Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity and Better Manage Your Feelings (Mastery Series Book 1)

by Thibaut Meurisse

Feelings manifest as physical sensations in your body, not as an idea in your mind.

Your emotions can make your life miserable or truly magical.

Your emotions color all your experiences. When you feel good, everything seems, feels, or tastes better. You also think better thoughts. Your energy levels are higher and possibilities

seem limitless. Conversely, when you feel depressed, everything seems dull. You have little energy and you become unmotivated. You feel stuck in a place (mentally and physically) y...

Fear of rejection is one example of a bias toward negativity.

your brain remains programmed to perceive rejection as a threat to your survival.

it is also your responsibility to separate real threats from imaginary ones. If you don’t, you’ll experience unnecessary pain and worry that will negatively impact the quality of your life.

if you want to be happy, you must actively take control of your emotions rather than hoping you’ll be happy because it’s your natural state.

We’ve become addicted to dopamine mainly because of marketers who have found effective ways to exploit our brains.

Once the initial excitement wears off, you’ll move on to crave the next exciting thing. This phenomenon is known as ‘hedonic adaptation.’

What it means is that, in the long run, external events have minimal impact on your level of happiness.

The influence of external factors is probably way less than you thought. The bottom line is this: Your attitude towards life influences your happiness, not what happens to you.

your survival mechanism negatively impacts your emotions and prevents you from experiencing more joy and happiness in your life.

The ego refers to the self-identity you’ve constructed throughout your life. How was this identity created? Put simply, the ego was created through your thoughts and, as a mind-created identity, has no concrete reality.

Events that happen to you bear no meaning in themselves. You give them meaning only through your interpretation of those events. Additionally, you accept things about yourself because people told you to do so. What’s more, you identify with your name, your age, your religion, your political belief, or your occupation in a similar way.

attachment creates beliefs, and these beliefs lead you to experience certain emotions.

highly self-conscious people can see through their ego. They understand how belief works and how excessive attachment to a set of beliefs can create suffering in their life. In effect, these individuals become the master of their mind and are at peace with themselves.

Note that the ego is neither good nor bad; it’s just a result of a lack of self-awareness. It fades away as you become aware of it since ego and awareness cannot coexist.

Your ego is a selfish entity, only concerned about its survival.

It wants you to do, acquire and achieve great things so you can become a ‘somebody.’

Marketers correctly understand people’s need to identify with things. They know people don’t just buy a product, they also purchase the emotions or story attached to the product. Often, you acquire certain clothes or a particular car because you want to tell a story about yourself. For instance, you may want to enhance your status, look cool or express your unique personality, and choose the products most closely associated with these ideals.

you can observe your body without ‘identifying with’ it.

The ego also derives its sense of identity from your relationships with others.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people.

Once you realize you don’t actually need anyone, you can start enjoying people’s company. You can see them as they really are rather than trying to get something from them.

The ego tends to equate ‘having’ with ‘being,’ which is why the ego likes to identify with objects. The ego lives through comparison. Your ego likes to compare itself with other egos. The ego is never satisfied. Your ego always wants more. More fame, more stuff, more recognition, and so on. The ego’s sense of self-worth often depends on the worth you have in the eyes of others. Your ego needs the approval of other people to feel valued.

Enhancing its value through people. If you have smart/famous friends, your ego will associate with them to strengthen its identity. This is why some people love to tell others how smart, rich or famous their friends are. Gossiping. People gossip because it makes them feel different and superior in some way. This is why some people like to put other people down and talk behind their back; it makes them—and everybody else in their gossiping group—feel superior. Manifesting an inferiority complex. This hides a desire to be better than others. Yes, even in this case, people want to feel superior. Exhibiting a superiority complex. This hides the fear of not being good enough. Looking for fame. This offers the illusion of superiority, which is why people often dream of becoming famous. Being right. The ego loves to be correct. It’s an excellent way for it to affirm its existence. Have you noticed that everybody, from Adolf Hitler to Nelson Mandela, believe they’re doing the right thing? Most people think they are correct. But can everybody be right? Complaining. When people complain, by definition they believe they are right and others are wrong. It works with objects as well. Have you ever bumped into a table and complained or even insulted it? I have, and the darned table was wrong to be in my way, wasn’t it? Seeking attention. The ego likes to stand out. It loves recognition, praise or admiration. To seek attention, people may also commit crimes, wear eccentric clothes, or ha...

the root of many of the negative emotions you experience in your life. For instance: When life doesn’t unfold according to your personal story you get upset, or When someone challenges one of your beliefs you become defensive. In short, most of your emotions are based on your personal story and the way you perceive the world.

The first thing to understand is that emotions come and go.

You then risk blaming yourself when you ‘fail’ to be happy, or even worse, beat yourself up for it. To start taking control of your emotions you must accept they are transient. You must learn to let them pass without feeling the need to identify strongly with them. You must allow yourself to feel sad without adding commentaries such as, “I shouldn’t be sad,” or “What’s wrong with me?” Instead, you must allow reality to just be.

You’ll doubt yourself and doubt your ability to be the person you want to be. But that’s okay because emotions come, but, more importantly, they go.

Remember this: the way you interpret emotions, as well as the blame game you engage in, creates suffering, not the emotions themselves.

Emotions work the same way. They signal you to do something about your current situation. Perhaps, you need to let go of some people, quit your job, or remove a disempowering story that creates suffering in your life.

Your emotions come and they go. Your depression will go, your sadness will vanish and your anger will fade away.

if you experience the same emotions repeatedly, it probably means you hold disempowering beliefs and need to change something in your life.

Negative emotions act as a filter that taints the quality of your experiences. During a negative episode, every experience is perceived through this filter. While the world outside may remain the same, you will experience it in a completely different way based on how you feel.

You only see the negative side of things, feeling trapped and powerless.

external factors might not be—and often aren’t—the direct cause of a sudden change in your emotional state.

During this period of emotional stress, your environment doesn’t change at all. The only thing that changes is your internal dialogue.

An emotion usually represents an amplified energized thought pattern, and because of its often-overpowering energetic charges, it is not easy initially to stay present enough to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds—unless there is enough presence in you. ECKHART TOLLE, THE POWER OF NOW.

The more these emotions fit your personal story, the stronger the pull becomes.

Because you’ve experienced these emotions so many times before, they have become an automatic response.

Your emotions act like magnets. They attract thoughts on the same ‘wave.’ That’s why, when you’re in a negative state, you easily attract other negative thoughts, and by latching onto these thoughts you make the situation worse.

no matter how great your life is, if you spend most of your time focusing on your problems, you’ll become depressed. Thus, to reduce negative emotions, you must learn to compartmentalize your issues. Don’t let your mind over-dramatize things by clustering unrelated matters.

Instead, remember that negative emotions exist only in your mind. Taken separately, most of your issues aren’t such a big deal, and no rule that says you have to solve them all at once.

Start noticing how you feel. Record your negative emotions. Look at what triggers them. The more you do this, the more you will uncover specific patterns. For example, let’s say you felt sad for a couple of days, ask yourself the following questions: What triggered my emotions? What fueled them over the two days? What story was I te...

Whenever you experience negative emotions, watch for emotions that give you more energy. So-called negative emotions like anger can help you overcome even more disempowering emotions, like hopelessness. Only you know how you feel. Therefore, if anger feels better, accept it.

Negative emotions are not the problem, the mental suffering you create out of these emotions is.

having the same repeated thoughts, running in circles to fight a problem that exists only in their mind.

What you don’t focus on doesn’t exist: A problem only exists when you give it your attention. From your mind’s perspective, what you don’t give any thought to doesn’t exist.