journaling
Improving Your Emotional Responses To Change
Change is inevitable, yet most people don’t know how to manage, or accept it. Living to the fullest is about constantly adapting to different stimuli and changing situations, as we go about our daily lives.
The change I am referring to is not about major socio-economic changes or political events in the world. I’m talking about personal growth, life transitions, and emotional and psychological challenges.
Knowing that personal changes and challenges are inevitable in our lives, how does one handle it in a more positive manner? First and foremost, you have to have the desire and will to succeed in making a change for the better. It must come from within, or it will feel as if it is being forced upon you.
Let’s look, for example, into emotional changes as a result of circumstances or events we may be able to control, or not. Emotional expression is innate in all of us. We can however choose how, and when, to express our emotions, and to what degree. For some of us this is easier said than to done, but never impossible. We can choose to be happy, sad, or even mad. How we choose to react in any given situation is the one thing in life we always can control.
To change a negative emotional response, we have to first understand what brings on that emotion and how the trigger affects us in a given situation. We must acknowledge the stimulus, as well as the emotion I tends to trigger. Finally we must choose how to address it, so it no longer is a negative response.