Most people are wired to focus more on the negative aspects of their lives. We worry about what our future will look like, we dread the reality of certain parts of our days, and we are consistently pulled back to agonise about our past.
Our negative bias causes us to spend too much time in states dominated by emotions we want to escape.
All effort to consistently show up and make a change in our lives disappears in that moment when we face another wave of emotions.
Could there be a simple yet often overlooked way to help us become better at regulating our emotions?
What’s at stake?
If we are being so severely dependent on what goes on the outside, if our inner state is dictated almost fully by our circumstances, it’s impossible to feel any other way than like being at the mercy of wherever we find ourselves.
This translates into having no consistency in the way we show up in the world.
Over time, we lose trust even in ourselves, because we never know when another wave of emotions will hit us and erase all the goodness from our lives.
How can we achieve any long-term goal, which by definition requires commitment and consistent investment of focused effort and attention, if we are being pulled in all directions by the outside world?
How can we create a life we want to live if we can’t look past and let go of the minor inconveniences in our daily lives?
We sacrifice the potential of what our lives could be by not giving ourselves enough time to learn how to manage the forces that pull us aside.
What’s the gain?
So much of what we desperately want in life stems from the ability to self-regulate our emotions.
An individual who knows how to reframe the unexpected situation at hand can quicker find the solution, take necessary action, and bring their focus back to the goal they are trying to reach.
A person like this knows how to discern thoughts, things, and situations that act as an investment in their future, from those that result in a waste of resources.
They are actively trying to stay aware of where their attention goes.
This is when we feel like we are in charge of our life.
As a result, the time we used to waste looping in certain emotional states can now be invested into building something meaningful – a lifestyle that introduces a sense of purpose and hope into our days.
A measure of prevention
A huge portion of our emotional instability stems from exposure to environments that aren’t beneficial for us.
Those are the places oversaturated with information and energies that harm the balance within us. It’s simply impossible to stay there for a longer period of time without being negatively affected.
Certain things, people, activities, and spaces immediately make us feel more grounded, at peace, and safer within ourselves. Others have the opposite effect – we feel more imbalanced, prone to doubt, fear, and anxiety.
Being largely exposed to the latter will reflect in our inner state, since we naturally attune to each other. This happens even when we don’t communicate directly or verbally. Those more sensitive within us are influenced by this on an even deeper level.
Spending time with others results in our emotional states, breathing patterns, and the way we view the world reflecting one another. This also includes the way people communicate and deal with conflicts, what values they prioritise, and how they perceive and deal with their emotions.
The people and places we hang around are what we eventually become – no matter how strong our character is, or how self-aware we are.
That is why it’s important to be highly selective of our environment and use it preventively to regulate our emotions.
Of course, it won’t be possible to create a perfect environment. You might be in a situation where you are frequently exposed to something or someone that severely affects you. Becoming aware of the influence they have over you can help you prepare yourself mentally before coming in contact with them, so that you aren’t taken aback by a sudden change in your state. This way, you can avoid confusion and doubts that lead you to question your sanity, and you know that once out of that environment, you’ll feel better.
Catalyst for change
Imagine feeding your body with only highly processed food and harmful ingredients over many years. Your immune system will be compromised, along with the rest of your body.
Now imagine you get sick and you get mad at your body for not being able to protect you. You feel powerless and lose trust in your body’s ability to protect you. You perceive it as being weak by default.
All along, you are completely ignoring the lifestyle under which your body lived, and how it influenced your current state.
It would be highly unfair not to address the conditions that your body was exposed to. You could focus here on treating the symptoms, but the true and long-lasting healing would only come when you’d pay attention to the complete environment in which the disease originated.
In other words, you would change your body’s inner environment and, as a result, unlock the potential of your immune system. Instead of reducing your body’s innate strength to fight the disease and support you through challenges in life, you are now enhancing it.
In the same way, a mind fed with proper nutrition, which comes from environments you thoughtfully selected, will naturally equip you with strength, clarity, and mental immunity to anything that harms your vision.
Expecting a change in your life while not making any adjustments in the way you show up daily, what information you consume, who you are surrounded with, and where you spend your time is not a very promising strategy.
This doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to change your life drastically. Find one thing you can do differently today. Even one small adjustment can act as a catalyst for change and improvement in your life.
What is the goal?
A big part of learning how to regulate our emotions is to discern what environments, both on the micro and macro scale, activate thoughts that lead us into low emotional states. If we can learn how to pay attention to the subtle signs our body sends and find the correlation with what we have been exposed to prior to that, we can successfully navigate our days by avoiding unnecessary triggers that lead to low emotional states.
The goal is not to live a life free of negative emotions. Pain is vital in our growth as it carries information that points to things we need to focus on improving.
The goal is to prevent those unnecessary states where we just endlessly loop without making any progress.
The better we get at preventing unnecessary negative emotional states, the more energy and focus we will have for dealing with the ones that unlock a new level in our lives.
What can you do?
1 Identify triggers
Know what situations, places, or people act as triggers for doubts, insecurities, and thoughts that don’t serve you.
Think about specific activities you do throughout the day that leave you feeling less in any way.
Is it scrolling on social media where you unconsciously compare yourself to others? Maybe it’s an interaction with a specific person or a place you visit.
Whatever it is, look for ways to reduce or eliminate the exposure to it.
2 Curate your diet
Be brutal in distancing yourself from everything that doesn’t benefit you.
The food you eat either enhances or reduces your body’s ability to deal with the challenges it faces.
The information you consume, the conversations you engage in, and the stories you hear are the diet that will either make your mind stronger or weaker.
If something or someone makes you think less of yourself and what your life can be, make a choice to reduce the time you spend with them, or if possible, completely stay away.
As hard as it can be to say no to certain people, remember that the choice you are making is directly related to the quality of your whole life.
If saying no to someone is hard, ask yourself, will it hurt you more to have one uncomfortable conversation now, or to wake up every day and automatically continue to say yes to what you mean no, only because you did the same thing yesterday, and the day before.
3 Declutter your life
Clutter on the outside enhances mess on the inside.
Organising our life externally gives us a sense of control and can serve as a starting point for cleaning up our mental and emotional spaces.
Start from your home and the place you spend the most time in.
Your home should be a place that feels safe and inviting. It should make you feel at ease, relaxed, and inspired. Excess clutter of things you don’t use affects you on a physical, mental, and emotional level, even when you might not be aware of it.
Try to clear up one room or one corner of your home, and see if you notice the difference in the way you feel.
4 Declutter your online world
Another place where we spend a lot of time is the online world.
Is the media and information you consume helping you to step into the person you wish to become, or are you mostly left feeling inadequate and overwhelmed?
Is your social media curated in a way to make you more inspired and motivated to believe in and work on yourself?
You are not going to miss out on some crucial information about what’s going on in the world, and be left behind. If consuming the news on a daily basis and staying updated on every single cultural announcement makes you feel heavy, hopeless, and less proactive in building your own life, the only thing that you’re leaving behind is your potential to rise up and create the life you wish to have.
Unfollow everyone whose content doesn’t aid your progress. Get rid of anything that doesn’t benefit you. By doing so, you are clearing up your physical, mental, and emotional space, so you have more energy, focus, and willpower to work on building and creating, instead of unconsciously consuming.
Curate your environment – from the smallest thing to the biggest one – so that it serves the person you hope to become and the life you dream of having.
You don’t owe a follow, a like, your presence, or attention to anything or anyone.
But you owe it to yourself a chance to tap into your potential and see how great your life could be.
5 Assign a specific purpose to each section of your home
Every section of your home should have a specific activity assigned to it.
For instance, create a work zone where the only thing you are allowed to do is work. Create a relaxation zone where the only activity you engage in is unwinding and relaxing.
If you have intentions to rest, but the space around you is constantly triggering your worries related to work, you will end up neither resting nor working.
Make small environments with a designated purpose within your home. This way, when you enter that area with the intention that matches the purpose of the room, you expose your body and mind to the environment that was designed specifically for the thing you are trying to do. Your body receives a clear signal that it’s safe and welcome to engage in the intended activity. Your body and mind unite.
Specifically designed areas of your home where each carries a certain purpose serve as a basis for establishing a steady routine of doing the things that you intend, and following through.
By doing so, you decrease the likelihood of being emotionally disrupted, which helps you build your self-trust and self-reliance, which further reflects in the way you show up in the world.
6 Take care of your body
Often, solutions to our problems are much simpler than we want to believe.
When you think you might need another course, what you might need is a walk to create a mental space for the integration of everything you’ve learned.
When you think you’re failing in life again and you need someone to guide you, what you might need is a good movement practice to get more oxygen in your cells that offer clarity and a new perspective.
Oxygen does wonders, and we often forget about it.
Just a couple of deep breaths can take you from one world where everything seems to be doomed, into another, where solutions appear naturally.
If we are experiencing life and creating everything with the use of our body, how do we expect that ignoring the conditions under which it operates won’t affect our ability and the way we show up in the world?
Take care of your body so that it can take you to places you want to go.
7 Curate inspiration and focus
If the information that enters our mind shapes the way we view the world and our place within it, then we need to pay great attention to what we are exposed to.
If you struggle with low self-worth, but there are some specific things that make you feel the opposite, consume more of that.
If you find it hard to believe in your power to change your life, but there are certain people online whose work makes you feel the opposite, read and watch more of that.
Curate your environment in a way that everything inspires you to seek more depth in life, brings your focus back on the vision you have, and reminds you of the strength and power you possess.
8 Seek evidence that it’s possible
We are complex and fragile, no matter how great our potential is. Doubts and resulting negative emotions will always find a way to creep in. There isn’t an environment where we’ll be completely safe from harm.
In those moments when doubts overtake you, go to places that invite the opposite.
Read books that show you another perspective on life.
Watch interviews with people who share their life stories that display both successes and failures.
Engage in activities that take you away from your mind and into your body.
Sometimes the best way to fight out doubts is not by trying to reason them, but by going in the opposite direction – where you don’t think, just simply expose yourself to something or someone that naturally inspires you, and where peace and solutions find you.
You don’t have to be at the mercy of your emotions or the world around you.
You get to have a say.
The solutions to our troubles are always simple.
But you have to make a move.
So make a small change today.
And never give up on yourself.
With love,
Julija
