Emotion
What is emotion? Emotion is a strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or
relationships with others.
Ever since you, I, or anyone else can remember, we have all
experienced emotions on a daily basis. Whether is fear, joy, anger, relaxation
etc… we all experience them naturally and just take them as they come. Even
though we know they are only emotions and they can’t do anything to us, we
often let them take control of our bodies and minds making us think and
function in an uncontrolled state.
Emotions are extremely interesting because they can
influence what we do and how we do things on a small and large scale. If we
approached a same scenario twice, but with different emotions, there would most
likely be entirely different outcomes. For example your friend could be running
late to meet you, you could experience many emotions, but let’s just say in
this scenario you experience Anger and then on the other hand you experience
Joy. You could easily be angry at your friend for being late, possibly argue
when they arrive and then fall out, or on the other hand, you could be Joyful
to the fact your friend is still on their way and be happy to see them when
they arrive. Two completely different outcomes for the same scenario.
So I want to ask you this question, are you in control of
your emotions? Or are your emotions in control of you. I believe that everyone
has the ability to control their emotions to some extent, don’t think we can just flick a switch and be
happy jumping around then flick another being sad and crying. However I am
learning with time that if you sit and observe your emotions at a given time,
you are much more in control of them, which in turn allows you to have much
more control over your thoughts and actions.
This again raises another question that some of you may need
an answer to, which is on the topic of achieving your Health & Fitness
goals. Do emotions effect my training and nutritional lifestyle? Well the
answer to this is yes they most certainly do, all you have to do is put two and
two together to understand this. Let’s think, do you remember the last time you
had a really bad day at work and come home feeling sad or annoyed or confused
etc… I’m sure you probably didn’t feel like eating a good natural healthy meal,
you may of even though you needed a “treat” because your day was so bad and you
feel you need to reward yourself for getting through. Obviously this isn’t everyone’s
case, but I’m sure more than one of you will be reading this knowing you have
done this in the past. From a training aspect, do you remember the last time
you had a great day and was excited for something? If you trained that day I’m
sure you was jumping about your training session like a rabbit on after 5
espresso shots. I’ll leave you to contemplate the opposite emotions in them
situations and come up with a completely different conclusion to them
scenarios.
Now I’m not saying you should feeling awesome each and every
day because you should have control over your emotions, all I’m saying is that
IF you choose to observe your emotion, recognise it and decide whether you’re
going to let it influence you to the extent it truly could. Before I get into any
more detail, there is also a fine line when observing and controlling your
emotions, even though I believe we should control them, in some cases I also
believe they need to be left to their own devices, but let’s not get off the
point of controlling your emotions to improve your training and nutrition
lifestyle.
As I gain more experience with my clients at RikFit, I have
realised that the key to long term success and long term results is not through
the training, or the nutrition or the recovery, it’s more so through changing an
individual’s psychology. I know if I get someone thinking logically and in
control of their minds, they will natural have better control over their
choices, thoughts and actions. This is the foundation to changing habits and
behavioural patterns to sustain a long term healthy, strong and happy
lifestyle. You could ask the majority of top coaches in the industry and I’m
sure they would agree with me in the fact that a person’s psychology plays one
of, if not the biggest roles in achieving great results long term.
You may now be wondering “how do I control my emotions?”
well I don’t think there is just one technique but I know one that I find
extremely effective. I’ve mentioned it throughout this blog and it’s observing
your emotions as they happen. For example, just the other day I done something
quite embarrassing which made me feel well and truly like an idiot, I could
feel myself warm up, get butterfly’s, get clammy hands and become confused as a
result of my actions. However I chose to stop, take a second, slow things down
and observe what I was feeling. I went to my stomach and observed my butterfly’s,
I stood and actually just let them happen and truly tried to pin point what
this feeling was. I then moved to my hands and identified that they were
clammy, along with my skin and cheeks quite red and warm. I simply observed all
these feelings and truly felt them instead of trying to avoid or run away from
them. I then realised that these were just feelings, wasn’t actually there,
they could do anything, they were just sensations I could feel in my body that
were causing me to experience this emotion of embarrassment. I then decide to
try and create another emotion which I could link with embarrassment to change
how I felt, this was happiness, more specifically laughter. Instead of locking
myself away in one emotion, I decided to open myself up with laughter.
Within 30 minutes I changed how I felt completely about the
situation, I’m sat here now actually with a feeling of accomplishment as now see
the situation as a great lesson I’ve learned from, I now know how to correct my
actions to not make the same mistake again. Luckily I didn’t let my emotions
get the best of me and influence my actions, I could of easily for example
opted to “comfort eat” to release hormones that create a feeling of
satisfaction and joy, but then today felt terrible and dissatisfied. However I didn’t,
this was simply due to the fact I faced my emotions head on, observed them,
handled the situation and changed my view on things. I’m sure you can imagine
the downwards spiral some people can get into, if not already experienced yourself,
when you let your emotions control you and not the other way around.
To simplify things I’m going to bullet point
in order the actions I want you to take so you can personally gain control of
your emotional state to influence you thoughts and actions positively instead
of negatively:
- Find a space to yourself and slow things down.
- Take a moment to actually observe what you feel, search your body for feelings and sensations that are making you feel how you currently do.
- Actually feel them and become familiar with the feelings and sensations.
- Name and identify them, e.g. stomach butterflies, rapid heartbeat, warm skin etc… Give them any name you want as long as it’s familiar to you.
- Wait… wait until they pass, and believe me they will, you just have to give it time and patience.
- Now Identify why you feel like you do, go over in your mind what’s causing this emotional state or number of feelings.
- Decide a solution. You need to logically conclude how to correct your actions or experience. Your mind needs reason and rational to function, not confusion.
- Take control and change. You now know the feeling and sensations, you know how to correct things, you have given your mind rational reasons and solutions, there’s nothing else that can happen as they are just feelings.
Take comfort in the fact that emotions and feelings are
something that do not physically exist, they can’t actually hurt you, and all
they can do is influence you if you let them. So next time your experiencing an
emotion you don’t want to, or feel like you’re going to do something you shouldn’t
or don’t want to, stop and take the actions listed above to decide whether your
emotions are influencing you or not. If not, then go ahead, you will have most
likely came up with a rational reason you will be happy with otherwise you
would immediately identify in reality you actually don’t want to do what your
about to do or think what your about to think.
I’d just like to finish this blog post by saying I’m not a
psychologist or a well education individual on emotions, all this is just me
discussing the solutions I use to control my emotions and the ones of my clients.
These are all my beliefs, understandings and experiences, I just hope whilst
reading this you have had some type of realisation that your emotional state
does truly effect your food/drink choice, how often you eat, when you train,
how you train, if you push yourself etc… As usual I hope you all have a great
day and contact me if you would like to discuss this topic in more detail.
Control your mind in order to control your body!
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