There are many times when it’s challenging to manage emotions with ease. And when you learn to be aware, accept and articulate them, you develop into a better, more rounded, emotionally intelligent person.

Let’s start with a story from my personal experience:

“Don’t cry”

is something I hear from my friends a lot.

(I cry easily – I discovered it helps me regulate my emotions faster).

My first, unconscious reaction when I’m told not to cry is: 

”Why not?”

I want to cry.

I need to cry.

Crying feels good.

It helps me release tension.

It eventually calms me down.

And helps me get over it [whatever it is].

So being told not to cry, doesn’t help. I need to deal with my emotions, as they come. And once emotions are out of the way, I can focus on solutions and take action to make things better.

Now consider this for a moment:

As a child, you were probably told: don’t be sad, don’t cry, don’t be a baby…. So you learned to repress and suppress some of your emotions. Also, society presented you with labels and clear expectations:

• “Positive” emotions are good and desirable – you should do everything you can to get them
• “Negative” emotions are bad and undesirable – you should avoid or minimize them at all cost.

The truth is, there are no positive or negative emotions. Each emotion exists to teach you something. An emotion is an automatic, impulsive, physical reaction to the environment – and lasts a maximum of 90 seconds. What comes after the emotion, is the feeling – the meaning you attach to the emotion. So you first experience the emotion, then what lasts longer is the feeling you associate with that emotion.

And you can’t stop feeling. Because if you do, you’re no longer alive.

When I trained with Marisa Peer a few years ago, she shared the ‘3A’ framework that she uses to manage her emotions with ease. And it works big time. You start with being aware of your emotions, then you move to accepting them, and then you end with articulating them.

 

Aware

Recognize your emotion, acknowledge it is there, observe it. Be honest about what you feel, where you feel it in your body, how you feel it. It may not be comfortable, but the emotion is there to tell you something. Notice it, be there in the moment.

Accept

After noticing your emotion, the next step is to accept it. What is the feeling you associate with that particular emotion? Without judging yourself, accept that what you feel is a part of you and it’s ok to feel. Look at your feelings with curiosity, without judgment. When you don’t judge yourself, you can accept your feelings fully. Yes, sometimes there will be resistance and you need to gently ask yourself what makes you resist? Why does this feel (un)comfortable? The answers may guide you to uncover more feelings you probably were not even aware of.

Articulate

When you can articulate your feelings, you release any resistance residue and accept yourself truly as you are. All you need to do is say out loud what you’re feeling and why and what are you going to do about it. Articulating your emotions teaches a lot about yourself. 

Let’s take an example:

A colleague got promoted at work.

Aware – you feel the jealousy in your stomach, shortly after you got the news. Then you realize you feel it’s not fair and you feel you deserve a promotion more than your colleague.

Accept – you notice you’re comparing yourself and challenge it: am I really less? ‘Their promotion doesn’t take away my achievements, so all I need to do is work to get a promotion too, if that’s what I want’. It’s ok to feel jealous, as long as you take it as a guidance to take constructive actions that benefit you.

So remember this:

You can’t stop emotions. 

You can’t stop feeling. 

So you’d better learn to deal with them.