Rich Bello breaks down why we feel what we feel. Emotions aren't just good or bad, they're signals that helped us survive. Fear keeps you alert, anger mobilizes you, joy connects you to others. Learning to read them matters more than trying to eliminate the uncomfortable ones.
Chapters
When we examine our emotions, we have to keep in mind that there are two categories and they overlap. The first category are positive and negative emotions, and the second category are resourceful and unresourceful emotions. It's good to look at them in these ways. All emotions have some purpose in mind, no pun intended, from an evolutionary perspective, that is. While it's true that we desire being in a positive emotional state, that won't always be the case. These emotions themselves are designed to give us what we need at the time. Sometimes you literally need what typically are referred to as negative emotions. In fact, that's their purpose, to help you to survive. That's the biological purpose of these negative emotions, to get you back on track, to get you back on the path. So the key to viewing emotions at any given time is not necessarily whether they're positive or negative, but whether or not they provide you with the resources you need at any given moment. Are the emotions you're feeling resourceful emotions or unresourceful emotions, meaning are they giving you what you need at that moment to get you on the right path? Which again, biologically means survival. We can substitute in fulfillment and happiness for survival, because in the current environment that we're living in, that applies. In other words, a short term negative emotion may be just what you need in the moment, in the short term moment to get you to have long term happiness. Now, the same emotion can be resourceful or unresourceful. It depends on your situation, on the trigger, whether it's real or not, whether that trigger in fact is real or not. For example, you may think that a rope in the road is a snake, but it might only be a rope. The rope triggered fear, but the trigger itself wasn't what you thought it was. It was just a rope, not a potentially poisonous snake. Now, it also depends on what meaning you give to the emotion. For example, some people are deathly afraid of flying. But flying is one of the safest forms of travel. So your meaning is factually incorrect. If you're afraid of it, and then it depends on your reaction to the emotion, is your reaction appropriate for the situation, to get the best result for your overall mission? For instance, a young employee makes a huge mistake, and it costs a firm money. A and if that mistake is made again, it could put the firm out of business. Now you're the boss, how do you react? Your reaction is in front of the whole team. It could be to yell at the employee and humiliate him or her, or to use it as a teachable moment for the whole firm and to motivate the team, you get to decide which is going to be best. The key to emotional mastery is A how you interpret them right and B, how you react to them, how you react to these emotions. For instance, fear can be a very good thing. It can help us to prepare for some type of danger. The pain of guilt keeps us from violating our own values a second time. If I did it once and the pain of guilt was really bad, I won't do that again. Guilt is a good emotion to have. As long as you learn your lesson and don't stay in the emotion, you stay in the emotion, then it's harmful. Even sadness can be a good emotion when what happens when you're sad about something? It's a signal to others that we need their support. The key though, again, is that we don't want to be feeling these emotions for too long. You want to take care of the situation and get back to feeling the happy emotions. Take care of it quickly. But sometimes we need to go there because something in our internal or external environment needs fixing. And the negative emotion lets us know that it gives us a signal and it gives us the resource to fix it. Emotions are a signaling device, similar to a compass. Positive emotions signal you're on the right path to true north towards survival and fulfillment. We're going to give you the resources to keep on going. That's the message. Now, negative emotions signal you're on the wrong path, you're going south. We're giving you the resources you need to get you back on the right path, heading true north, which is pain. We're giving you some pain here. Get back on the right path. That's what negative emotion gives you, right pain. Now, sometimes the compass settings aren't right, so you need to check it. Is the trigger real? The snake versus rope example, the trigger was not real. Do you have the facts right? Flying is safe. Is your reaction appropriate? Do you motivate or do you yell? Now, you can have four combinations of positive and negative emotions that are resourceful or unresourceful. Here are some. You can have negative emotions that are unresourceful. For example, you get angry at your child as a result of a fight he had with another child. You react quickly without thinking. You yell and punish your child without even explaining what he did was wrong. This is a negative emotion. And you are in a negative, unresourceful state because you didn't think about your reaction. It's the worst place to be. You let the anger get the most of you, and you lost out on a teachable moment.
