It seems to me that sometimes emotions get a bad rap, being labelled good or bad, being sought after or avoided. I’ve come to believe they are an excellent guidance system, not a design flaw.

Often behaviours and thoughts are tied to certain emotions and I would like to challenge that notion. The emotion is the feeling that shows up, thoughts are then attached to it which leads to the behaviour, the choices made based on those feelings and thoughts. Linking specific behaviours to an emotion can limit how effectively they can work for us.

I stumbled upon this insight recently when I was feeling envy. I got curious. I asked myself questions. I discovered a desire. How delicious.

Five emotions that we often try to avoid or label as bad are jealousy, envy, anger, frustration, anxiety. Let’s get curious about the assumptions we have about them.

Jealousy we often associate with the behaviours of controlling, confronting and being possessive; envy with revenge or surliness; anger with a bad temper and verbal or physical abuse; frustration with giving up or lashing out at others;  anxiety or worry with being obsessive or ineffective, or other negative behaviours.

Sometimes when we feel these emotions we get stuck in the blame game. We feel jealous and we blame the person we feel jealous over for being untrue or unfaithful or the “other person” for trying to take away someone we love; envy conjures up thoughts of the person who has something we want as having cheated to achieve it or assuming they must have done something unfair to obtain it or they are lucky and we aren’t or they must be better than me; anger lays blame on someone else, it is their fault this is happening; frustration and anxiety evoke thoughts of I am not good enough or someone is trying to undermine my  efforts. These thoughts don’t usually lead to powerful choices.

What if we saw emotions as an early warning system instead, an opportunity to question what is going on rather than collapsing together the emotion with certain behaviours. Try allowing your guidance system to work for you and assist you in getting to know yourself better. How about getting curious when you feel these emotions? What might you discover?

Rather than attaching past thoughts to these emotions when they show up, try some of the following:

Jealousy – wow, I guess I really love this person, have I been letting them know how much I love them lately? Gee, the person I love and this other person seem to have a real connection, what can I do to create that kind of connection with them? That really opened up my heart.

Envy – oh boy, I just realized how much I really want what that person has, what can I do to have it as well? Now I have an opportunity to find out how they achieved it and to take action to bring it into my life. How great is that.

Anger – that was powerful, so clearly I feel very strongly about what happened, why is that? what loving and compassionate action can I take in response to that? How can I take better care of myself?

Frustration – arg, darn, ok take a breath, what can I do to learn how to do this better or to create an environment that makes this easier or maybe I would rather be doing something else and now with this awareness, I can create that change. Thanks for the insight, guidance system.

Anxiety and worry – ok, I am now aware that I am concerned that things may not turn out the way I want them to, is there anything I can do to improve the outcome? or is this out of my control?  Perhaps I should just step back and see what happens, then deal with the consequences in the best way possible, and hey sometimes letting go of control lets something even better show up. I can just lighten up.

Same emotions, alternate thoughts, leading to more empowered behaviours. This curiosity can be applied to all of the emotions we feel.

Have fun tinkering with your emotional guidance system and the insights it may reveal.