I have written extensively about emotions.
I have discussed the emotions of mad, sad, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, jealousy and disgust as:
- primitive threat detectors
- a source of information about the situation in which you find yourself
- a source of information about how others view you
- and so forth
I have noted that what Fredrickson calls the “positive” emotions such as happiness communicate the message that the situation in which you find yourself is a pleasurable one and motivate you to continue to engage in what you are doing.
Recently, I thought about emotions in the context of being inspirational and connecting emotions with being inspired was entirely new to me.
Dictionary.com defines inspired as: to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence.
I am well aware of great speakers who excited their audiences and inspired them to take action to fight an enemy, pursue a worthy cause, make some important personal changes, and so forth.
However, to approach an emotion such as anger, anxiety, sadness and even guilt through the lens of being inspired by the emotion while incorporating the idea of being motivated, as by a great speech or piece of literature, was different.
Using your own emotions as a source of inspiration gives you an enormous source of both personal insight, energy and self-control.
Let me explain.
When you strategically deploy your emotions as tools, you experience the emotion and validate it as evidence of how you initially perceive the situation in which you find yourself.
Once you have accepted your initial emotion, you go into management mode which involves controlling the level of your emotion so that you don’t overreact. Management also involves creating psychological safety (if needed) by taking a breath and physical safety (if needed) by taking a step back from the situation.
Emotional mastery suggests that you assess your situation to determine whether your initial perception is accurate or if, for some reason, you have misunderstood what took place.
Based on this assessment, you can choose how you want to respond to the situation.
If your initial perception was accurate, you can use the energy of the emotion to effectively deal with what is going on. This is using your emotion as a motivator and is what emotions have done for humans since we lived in caves.
If your initial perception was inaccurate, you can choose to change your perception which will then elicit a different emotion and plan of action.
This is a one-and-done approach. You deal with the situation and move on.
It is also where most of the self-help literature (including mine) end.
To be inspired by the emotion:
- is a step beyond strategic mastery and
- occurs after you have used the emotion to help you deal with a specific situation.
To be inspired by an emotion involves:
- viewing that feeling as having a degree of importance and influence beyond just being a tool or a source of information leading you to take a particular action.
- being curious about what that emotion tells you about you and how you interact with your environment
- letting that feeling motivate or inspire you to learn about yourself, what it was about that situation and any experiences you brought to the situation that elicited the specific feeling you experienced, what can you learn which might be beneficial the next time you experience this feeling and so forth.
Does this mean you have to deep dive into you and do a self-analysis? Well, if you can, great. Or, if you decide to get into therapy to get some of these answers, again, great.
But, you can start the process of self-understanding (not analysis) by some simple questions such as:
- What about that situation pushed my (anger, envy, jealousy, guilt, etc) button?
- What was I so sensitive to in that situation?
- Is this how I typically react to these situations?
- Was this the most adaptive way to view this situation or could I have seen it in a different light?
Being inspired by your emotions is difficult but it is doable. It just isn’t for everybody.