children's emotions, you should remember that in the course of several sessions it is impossible to experience the entire complex palette of feelings. But children can learn not to be afraid of their own emotions. During the classes, participants should understand that each person can manage their own emotions and take care of the feelings and experiences of other people.

EXERCISE “COMPLIMENT”

Each participant must say something nice to his neighbor. Required conditions:

1. Calling by name.
2. What is said should be pleasant not to the speaker, but to the listener.

Exercise. "COLORATE YOUR FEELINGS"

This exercise is not performed in a notebook, but on separate sheets of paper. Sheets with a schematic image of a man are prepared in advance (see appendix). Participants are asked to prepare colored pencils: yellow, orange, green, blue, red, brown, black. After the presenter is convinced that everyone is ready to work, he gives instructions:

Imagine that this little man is the fairy-tale hero that you have become. This little man, like a fairy-tale hero, can experience different feelings, and his sensations live in different parts of his body. Color these feelings:

joy - yellow;

happiness - orange;

pleasure - green;

anger, irritation - bright red;

guilt - brown;

fear - black.

After the “men” are painted, participants show their drawings to others and tell why they used a particular color.

The teacher then asks the students to sign the drawings and collects them for later analysis.

Analysis of drawings

Attention! It is advisable to analyze the drawings together with a school psychologist. Analysis data is confidential information that is not discussed with children. If a child paints a “little man” with pink, yellow, green and other calm colors, then we can say that his condition is quite stable and harmonious, he will perceive and react constructively to activities.

Sometimes black, brown and bright red tones may appear in the drawings.

If most of the picture is painted black, perhaps this child needs psychocorrection. It happens that black, brown and bright red spots are narrowly localized in a certain place of the body. If the color spots are in the head area, then we can assume that the child is thinking intensely about something, some thoughts haunt him and even frighten him. In this case, it is necessary to switch the child’s thoughts in a different direction. It makes sense to involve him more often in motor exercises or inventing something.

If the black color is localized in the arm area, it can be assumed that the child is experiencing certain difficulties in interacting with others. Maybe he is just withdrawn or rejected by other children.

Sometimes black hands can be drawn by a child who is often told that he has “hands like hooks” or “don’t touch, don’t touch, get away from me.” In any case, such a child needs acceptance and support, as well as additional psychotechnical exercises. Black and brown spots may be located in the leg area. This can occur in the drawings of children who feel insufficiently confident and protected.

If a black, brown or bright red spot appears in the chest area, it can be assumed that the child is experiencing serious emotional difficulties and anxiety.

EXERCISE “Round dance”

The group is divided into two or three teams. The teams join hands and form round dances.

Now the round dances will move to the music. Movements can be very different. Everyone offers their own, and if everyone likes them, then the round dance dances this particular dance.

After 3-5 minutes, a general round dance is formed, and those whose version of the dance was performed are invited to show it to everyone. The round dance performs several general dance movements and thanks the authors of the dance with applause. After returning to the circle, participants are asked to answer the following questions:

♦ Did their mood change after the dance (if so, how)?

♦ Why do they think the mood has changed?

After this, the presenter himself must draw a general conclusion: “The transition to activities associated with great physical activity can change our condition. If we move to cheerful music, then changes come faster.”

Exercise “PICTOGRAMS”

A pictogram is a capacious graphic representation of objects and all kinds of information. You have all seen examples of pictograms, for example, on road signs. If a fork and spoon are drawn crosswise on the sign, this is, of course, a canteen or a cafe. The Red Cross is a hospital or medical center. If we see a sign with a skull and lightning, this is the message “Don’t interfere, he’ll kill you.” Let's remember what other pictograms we encounter in life?

After the participants remember which pictograms they saw, the exercise itself begins. It takes place in several stages:

1. Participants are invited to think through and then draw the following pictograms: “Merry Holiday”, “Deaf Old Lady”, “Fine Rain”, “Happiness”. After finishing the work, an exhibition of pictograms is organized, and then a short discussion is held on the topic: “Why can pictograms of the same content be drawn differently?”

2. The group is divided into two teams. Teams are invited to come up with the content of the pictograms themselves and draw them. There should be as many drawings as there are people in the team.

3. One of the teams takes turns presenting their drawings, and the other must guess what content is hidden behind them. The winner is the team that guessed better and could explain their reasoning in more detail.

EXERCISE “JOY”

Participants are presented with a pictogram depicting the emotion of joy (see Appendix). After everyone understands what emotion the pictogram represents, the presenter asks to explain: “By what signs can we determine that a person is experiencing joy?”

At the end of the exercise there is a competition for the most joyful face.

EXERCISE “INTERNAL INFINITY”

When performing tasks united under this name, class participants imitate various external reactions, thereby causing internal changes in themselves. In this way, children gain experience of experiencing various emotional states. Each step must take at least 1 minute to complete.

1. Now everyone will sit on chairs like a kitten sitting basking in the sun.

2. Everyone gets up and walks in a circle, like a proud lion in the desert.

3. Everyone sits down the way a monkey sits when it first saw itself in the mirror.

4. Walk in a circle like a proud giraffe walks

5. Sit like a scared snake.

Sit like Cinderella, who was not allowed to the ball, sits.

6. Roar like a lion who has seen his prey.

7. Fly like a butterfly flies around a very beautiful flower.

8. Jump like a rabbit who sees a cauliflower.

9. Let's walk like an angry tiger locked in a cage.

EXERCISE “ANGER”

Participants are shown a pictogram of anger (see Appendix) and asked to identify what the emotion is. Everyone tries to portray the emotion of anger. After this, a competition is held for the “angriest wrath.”

EXERCISE “SAD”

Participants are shown an icon of sadness (see Appendix) and asked to identify what kind of emotion it is. Everyone tries to portray the emotion of sadness. After this, a competition is held for the “saddest sadness.”

EXERCISE “WHERE DOES ANGER GO”

While we were doing the previous exercise, a lot of anger accumulated in the room. We cannot work while anger is with us. Let's disperse around the room and use our hands to drive all the anger into the middle. Now let's stamp our feet so that the anger gets scared and rises up. Now let’s all blow on the anger together so that it flies out the open window.

Santosha - satisfaction in everything

If a person approaches hatha yoga intelligently and follows all the recommendations, then gradually he develops a certain positive state, which in Sanskrit sounds like “santosha” - satisfaction.

This is already a sure step towards
mastering your emotions and achieving emotional peace.
Relationships with loved ones are improved, employees at work are accepted for who they are, and ambitious requests for material wealth go away. What used to irritate you cannot now make you angry. In Western terms, you enter a state of “okayness.”

Control of emotions: benefit or harm?

​​​​​​​

Film "Jeeves and Wooster"

Control of emotions is a natural part of the life of a well-mannered person.

You can often hear from Gestalt therapists that constant control of one’s emotions not only does not help to cope with emerging problems, but even worsens them, and developing the ability to more boldly and spontaneously express one’s feelings and emotions is a useful thing for many.

Film "Liquidation"

David Gotsman controls his own emotions and the emotions of those around him.

And for you, dear readers? Are the recommendations “learn to openly express the emotions that arise, don’t keep them to yourself,” so popular in women’s magazines, also relevant to you? Or is another task more important to you - to be able to control yourself, to be able to restrain and control your emotions?

Indeed, what is necessary for a sick person is no longer appropriate for a healthy person, and where a sick person needs to reduce the load and lie in bed, it’s high time for a healthy person to get up, do exercises, shower, have breakfast - and go to work! The recommendations of psychotherapists are addressed to those who need psychotherapeutic help, and beyond this situation their relevance needs to be considered. Looks like there's a lot of confusion here.

The attitude “You need to control your emotions” is not a ban on emotions in general, but the cultivation of an emotional culture and simply the habit of a decent person. Fears “Control of emotions leads to suppression of emotions, as a result of which children grow up emotionless” - empty. If parents explain to a child that it is impossible to fight with iron sticks, this is not a ban on movements at all and this will not lead to the child’s physical underdevelopment. Our children can and should be lively and emotional, but feelings of rage, helplessness and self-pity should hardly be the main notes in the range of emotional experiences of our children. The ability to freely express your spontaneous emotions is a great ability, but it does not at all contradict the ability to control your emotions in other situations. There is a time and place for everything.

What is emotional control? Emotion control is the strict management of involuntary emotions, primarily with the aim of containing them, one of the important components of a person’s control over himself and his emotions.

Important: control is not necessarily a ban. Control does not necessarily prohibit; control also prescribes. A high-level manager (and simply a developed person) has all emotions under control, and this is not just normal, but necessary and good. High-quality control of emotions helps you not to be lazy and include the right emotions, to always be emotional, but emotional in the right way. continued

Who complains about lack of emotional self-control? - an interesting question. Truly mature people do not complain about their lack of self-control; they develop it. Complaining is childish behavior, and children and adult children often complain about a lack of self-control, covering up their reluctance to grow up.

“I can bombard my loved one with (stupid) text messages that infuriate both him and myself. I can behave aggressively. Show your anger. Moreover, this only appears on people close to me. Mom, beloved man, grandfather, even friends. I quickly cool down and they forgive me..."

The girl complains about a lack of emotional self-control, but this is more likely to attract attention and self-justification than a real desire to develop self-control. What could be the solution here? Either the girl will be locked in (life will force her), or she will be successfully drawn into a new, adult life.

With the light hand of illiterate specialists they write that controlling emotions is harmful. This is not entirely true, or rather, not at all true.

Psychologist George Bonanno from Columbia University decided to compare students' stress levels with their ability to control their emotions. He measured the stress levels of first-year students and asked them to complete an experiment in which they had to show different levels of emotional expression - exaggerated, understated and normal. A year and a half later, Bonanno reassembled the subjects and measured their stress levels. It turned out that the students who experienced the least stress were the same students who, during the experiment, successfully increased and suppressed emotions on command. In addition, as the scientist found out, these students were more capable of tuning into the state of their interlocutor.

For more details, see the very important article How to deal with restraining your anger, rage, irritation and other aggressive emotions

Holding back negative emotions for a long time is like putting up with garbage in your house for years. And controlling emotions means not littering your home and putting things in order quickly. How noticeable is this difference?

Controlling emotions is like a sport: it is useful for a healthy person, but harmful for a sick person. Controlling emotions is socially necessary, but for a neurotic or emotional person it is too difficult a task, giving more problems than gains. Where an active person will be engaged in business, an emotional person will unwind emotions out of the blue, after which the task of controlling them will arise. Later, perhaps, the task of suppressing unacceptable emotions. When emotions are inflamed, controlling emotions is already the task of suppressing them. The main thing, dear fellow psychologists, is not to confuse the suppression of emotions and their control: the first is difficult and rather harmful, and the second, at least for a healthy and active person, is useful, reasonable and necessary.

And, what's more, it's not very difficult. The more emotions become voluntary, the less the task of controlling them arises. Controlling them becomes as natural as controlling your own arms and legs. Raising your spirits is as easy for a person with developed psychological culture as raising your hand is for a healthy person. Develop your emotions, learn to manage your emotions, and you won't have to control them!

Meditation

However, this condition is not always stable. Meditation leads to better results in controlling emotions

. Meditation is a fairly common term nowadays. There are a huge number of different meditation techniques and their variations.

Classical yoga involves a state of deep concentration

on any object. In Sanskrit it sounds like “dhyana”.

It must be said right away that this is a rather long path and not the easiest technique, which may take a modern person years to master. But if a person manages to realize the state of dhyana, then he takes himself to a new level of being. Deep calm and self-control are some of the qualities that can characterize a person who has achieved and mastered internal practices.

Turn your focus inward.

“A colleague gets more contracts,” “a friend managed to lose weight, but I didn’t,” “planes are falling,” “the newspapers only have bad news, something terrible is bound to happen.” All these thoughts are stressful. They feed anxiety, lower self-esteem, and make you lose control over your own life.

You need to learn not to focus on information noise, but to direct your attention inward. For example, you might ask yourself “how does this situation affect me?” The success or failure of a colleague, the beautiful figure of a friend, or a plane that crashed several thousand kilometers away are situations that are in someone else’s emotional field.

Observer state

There is another technique that allows you to take control of your emotions. A person gradually in the process of life (work, home, travel) develops the state of an observer of his feelings and thoughts. Observer State

You can master shavasana well in time after a complex of asanas. By studying ourselves, our reactions to various events, we can over time classify which emotion arises when.

Usually our reactions are of the same type and almost everyone can predict their occurrence with practice. By acting proactively, we can either not bring events to our reactions, or be already prepared for the expected emotion, which in itself will weaken it. Thus, we will be able to avoid many negative events, maintain friendly relations and conduct more constructive activities.

In conclusion, we recommend using all of the above techniques in a comprehensive manner. Gradually, you will be able to notice that your sharp reactions to certain events become softer, the sharp corners of your personality are erased, and thanks to calmness you can make better decisions. The key to success is always making the decision to change yourself and take responsibility for your life, no matter what events happen outside.

Immerse yourself in worries.

Thoughts come on their own, and not when a person wants to. It's the same with fears. They arise suddenly, worsening your state of mind, depriving you of optimism and motivation. You don't need to let them do this.

Whenever a worry arises in your head, you can conditionally push it aside. Leave it for later, setting aside time during the day when, having calmed down and relaxed, you can think about the problem. For this process to be productive, you need to take a piece of paper and make a list of problems, followed by possible solutions. To relieve stress, you can write even the stupidest ideas. For example, the problem is that the results in the report do not match .

• Solution 1 : try to prove that Pythagoras made a mistake in the multiplication table, then the report will converge. Discussion: you will have to understand the teachings of ancient mathematicians, but there is no time for this, maybe another time. Rejected!
• Decision 2 : quit your job as chief accountant and get a job as a janitor. Discussion: This option is already easier, but pollen allergies will complicate work in the summer. Rejected!
• Solution 3 : try to compile the report again, ask a colleague to help review it together, recalculate the indicators manually. Discussion: you need to ask who from the department is free to look at the report, order pizza to make work more fun. Accepted!