First of all, we must understand what are negative emotions. What is the meaning of negative emotion? As human beings we are bound to feel happy or sad with situations or while interacting with people. Impact of such situation or such interaction is emotion. These emotions can be positive or negative. Positive emotions will make us feel happy. Negative emotions on the other side make us feel sad and unhappy. Both these categories of emotions are a part of human life. Both have a role to play. When these are left uncontrolled both these emotions do not help humans. In fact, they tend to add problems in the life which have to be dealt with.
So what should we do?
We must be self-aware and monitor our emotions at all time. What are the examples of negative emotions. Negative emotions are of five types. These are: sadness, anxiety, anger, guilt and shame or embarrassment. Let us examine each of these five types of negative emotions.
Sadness:
This is an emotion which hardly has any positive effect on life. In fact it saps away the time that we lose because of this negative emotion. Except for the fact that we have possibility to contemplate and experience nostalgia, there is no other gain from the emotion of sadness. It reduces energy. It reduces your desire to follow goals. You start feeling that there is no significance of life. If the sadness continues you lose your interest in life.
How to come out of this negative emotion?
The best way is to start doing something interesting. For example if you are fond of painting, start a new picture. If you are fond of singing, start practicing a new song. If you are a health freak, it is time that you start doing some exercise. In short don’t sit and spend away your valuable time in remaining sad.
Anxiety:
Next on the list is Anxiety. Some people may say that anxiety helps you to analyse the situation. It prepares you to meet the challenge ahead. It forces you to do all the preparation that you need to face new situation or a challenge. This is an example of self satisfying assumption. Anxiety will have a negative effect on your brain. Anxiety affects your ability to decide. And it should not be mistaken for need to prepare for meeting any situation. That does not require anxiety. It requires only your decisive thinking and discipline. Anxiety will only causes stress which will affect your productivity. Whenever you are anxious for a particular challenge which has cropped up in your life the best way is to sit down and write what are the possibilities. You have always to make a choice. If you don’t decide even that will add to your anxiety.
Anger:
The third type of negative emotion is Anger. Anger is the negative emotion which can be used to your advantage. But it will happen only if you are keen to use it. Keen to use Anger to motivate you to do something which you have been postponing. Anger also needs to be in control. When in control you can be sure that it will give you greater energy to face the situation which is difficult and which requires all concentrated effort. However if you think that Anger by itself will help you, if you think that it will solve your problem by itself, you are sadly mistaken. Unbridled anger can cause havoc. It will increase your stress and generate further negative emotions like vengeance or enmity and the like. So, you should be cautious that anger should not be allowed to rule over you. You should only think of using the situation or using this powerful emotion for furthering your course. It definitely enhances your motivation. It definitely increases your willpower to resolve the problem. But as I said earlier you must be in control of your anger. You should not allow anger to have control on you.
Guilt:
Fourth type of negative emotion is guilt. It is generated by your inner self. It happens when you feel that you have done something which you ought not to have done. It is indicative of lack of discipline on your part. It is indicative that you are tempted by small things. It is indicative that you have lesser control on yourself. It is indicative of the weakness of one’s character. How can we use this emotion to our advantage? We should remain self-aware and we should think before doing anything. Over the period you have realized that certain things which you did in the past, left the curse the feeling of guilt. It means that if you are shirking away from your responsibilities, you will have the feeling of guilt. So if you question yourself that you must avoid the negative feeling of guilt which will cause a negative effect on my health, on your thinking, on you brain, you may help yourself to avoid such inaction or even action which you feel will cost you dearly.
Shame or Embarrassment:
Last but not the least we should talk about shame or embarrassment. This negative feeling or emotion demolish our self-confidence. It can reduce our self esteem. This may not be entirely due to your character blemishes. It may be due to environment. Oftentimes there are some incidents where your peers or colleagues or others deliberately try to embarrass you. So what should you do? Whenever you are likely to face such a situation you have to prepare yourself. Maybe you remind one previous occasion when some people misbehaved with you. At that time recall what was your conduct. What was your reaction? How did you deal with the situation? Recall, if you had not handled it properly and that became the cause of embarrassment. You can plan out a different response. In any case if you want to avoid embarrassment which is affecting your personality, you have to do some kind of preparation. In life, if you want to be successful, you have to always prepare for challenging situations. Never be shy of preparation. Never think that you can handle anything and everything because of your ego. Ego has absolutely no place in life except when you mean self-confidence when you’re talking about ego
It is necessary to identify the negativity in your attitude. What is negative attitude? Negative attitude is when you start focusing on the problems that you might face during your efforts to achieve your goals. It is the lack of hope that things will happen to help you out in your mission. It is the feeling that people will not help you because on earlier occasions you met with rejections. Negative attitude is the lack of your conviction that you can overcome the hurdles that you might face during your journey. In a sense, negative attitude is also a lack of belief in you. Some more symptoms of negative attitude are enumerated below:
1. Laziness: When you think you don’t have the energy to get up and do the work. Sometimes you don’t even think and realize that laziness is simply whiling away the time. It is not even procrastination which will be described separately.
2. Low self esteem: It is an extremely harmful attribute in your personality. You start thinking that you are good for nothing. You accept the situations in which you are because your self esteem is so low that you think you can do nothing better.
3. Low productivity: Work has a strange tendency of expanding as per the time available. Even worse is when no time is allotted for the completion of a task. This gives you a feeling of solving certain important problems whereas in fact you are just being satisfied in remaining busy. This approach will never allow you to increase your productivity. For doing more in a given time, you have to stretch yourself. Therefore is it necessary that you allot specific time duration for a task. In the beginning, the allocation may seem difficult, but once you form a habit it will become much easier. Difficult or easy, it is necessary.
4. Lack of initiative: For any significant progress, initiative is necessary. What is initiative? Initiative is your first step for going ahead with a task. When it is something new, you have to creatively think and courageously take the first step, even if there is some risk. No risk is the biggest risk in life. Any significant initiative cannot be taken to move forward without accepting this reality. So don’t be afraid to take initiative.
5. Not listening to understand: In the course of conversations, sometimes we tend to focus so much on what we have to say, that we stop listening to the other person. This is particularly so when the speaker has said something for which we have a ready argument to negate what he has said. Unfortunately, such a habit does not allow us to listen and assimilate what the speaker says after that. Evidently it leads to miscommunication and problems. The solution is first understand and then be understood.
6. Faking: We feel envious of some people who are more successful in the material sense than we think that they deserve. Such a feeling leads us to a myth that it is their style which makes them successful and we try to imitate their conduct. This is a extremely bad situation. We lose belief in ourselves, and how can we expect that others will believe us.
7. Not trying to express: When we have certain ideas, but either we do not want to express, or we are afraid to express, is also indicative of our negative attitude. It is necessary to develop an ability to express without hesitation. The fear of rejection which takes away your ability to act is one of the serious handicaps.
8. Not learning lessons from mistakes: There is no one who does not commit mistakes. Whenever we undertake something new, mistakes may happen. This is normal. However, repeating the same mistake again and again, is neither normal, nor should be acceptable. Thus we must learn lessons from our past mistakes and use these lessons to direct our future efforts.
9. Ego: Ego happens to be another aspect of personality which does not allow us to grow. Ego comes in the way of our approaching people to help us. It makes us believe that it is below our dignity to seek help. A success Guru had said that there are eleven principles of achieving success. And what are these eleven principles? These are, ask, ask, ask….(eleven times).
10. Jealousy: Jealousy is a negative emotion which keeps sapping our creative energies. We gain nothing in the process. It makes us feel as victims of fate or poor destiny. Jealousy may even take away our sound sleep. The worst part is that sometimes it cannot be contained, it goes on swelling. Jealousy must be thwarted out of the personality.
11. Avoiding hard work: There is only one way to success, and that is the hard way. If we habitually seek short cuts it will be very difficult for us to work hard. What is working hard? When you are fully devoted to completing the job and you forget even your surroundings, you continue to work even when you are tired because you want to complete. That aspect of work may be termed as hard work. Initially it may be very difficult, but then one can form a habit. For any significant progress, hard work is necessary.
Ego is often confused with
self respect or confidence. In fact it shouldn’t be. Ego is the worst enemy of
the individual’s success. There are many ways in which ego creates handicaps. I
am listing below eight of these, the prominent ones.
1. Inability to think
objectively.
False ego does not allow you to think objectively. In the world today interaction with others at every stage is critical. In case you are not able to think objectively, invariably, you end up in creating unnecessary differences. When the people argue vehemently and take it personally, ego is the hidden culprit. People are naturally biased, says leadership consultant Brandon Smith, whose professional moniker, “The Workplace Therapist,” reflects his expertise in clinical counseling.
2. Ego doesn’t
allow you to reach out to people for help.
A person suffering from ego often hesitates to
reach out to people. Our progress depends on how well others support us. Any
handicap or inability to collaborate with others and seek their help becomes an
obstacle. The fact that you might
not be aware of is that hesitation happens when an unconscious conflict
develops!! This means that hesitation is caused by the development of two
opposite goals even if one of them was not apparent to you.
Sometimes an unconscious goal can take
control over your decisions even if you were not aware of it.
3. You become judgemental and
away people around.
A person who is dominated by his/her ego considers ‘own’ opinions as the best. It leads to a tendency of passing judgments even on subjects unknown. The worst comes when you passed judgments on others, their personality, appearance or conduct etc. judgmental has to do with being overly critical in an unhelpful way, and it is this separate meaning that allows us to get to the heart of the issue. It is when we make judgments in ways that have harmful or negative consequences that we are being judgmental in ways that are best to avoid.
4. Ego
doesn’t allow you to listen to people to understand you listen to them only to
reply.
Ego does not allow the person
to be a good listener. They start speaking more to impose their presence. As
they are judgmental, they are no longer to open others’ say. In, turn it makes
them confined to themselves. If you don’t listen to others, it’s not possible
to understand them. In such a situation it’s difficult to hold a constructive
dialogue.
5. Ego doesn’t allow you to gel with the group. Ego sets you to think ‘I don’t care’. You tend to strongly hold on to your own perception about you. This does not enable you to gel well with others. People avoid your company and you become secluded. A secluded person develops a negative attitude.
6. You start
using arrogant language.
Language is the only means of
our communication with others, of sharing our thoughts, of learning from
others’ experiences. But the egoist in his/her effort to dominate forgets the
importance of using appropriate language. Others feel upset though, at times,
they may not show it. But they brew ill feelings in their mind.
7. Ego doesn’t permit you
to develop good relation with others.
The business today requires
not only a good proposal but also ability to build relations. In fact, many
companies including banks employ relationship managers. Their job is not sales
but just to introduce the organization to the prospective clients. Ego will
always come in as a big obstacle in building relations. This is true not only
in business but also in social and family environment. Relationships give us several other
benefits: our work is more enjoyable when we have good relationships with those
around us. Also, people are more likely to go along with changes that we want
to implement, and we’re more innovative and creative.
8. You are unable to negotiate
under a cordial atmosphere.
A good negotiator prepares him/her well before going to negotiating table. They visualize all possibilities. On one side they prepare their arguments on the other they have to consider the possible arguments of the opposite party. Even if the person prepares very well so far as strategy is concern, ego will not allow having a smooth sailing during negotiations. There can be no successful negotiation in such a case.
Five types of Negative Emotions which may wreck your Life
First of all, we must understand what are negative emotions. What is the meaning of negative emotion? As human beings we are bound to feel happy or sad with situations or while interacting with people. Impact of such situation or such interaction is emotion. These emotions can be positive or negative. Positive emotions will make us feel happy. Negative emotions on the other side make us feel sad and unhappy. Both these categories of emotions are a part of human life. Both have a role to play. When these are left uncontrolled both these emotions do not help humans. In fact, they tend to add problems in the life which have to be dealt with.
So what should we do?
We must be self-aware and monitor our emotions at all time. What are the examples of negative emotions. Negative emotions are of five types. These are: sadness, anxiety, anger, guilt and shame or embarrassment. Let us examine each of these five types of negative emotions.
Sadness:
This is an emotion which hardly has any positive effect on life. In fact it saps away the time that we lose because of this negative emotion. Except for the fact that we have possibility to contemplate and experience nostalgia, there is no other gain from the emotion of sadness. It reduces energy. It reduces your desire to follow goals. You start feeling that there is no significance of life. If the sadness continues you lose your interest in life.
How to come out of this negative emotion?
The best way is to start doing something interesting. For example if you are fond of painting, start a new picture. If you are fond of singing, start practicing a new song. If you are a health freak, it is time that you start doing some exercise. In short don’t sit and spend away your valuable time in remaining sad.
Anxiety:
Next on the list is Anxiety. Some people may say that anxiety helps you to analyse the situation. It prepares you to meet the challenge ahead. It forces you to do all the preparation that you need to face new situation or a challenge. This is an example of self satisfying assumption. Anxiety will have a negative effect on your brain. Anxiety affects your ability to decide. And it should not be mistaken for need to prepare for meeting any situation. That does not require anxiety. It requires only your decisive thinking and discipline. Anxiety will only causes stress which will affect your productivity. Whenever you are anxious for a particular challenge which has cropped up in your life the best way is to sit down and write what are the possibilities. You have always to make a choice. If you don’t decide even that will add to your anxiety.
Anger:
The third type of negative emotion is Anger. Anger is the negative emotion which can be used to your advantage. But it will happen only if you are keen to use it. Keen to use Anger to motivate you to do something which you have been postponing. Anger also needs to be in control. When in control you can be sure that it will give you greater energy to face the situation which is difficult and which requires all concentrated effort. However if you think that Anger by itself will help you, if you think that it will solve your problem by itself, you are sadly mistaken. Unbridled anger can cause havoc. It will increase your stress and generate further negative emotions like vengeance or enmity and the like. So, you should be cautious that anger should not be allowed to rule over you. You should only think of using the situation or using this powerful emotion for furthering your course. It definitely enhances your motivation. It definitely increases your willpower to resolve the problem. But as I said earlier you must be in control of your anger. You should not allow anger to have control on you.
Guilt:
Fourth type of negative emotion is guilt. It is generated by your inner self. It happens when you feel that you have done something which you ought not to have done. It is indicative of lack of discipline on your part. It is indicative that you are tempted by small things. It is indicative that you have lesser control on yourself. It is indicative of the weakness of one’s character. How can we use this emotion to our advantage? We should remain self-aware and we should think before doing anything. Over the period you have realized that certain things which you did in the past, left the curse the feeling of guilt. It means that if you are shirking away from your responsibilities, you will have the feeling of guilt. So if you question yourself that you must avoid the negative feeling of guilt which will cause a negative effect on my health, on your thinking, on you brain, you may help yourself to avoid such inaction or even action which you feel will cost you dearly.
Shame or Embarrassment:
Last but not the least we should talk about shame or embarrassment. This negative feeling or emotion demolish our self-confidence. It can reduce our self esteem. This may not be entirely due to your character blemishes. It may be due to environment. Oftentimes there are some incidents where your peers or colleagues or others deliberately try to embarrass you. So what should you do? Whenever you are likely to face such a situation you have to prepare yourself. Maybe you remind one previous occasion when some people misbehaved with you. At that time recall what was your conduct. What was your reaction? How did you deal with the situation? Recall, if you had not handled it properly and that became the cause of embarrassment. You can plan out a different response. In any case if you want to avoid embarrassment which is affecting your personality, you have to do some kind of preparation. In life, if you want to be successful, you have to always prepare for challenging situations. Never be shy of preparation. Never think that you can handle anything and everything because of your ego. Ego has absolutely no place in life except when you mean self-confidence when you’re talking about ego
It is necessary to identify the negativity in your attitude. What is negative attitude? Negative attitude is when you start focusing on the problems that you might face during your efforts to achieve your goals. It is the lack of hope that things will happen to help you out in your mission. It is the feeling that people will not help you because on earlier occasions you met with rejections. Negative attitude is the lack of your conviction that you can overcome the hurdles that you might face during your journey. In a sense, negative attitude is also a lack of belief in you. Some more symptoms of negative attitude are enumerated below:
Laziness: When you think you don’t have the energy to get up and do the work. Sometimes you don’t even think and realize that laziness is simply whiling away the time. It is not even procrastination which will be described separately.
Low self esteem: It is an extremely harmful attribute in your personality. You start thinking that you are good for nothing. You accept the situations in which you are because your self esteem is so low that you think you can do nothing better.
Low productivity: Work has a strange tendency of expanding as per the time available. Even worse is when no time is allotted for the completion of a task. This gives you a feeling of solving certain important problems whereas in fact you are just being satisfied in remaining busy. This approach will never allow you to increase your productivity. For doing more in a given time, you have to stretch yourself. Therefore is it necessary that you allot specific time duration for a task. In the beginning, the allocation may seem difficult, but once you form a habit it will become much easier. Difficult or easy, it is necessary.
Lack of initiative: For any significant progress, initiative is necessary. What is initiative? Initiative is your first step for going ahead with a task. When it is something new, you have to creatively think and courageously take the first step, even if there is some risk. No risk is the biggest risk in life. Any significant initiative cannot be taken to move forward without accepting this reality. So don’t be afraid to take initiative.
Not listening to understand: In the course of conversations, sometimes we tend to focus so much on what we have to say, that we stop listening to the other person. This is particularly so when the speaker has said something for which we have a ready argument to negate what he has said. Unfortunately, such a habit does not allow us to listen and assimilate what the speaker says after that. Evidently it leads to miscommunication and problems. The solution is first understand and then be understood.
Faking: We feel envious of some people who are more successful in the material sense than we think that they deserve. Such a feeling leads us to a myth that it is their style which makes them successful and we try to imitate their conduct. This is a extremely bad situation. We lose belief in ourselves, and how can we expect that others will believe us.
Not trying to express: When we have certain ideas, but either we do not want to express, or we are afraid to express, is also indicative of our negative attitude. It is necessary to develop an ability to express without hesitation. The fear of rejection which takes away your ability to act is one of the serious handicaps.
Not learning lessons from mistakes: There is no one who does not commit mistakes. Whenever we undertake something new, mistakes may happen. This is normal. However, repeating the same mistake again and again, is neither normal, nor should be acceptable. Thus we must learn lessons from our past mistakes and use these lessons to direct our future efforts.
Ego: Ego happens to be another aspect of personality which does not allow us to grow. Ego comes in the way of our approaching people to help us. It makes us believe that it is below our dignity to seek help. A success Guru had said that there are eleven principles of achieving success. And what are these eleven principles? These are, ask, ask, ask….(eleven times).
Jealousy: Jealousy is a negative emotion which keeps sapping our creative energies. We gain nothing in the process. It makes us feel as victims of fate or poor destiny. Jealousy may even take away our sound sleep. The worst part is that sometimes it cannot be contained, it goes on swelling. Jealousy must be thwarted out of the personality.
Avoiding hard work: There is only one way to success, and that is the hard way. If we habitually seek short cuts it will be very difficult for us to work hard. What is working hard? When you are fully devoted to completing the job and you forget even your surroundings, you continue to work even when you are tired because you want to complete. That aspect of work may be termed as hard work. Initially it may be very difficult, but then one can form a habit. For any significant progress, hard work is necessary.
Ego is often confused with self respect or confidence. In fact it shouldn’t be. Ego is the worst enemy of the individual’s success. There are many ways in which ego creates handicaps. I am listing below eight of these, the prominent ones. 1. Thinking objectively: False ego does not allow you to think objectively. In the world today interaction with others at every stage is critical. In case you are not able to think objectively, invariably, you end up in creating unnecessary differences. When the people argue vehemently and take it personally, ego is the hidden culprit. 2. Causes hesitation: A person suffering from ego often hesitates to reach out to people. Our progress depends on how well others support us. Any handicap or inability to collaborate with others and seek their help becomes an obstacle. 3. Makes you judgmental: A person who is dominated by his/her ego considers ‘own’ opinions as the best. It leads to a tendency of passing judgments even on subjects unknown. The worst comes when you passed judgments on others, their personality, appearance or conduct etc. 4. Impairs listening skills: Ego does not allow the person to be a good listener. They start speaking more to impose their presence. As they are judgmental, they are no longer to open others’ say. In, turn it makes them confined to themselves. If you don’t listen to others, it’s not possible to understand them. In such a situation it’s difficult to hold a constructive dialogue. 5. People’s perception about you: Ego sets you to think ‘I don’t care’. You tend to strongly hold on to your own perception about you. This does not enable you to gel well with others. People avoid your company and you become secluded. A secluded person develops a negative attitude. 6. Inappropriate language: language is the only means of our communication with others, of sharing our thoughts, of learning from others’ experiences. But the egoist in his/her effort to dominate forgets the importance of using appropriate language. Others feel upset though, at times, they may not show it. But they brew ill feelings in their mind. 7. Building relationship: The business today requires not only a good proposal but also ability to build relations. In fact, many companies including banks employ relationship managers. Their job is not sales but just to introduce the organization to the prospective clients. Ego will always come in as a big obstacle in building relations. This is true not only in business but also in social and family environment. 8. Affects negotiating skills: A good negotiator prepares him/her well before going to negotiating table. They visualize all possibilities. On one side they prepare their arguments on the other they have to consider the possible arguments of the opposite party. Even if the person prepares very well so far as strategy is concern, ego will not allow having a smooth sailing during negotiations. There can be no successful negotiation in such a case.
The Dictionary meaning of Poise is composure or self-possession or equilibrium.
Thus a poised person is self-assured and carries himself/herself gracefully and with dignity.
For human beings the difficulty arises due to emotions. If anything is not happening as per the expectation, the individual is likely to react in a way which is often irrational. Poise is difficult to maintain. However, the benefits are immense. A poised person is able to deal with all kinds of people calmly and elegantly.
How to maintain poise? Psychologists after research have come to certain conclusions, which I would like to reproduce below:
The biggest enemy of poise is anger. Everyone would agree that anger is not beneficial to the individual under any circumstances. A person gets angry due to uncomfortable situations due to uncomfortable situations or due to his/her own inadequacies to meet the situations. One may also get angry if someone insults or speaks in a manner which is unworthy. But with practice one can meet all challenges. They can remain cool in all circumstances but this will happen with consistent efforts and self awareness.
You should laugh with others even if joke is on you. Any sarcastic remarks can easily be laugh away. Apply mind to come out with the solution. This will happen if you take things in their straight.
Life is mixture of highs and lows. Good things are followed by challenges just like night falls after day the life does not offer a regular cycle like night and day. But both difficulties and happy moments are a part of everybody’s’ life. We need to be appreciated. Keep your spirit up even when things go wrong.
Ego is another enemy of poise. Unfortunately this malady is wide spread. It is found in most well-to-do people. Realizing that ego does not serve any purpose we should throw it out from our life.
Thanks for reading.
