4 Questions that Will Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
By: Nick Wignall
Tags: Happiness, Inspiration, Psychology, Life Lessons, Self Improvement

2. What’s my emotional dashboard telling me?

Many people don’t understand their emotions very well because their model for emotions — their beliefs about what emotions are and how they work — is faulty.

In particular, there’s one big mistake most of us make when it comes to our moods and emotions: We treat painful emotions like diseases, things to be fixed or eradicated. But just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad.

Luckily, there’s a simple visual image that can help undo this mistaken view of emotion:

Learn to see your emotions like lights on your car’s dashboard.

We all know that feeling of anxiety when the low fuel light comes on while we’re driving. Of course, that sudden burst of fear doesn’t feel good, but it is useful.

Imagine what would happen if, the next time your low-fuel light went off and made you feel uncomfortable, you stuck a piece of tape over it?

Well, you’d never feel that uncomfortable running-low-on-fuel anxiety again. Which is nice, until it occurs to you that you are now far more likely to actually run out of gas and be stranded on the side of the highway for an hour waiting for your mom to come pick you up.

See the problem?

When it comes to both your emotions and your car dashboard, the feeling isn’t the problem; in fact, it’s just trying to help. And simply avoiding it (or “fixing” it) just sets you up for more trouble down the road.

When you constantly pick fights with your emotions, they tend to fight back.

Most bad moods and persistently painful emotion come from getting in fights with our feelings:

We feel sad, insist that we shouldn’t, then start beating ourselves up for all the ways we should be improving, all the reasons we should feel happy and content, all the mistakes we should have avoided, etc.

We feel anxious, interpret that to mean something awful is going to happen, and then spend the next 3 hours in a frenzy of worry and panic.

We feel bad for someone, assume that we should have done something to prevent their misery, then spin ourselves up into a vortex of guilt, self-anger, and depression.

The common denominator in all these examples is a combative and aggressive relationship with our own feelings. And turns out, when you constantly pick fights with your emotions, they tend to fight back:

Problem-solving your anxiety leads to panic.

Ruminating on your anger leads to rage.

Criticizing your sadness leads to depression.

If you struggle with painful emotions and difficult moods, there’s a good chance it’s your relationship with your emotions that’s the problem, not the emotions themselves. Because treating an emotion like a problem teaches your brain to see it as a problem.

All of which means, you need to foster a better relationship with your emotions, especially the painful ones:

Validate your emotions instead of trying to fix them.

Welcome your emotions instead of running away from them.

Be curious about your emotions instead of interrogating them.

The next time you’re feeling anxious or sad or guilty or any other painful feeling, try to see these emotions as lights on your dashboard.

This small shift in thinking sets you up for a much healthier, more productive, and less painful relationship with your own emotions.