Complex Emotions- The Ultimate Formulas to Take Control of Your Life
How do you deal with complex emotions?
A powerful tool I’ve used in the past was listing my daily emotions.
Let me break it down into 2 steps for you:
1. So, in the evening, here’s what you can do:
→ You grab your journal
→ And divide the first blank page into two columns.
You just need to draw a line.
→ The left part is for your emotions and the hour you experienced them
→ The right part is for the context of those emotions.
For example, let’s imagine it’s 8:30 pm.
Today you wanna report 3 emotions:
→ Anxiety
→ Satisfaction
→ Jealousy
Well, your left column will look like this:
1. Anxiety: 8:50 am
2. Satisfaction: 1:00 pm
3. Jealousy: 7:00 pm
Your right column will look like this:
1. I felt anxious about the upcoming sales pitch that I had at 10:00 am
2. I felt satisfied after ending an important task, while eating alone.
3. I felt jealous while scrolling my social media feed and seeing a picture of my partner.
2. Alright! Now that you’ve listed all emotions, you just need to:
→ Compare them
→ And analyze them
How?
By asking yourself:
→ What’s the ratio of “positive” vs “negative” emotions?
→ What are their triggers?
For example, in our previous example we can see:
→ The ratio is 1 positive emotion + 2 negative emotions
Instead, in terms of triggers we can see:
→ Anxiety is triggered by thinking about the upcoming sales pitch, maybe too much
→ Satisfaction is triggered by taking time alone and reminding yourself of your daily achievements
→ Jealousy is triggered by making assumptions without any real evidence
This allows us to understand our emotions better.
And of course we can take action based on that.
How?
→ By focusing on the present moment — instead of overthinking about the sales pitch
→ By communicating openly with our partner — instead of making assumptions.