Are your emotions serving you?

Learn to redirect any emotion and make yourself happier.

This exercise will take about 15 minutes.

Choose something you're feeling negative (anger, fear, sadness) about. Get curious.

If you’re feeling sad

Ask yourself,

“Is there something I should let go of?”.

Is there a belief, an idea, a dream, a hope, a vision that isn’t serving you anymore?

Perhaps you expected someone you know to “be better”. You expected that they would be “kinder” or “smarter” or “more fun” but then you got to know them. This might give you a feeling of sadness.

Ask yourself, is that sadness serving you? What is the vision you should let go of?

Work example

Julie thought her manager would fight for her promotion and support her. Turns out the manager is afraid to disagree with their superiors and won't fight for Julie. This person that Julie looked up to is actually a huge disappointment. She feels sad because she expected more out of them. But this sadness isn’t serving her. Now her whole day feels gloomy. Instead, she can choose to let go of the vision that her manager is someone who will fight for her. She can accept this new constraint and I can work around it now. Before, she felt powerless and immobilized and alone. Now, she just has a small roadblock that she can problem-solve around.

Personal example James felt sad when he went to the gym and saw how much muscle he'd lost. The other guys at the squat rack looked jacked and he's sad because he looked weak compared to them. But this sadness isn’t serving James. In fact, it’s making him want to go home and not work to get those muscles back. Instead he can choose to let go of the dream that he could have taken a few months off and still be in prime shape.

If you’re feeling angry

Ask yourself,

“What is no longer of service to me and should be destroyed?”.

I like the “destroyed” language because when you’re angry, you crave destruction. ;)

Work example Jasmine's manager took credit for her work in an important meeting and she's angry at the injustice of her not being recognized. She feels angry at Jacob taking credit for her project. Recognition for this would have resulted in a promotion for her. Sitting in the meeting, she's so angry that she doesn't even want to answer the questions that the VP is asking. Answering these questions would help prove that she's actually the one who did everything, but the anger is freezing her up. This anger is not of service to her. Her goal is to get a promotion for the VP to recognize how much she's done here. Instead, she is going to take a deep breathe and destroy the desire to sit and grumble for the next hour. She will get engaged and curious about how she can still turn this around.

If you’re feeling afraid

Ask yourself,

“What am I supposed to wake up to? To pay attention to? To learn from?”.

Work example

Jonathon is afraid that the younger, smarter, more attractive new hire is going to threaten his status as “the most insightful person on the team”. He fears that this new hire asks better and more insightful questions than him. While in a team discussion, he's so worried that his team is going to start going to the new hire with interesting questions instead of him if he don’t prove myself right now with some amazing insight. He's so afraid of losing this status that he just wants to sink into his chair and hide. His palms are sweaty and his chest is tight. "All I’m thinking about is how he’s a threat and I can’t think of anything insightful to say!" Instead of continuing to spiral, he can ask himself 'what can I learn from this fear? ' Turns out that he is deeply afraid of losing status. He was unpopular in high school and is terrified of being irrelevant again. Just understanding the source of this fear gives him peace and a sense of control. Now he can choose to set aside this fear and think about the problem being discussed by the group, instead of being caught up in his own head.

---

When you feel a negative emotion, asking yourself these questions will bring profound wisdom and insights into your own mind. The answers to your curiosity questions will radically alter the way you understand how you operate in the world around you and how you interact with the people around you.