Harnessing your Emotions for Greater Clarity

High performers have a tendency to see emotions as an afterthought. They either help you enjoy the successes you’ve made or they’re in the way of achieving greater things. They need to be controlled, managed, and dealt with. Good emotions are good. Bad emotions are bad. Less bad emotions are good. More good emotions are good.

However, there’s a more sophisticated way of understanding emotions that can lead to greater clarity. I’ve found time and time again that people who try to control their emotions exert a lot of psychological bandwidth on this.

The results are usually not good as actions are made on a subconscious level. When people come to me emotionally confused, I help them understand and process their emotions. Only after that process do they gain greater clarity. More clarity = More Action = More Power.

It is important to understand that emotions are not things that you can manipulate. They just exist. However, emotions are very powerful because of one undeniable fact: They are always TRUE.

Your mind can play tricks on you. You can have great lofty ideas of how the world works, false perceptions of how others think of you, or incorrect beliefs about yourself. The mind has a whole series of defense mechanisms to prevent you from learning the truth because the truth might be very hurtful to your ego. However, one cannot achieve great things without understanding reality. One cannot understand reality without having a true perception of the world.

Emotions have the ability to make you take an irrational course of action. Irrational decisions lead to bad results. Bad results by following your emotions lead you to ignore your emotions.

However, that is not the power of emotions. Emotions are not rational, but they are TRUE. The power of emotions is to point you to a greater truth.

If you are feeling sad because your dog died, it points to the truth that you love animals, that you love all living creatures, that you are a kindhearted person. Feeling sad is a necessary part of your experience because only kindhearted people who love animals would feel that way. And that’s okay. It’s part of the package.

If you’re feeling frustrated because of incompetence at work, it points to a truth that you value efficiency, consistency, and results. It points to a truth that you are a hard worker, and you hold others to a higher standard. That’s okay. Now it’s time to inspire others to view work the way you do, to model things appropriately.

All emotions, good and bad, points to a greater truth about yourself. A person that masters an understanding of their emotions has the greatest clarity on themselves. Clarity = Action = Power.