As we continue learning about tools for handling our emotions, we move today from awareness to identification. What is the feeling/emotion? Please identify your emotion.  Sometimes a detailed analysis is necessary to help you identify your emotion. And the only way to get control is to conduct a thorough analysis.  Use this detailed analysis for when you need to diagnose your feelings and carefully examine their nature.

Identify Your Emotion

Our feelings are complex and are not easily defined.  We can be fooled by their many faces and attempt to control the wrong feeling.  For example, it does us little good to think we are angry when on careful analysis, we realize we are hurt, and the hurt is causing our anger.  Hurt automatically induces anger.  But we deal with hurt feelings differently than we deal with angry feelings.  When the two are present, you should deal with hurt first and the anger will subside.

The same is true of anxiety and fear.  Anxiety can lead to outright fear.  But the emotion that we have to confront is the one that is the cause — the anxiety.  Dig it up, roots and all. Remove its influence and the fear will then ease.

Once You Identify It, Analyze Your Emotion

These questions addresses the critical times when you will need to accurately diagnose your feelings.  The instructions or tools to identify your emotions are for all temperaments.  The NF, however, should pay particular attention because of their acute capacity to respond to stimulation.

Observe whether your feelings are positive or negative.

I call it the “mind’s weather forecast.”  Is the forecast for sunny weather or a cold, wet, gray day.  Deciding whether our thoughts are positive or negative is not difficult and will give a reliable indication of what to expect in the way of emotional responses.

1. Incidentally, if you want to be happy, always keep a positive frame of mind.  Happiness and a negative outlook are incompatible.     
2. If you feel fear and anxiety, anger or disappointment, or any emotion that dulls your happiness, loss of emotional control is near.   

Are we distinguishing between our actions, reactions, thoughts and feelings? They are closely related.

1. The difference between actions and reactions tells us who or what instigated the emotional situation and what role our emotions are playing — offensive or defensive. We’d better know which side of the ball we are playing on if we want to win. Actions are offensive plays. Reactions are defensive plays. Simply ask yourself, “Are my emotions defensive or offensive?”
2. An offensive anger should be understood differently from a defensive anger. Defensive anger, on the whole, is more excusable.  However, it develops into bitterness more quickly, creating a longer lasting emotional event.
3. The difference between thoughts and feelings is more complex.
4. Thoughts are analytical and come from reasoning. If our reasoning is the cause of our negative emotions, then analyze them. Discover the failure in their logic or the logic that will calm your emotions. The way to control these emotions is to reason correctly. Ask:
   • Is reason driving my emotions?  Or are emotions driving my reason?
   • Am I stating the facts or interpreting the facts?
   • Are there other alternatives that I am not considering?
5. Feelings are thoughts too. But they come from memories, established values and beliefs, and from emotional insights and impressions. Deal with emotional thoughts by calming the mind first. Then examine what your emotions are telling you. Do they come from…
   • A false or true belief?
   • An accusation that is founded or unfounded?
   • A prejudgment or a bias? Correct them with the undistorted truth.
   • Discover that truth by facing the hard facts and adjusting your feelings to confront the facts honestly.

 Resources to Help You:

THE WONDERFUL TRUTH ABOUT EMOTION

Are there such things as intelligent emotions? Intelligently Emotional will argue that there are. And they are the ones we must focus on if we want to know success.

Ray W. Lincoln will show us how understanding the patterns of emotion in our temperament will enable us to manage our emotions effectively. If you long to know how to understand your emotions and the immense power of your feelings, Intelligently Emotional  will show you the way.  The path to real emotional intelligence requires learning to partner with intelligent emotions.

DISCOVER THE TRUTH OF WHO YOU ARE!

Lean into the whole truth.  Discover the truth of who YOU are — the “Real You” — and who your children truly are.  Discover how to best engage your children in finding the whole truth.  INNERKINETICS, Your Blueprint to Excellence will guide you in that

Our team at InnerKinetics is ready to provide that help, too.  If you’d like some assistance, you can request a consultation.  An InnerKinetics consultant will call you to answer questions and schedule your meeting. Schedule an Initial Consultation. Alternatively, if you are more independent and want to cut to the chase, you need not wait for a call back. You can get answers to your questions and schedule your session HERE.

Our first and most important task in a world-changing mission is to learn how to think straight (and teach straight thinking) and combat the insurgence of crooked thinking in our culture and in our world today. If we become passive victims of this crooked way of thinking, we promote it. Furthermore, if we remain silent, we also give it credence. In Who Am I?, the reader progresses from how we have become “crooked thinkers” to how to break out of this prison of the mind to become instruments of change for a better world.  We do this by recognizing from where we derive our value as humans. “Build a straight and powerful mind.” ~ Ray W. Lincoln