Managing our Emotions

Feelings or emotions are inherent part of human beings and it is what make humans human. Animals too feel emotions to varying degree. This is what makes animal and human species different from machines or computers. Computers can do all the heavy duty processing and number crunching but when it comes to experiencing and expressing emotions they are no match.

Today lot of research is going in Artificial intelligence and machine learning field to make computers more human like.  They can now by processing thousands of music records or painting data sets, can learn patterns and create new music compositions or paintings in the style of Mozart or Vinci. Soon we will have virtual composers and painters to compete with.

 

But machines are still far off from experiencing and demonstrating emotions.

 

Emotions come both as a blessing and a curse to human beings.

The love and joy, happiness we experience on doing any activity or being with a person or with nature can give way to hate , jealousy , anger , sadness in no time. Today depression is a major ailment affecting even affluent countries in Europe and America. So we need to learn to how to manage emotions.

 

A little dose of these "negative" emotions are useful like salt in our food.

A little fear determines our fight and flight response in a situation like confronting a tiger or a robber, a little jealousy can make us compete better. Little dose of anger is required at times to make a child realize a mistake or a person not behaving properly in a public place. But when these emotions run amok they have a ability of taking over our sanity and causing more harm to the individual expressing it than the person targeted against. These emotions can burn us.
 

Today a lot of ailments like blood pressure, hyper tension, obesity, heart problems, cancer can be attributed to these emotions which go unmanaged over a period of time. How to deal with emotions is a thing which does come from experience but why wait till old and wise. Simple techniques can help quite the mind and manage emotions..

Breathing helps. Long deep breathing, pranayama, yoga can get rid of anger and anxiety, both in short term and long term. Learning these techniques from certified teachers or known yoga centers can be the first life changing step.

 

Also switching the  diet to non vegetarian food over period of time make you less aggressive. Eating less spicy, satvic food can help you maintain calm composure. It is said you become what you eat. Eating non vegetarian food which are more complex to digest and in taking of meat from an animalwhich has undergone certain emotions of fear and trauma at the time of its death can influence our chemistry. Also it is found that animal slaughter houses contribute a significant amount to greenhouse gases comparable to automobile emissions. Go vegetarian is the new mantra.

 

Channelizing emotions

When feeling jealous channelize your jealousy to something positive. Convert jealousy into inspiration. Get inspired by the person you are jealous of. See what good qualities made the other person achieve his or her kind of success. Complement the person on his abilities. Better still remember you are a unique individual with creative and fertile mind. Why to copy others and follow the herd mentality. Make your own choices and pursue interests and excel in them. You have to live your dream and not some other persons dream.

 

If you are afraid of heights or water or anxious in public places. It is best to tackle your fears. The opposite of fear is love. Try to gain more knowledge about the fear. If we start dabbling in the things we fear say for example fear of public speaking, one  can join courses like toastmasters and soon you will find yourself enjoying and loving it more than fearing. If you are afraid of heights you can join a hiking group who will be around you and same time you can climb various peaks. Soon the things we fear we will start loving them.

 

Identifying and accepting negative emotions just like we accept any positive emotion is the first step. Next is to channelize them into positive emotion using the techniques above will help in managing them.

 

Soon you will find yourself a transformed individual.