Noticing your emotions
Use this exercise to notice how you feel, when you feel an emotion. What triggers it, and what do you feel in your face, your stance, your gut, your temperature, and what thoughts bubble up. Particularly when you feel angry, look back and test if there’s a primary feeling that jumps in there before the anger takes hold.
| Emotion | Trigger | Feeling (what do you notice about yourself?) |
| Love | ||
| Joy | ||
| Sadness | ||
| Fear | ||
| Anger | ||
| Interest/ Surprise | ||
| Guilt | ||
| Shame |
Now look at some of your friends or role models and how do they visibly handle different emotions. What could you take from each of them?
| Emotion | Person | What can you learn from them (good points or points to avoid) |
| Love | ||
| Joy | ||
| Sadness | ||
| Fear | ||
| Anger | ||
| Interest/ Surprise | ||
| Guilt | ||
| Shame |
Six steps to Emotional Mastery
(Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within).
Firstly, embed a new global belief:
I am the source of all my emotions.
Nothing or no one can change how I feel except for me.
If I find myself in reaction to anything – I can change it in a moment
Nothing needs to happy to make you happy or sad. It’s how you choose to respond to a trigger, and what you think is the ‘acceptable’ response.
All communication is either a loving response or a cry for help, and your emotions give you messages from your subconscious about your response to a trigger.
So:
- Identify what the feeling is (use the List of Feeling Words on p131)
- Acknowledge and appreciate your emotions, knowing they support you (use the Emotions of power and warning signs)
- Get curious about the message this emotion is offering you
- Get confident (i.e. confident to accept the feeling, and know you have a choice on how to react)
- Get certain you can handle this not only today, but in the future too
- Get excited and act
Realise that the emotions you are feeling at this very moment are a gift, a guideline, a support system, and a call to action. If you suppress your emotions and to drive them out of your life, or if you magnify them and allow them to take over all that stores up is the potential for illness in the future.
They are a call to action – don’t avoid or deny them. Don’t compete or compare but learn and use.
You don’t need a trigger for an emotion;
you can feel them at any time because you react them