How to Overcome Negative Emotions to Achieve Peace
Part of living our best life involves balancing our emotional state throughout our daily ups and downs. It is our reaction to the things that happen to us that truly defines how we will be affected. Feeling emotions like jealousy, disappointment and frustration are necessary parts of being human. We should let ourselves feel them, but then try to let the moment pass. When we feel down about a situation, it can be easy to dwell on it and let it overtake our mood. Learning how to overcome negative emotions is critical to our mental health.
Instead, we need to think about the good things that we enjoy in life, even if they are little things. At the end of the day, little things are what make life worth living. Allowing ourselves to feel the negative emotion, then move on and place our thoughts somewhere else is what builds our resilience. We are still here, we are okay, and we still have things to be grateful for. Here are some common situations where I often feel the need to balance my emotional state.
Feeling Jealous When You Experience the Fear of Missing Out
When others post on social media and you were not included, or you wish you had a similar experience, you start to feel down on yourself and dwell on what’s lacking in your life. Someone else is giving their kids a cottage experience, or a major vacation. A friend is running her own business and excelling with the freedom to design her own schedule. Yet another person is always engaging in fun activities with friends. People you once felt close to are sharing things with others that you had no idea about, and this makes you feel left out of their life. It makes you feel less connected to them.
Try to feel genuinely happy for the other person, make a positive comment, and use it as the catalyst to strive to make positive changes in your own life. Do you want that experience? Find a way to go out and get it. Think about the friendships you do have, reach out to people if you feel left out, and find something positive you love and appreciate to spend time with to improve your mood.
Gratitude is the Solution to Overcome Negative Emotions
Linda and Charlie Bloom, experts in the field of relationships, recommmend ten ways to overcome Fear of Missing Out: 1) Slow Down; 2) Practice Discernment; 3) Go For the Experience, not the Symbol; 4) Be Willing to Not Have it All; 5) One Thing at a Time; 6) Practice Mindfulness; 7) Prioritize Relationships over Acquisitions; 8) Savour the Moment; 9) Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude; and 10) Enjoy the Process.
The Blooms state that “Rather than chasing after what may be just an illusion of happiness, we can gently strive for the deep satisfaction that comes with the cultivation of mindfulness—the practice of being present in our lives and giving non-judgmental awareness to our moment-to-moment experience. Rather than desperately seeking rock star recognition, cultivate the mastery of enjoying mundane pleasures,” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stronger-the-broken-places/201501/10-ways-overcome-fear-missing-out). If we can adopt this mindset of appreciating what we have, rather than longing for something more, we will be well on our way to achieving greater peace and contentment.
How to Overcome Negative Emotions: Being Upset About a Shortcoming or Flaw About Yourself
Perhaps you want to be more assertive, and a stronger communicator or you want to be handier, or less shy. You see the trait in others and you want to emulate it, but can’t seem to bring yourself to behave in this way. You feel down on yourself and long to make these changes. Try to use this emotion to spur yourself to action. What small steps can you take towards change? In the meantime, try to be happy with who you are, and remind yourself of the traits you love about yourself.
It is not easy to overcome a negative self-image, especially when faced with your shortcomings every day. See the post Pushing Ourselves to Do Better: How To Strike a Balance for more insights. You have to actively practice positive self-talk when you feel insecurities taking over. Tell yourself that you will get there, or that perhaps it doesn’t matter if you don’t. Are you still a good person? Are you living a happy and healthy life? Maybe that can be enough.
Feeling Disappointment With How a Situation Turned Out
It was beyond your control, but the universe didn’t have the same plan as you. Maybe you did not get the job, your team lost a championship, or a relationship faced impossible odds. Allow yourself to hurt, and curse the universe for allowing this to happen when it easily could have gone the other way. Then take a realistic look at how this will matter in the grand scheme of life a week from now, or months from now. Life will go on, no matter how much it hurts right now.
Take time to deliberately do something that you love, and that will make you appreciate your life. Learning to overcome negative emotions is not easy. You have to intentionally adopt the mindset that there is no way to change things. Raging and dwelling on it will never change the outcome. It is done. It is time to look forward to the options that remain. What can you do instead, and how can you see the positives in the path you’re going to take moving forward?
Feeling Frustrated When Things Don’t Go as We Wished for Our Children
We have expectations for our children, and we feel let down when they don’t get the things they want in life. Maybe they can’t get the grades they need, or they don’t have the social life they crave, or God forbid, people, are mean to them. Desperate to change the situation for them, we intervene to prevent them from feeling hurt. We know that they have to experience failure and disappointment to build resilience but it hurts to let this happen.
We need to focus on the positives in their life and help them to do this as well. Spend time indulging in the little things that bring you and your family joy. They will learn from your calm and steady reaction and modeling. They will turn to this mindset when faced with future problems, when you may not be there to guide them. Evaluate your reactions to the stresses in your life, and make sure you are leading your children by your example.
Learning How to Overcome Negative Emotions
Developing this mindset of feeling the emotion, then letting it slide off your back is critical to our mental health. We have to take it day by day and keep bringing it back to this focus on gratitude and self-love. At the same time, we can use these situations as fuel and motivation to make changes in our lives, if what we wish for is truly important to us, and if it will genuinely serve us and our family.
It’s also important to recognize that what is important to other people may not truly be what you want. Try not to think that you need something just because someone else has it. Instead, decide what you want your life to look like, then work to achieve that vision. We need to honour, accept and validate our true personalities balanced with the small changes we know would be best for us to make, and respect ourselves enough to know the difference. This is the path to achieving true peace.
