Many of us have had times when our emotions get the best of us. When no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to put them in check and maybe they even put you in check. This maybe has manifested by you going off on people, isolating because everyone seems to be a nuisance and in the most extreme cases you have people getting into physical fights just because at that point there is no way of expressing how they feel.
Someone once called me emotionally unstable in my younger days. I got so annoyed because surely “the nerve”. Looking back, I was very unstable, in fact, I think I was emotionally volatile and ready for a fight at the slightest provocation. Thank Jesus for character development.
I have come to appreciate that there is nothing wrong with being emotional, emotions are part and parcel of what makes us human. The trick is to manage emotions and not them managing you. How do you manage you ask?
Practice mindfulness
Learn to be alert in thought in order to identify an emotional baseline. Not every thought out to elicit an emotional reaction some are meant to be ignored. As D-mac tells me the devil capitalizes on playing overtime, don’t offer your mind as his playfield.
Identify your triggers
All of us have those things that set off our emotional alarms. it could be fear, doubt, uncertainty, or even overthinking or overanalyzing situations. Pick what is affecting you and then counterattack it.
Cut yourself some slack
So, you blew it (ulichoma mbaya) and you had a full-blown emotional episode. So what? It’s never that serious. We all make mistakes, apologize if you need to, pick your lesson and aim at being better tomorrow. Don’t make the mistake of defining yourself by the mistakes you make, learn to forgive yourself.
Finally always remember, we can’t control what happens to us but we can control how we react.
