Emotions Make Life Awesome
By: Andy Ang
Tags: Guides And Tutorials, Emotions, Emotional Intelligence, Life Lessons, Design Thinking

The world against us

How often that when we mention the word “emotions”, and it brings about a negative connotation. You hear people saying, “Don’t get too excited”, “Don’t be so angry”, “Hide your fear” or “Stop, being emotional!”

Seemed like people are going all out to kill emotions.

Are they are trying to stop you from being — human?

We are creatures of emotions. Can you imagine a day where you are “emotionless”? Void of feeling happiness or sadness? When you see a delicious-looking spaghetti, do you not react to it? (Emm, my salivary glands will, somehow). When you look at your childhood photos, will you not feel that reminiscence?

My friend if that is you, I feel sad for you. That is not being alive at all. You could be just going through life.

(our) experiences will invoke a different kind of emotions from us

Humans are motivated and activated by emotions. We communicate with others as we want to feel connected. We put our best foot forward, to feel the satisfaction of good work done in return. We want to laugh and enjoy the pleasure that happiness can bring us. We cannot live without emotions.



Research has shown that our brain produces hormones that will influence our feelings and thoughts. For example, Dopamine creates motivation. Serotonin creates happiness, Oxytocin creates bonding and calmness, while Adrenalin creates both excitement and fear.

Simply saying, we cannot run away from our emotions, it is a part of us.

Let it be awesome

How can we then allow emotions to make our lives awesome and extraordinary?

Emotions seemed to always get us more into trouble, isn’t it?



Haha! you are right, mostly.

There is a fine line between whether an emotion is making your life miserable or wonderful, lies in how much you know about your feelings and your ability to create the right emotions for yourself and others. Meaning: Awareness & Action.



This is where Emotional Intelligence comes into play. From the perspective of Emotional Intelligence (EI) or Emotional Quotient (EQ), we need a “trigger” to activate a feeling and emotions. The trigger adds as a stimulus for us to feel what we want to feel, either consciously or sub-consciously.

And the triggers exist both internally, as well as externally.

These triggers can include our thoughts, our memories, the people we met, the places we went to and the experiences we get. We can be shopping or having a meal with our family, and these experiences will invoke a different kind of emotions from us.

One way to experience happy, joyous and likeable emotions, is to first learn how to manage and prevent the triggers that we do not want. Subsequently, how to create that stimuli that we want to have in our life.

How is this done

We can do so by applying the “PCA” or Pause — Choose — Act Model.

1. When you are triggered, learnt to take a PAUSE. Do your best to calm down and stay aware of the triggers and assess what is going on with your thoughts and feelings.

2. After you have assessed and have a better understanding of what is going on, then CHOOSE how you want to respond to it. Decide to do something different from your usual if necessary, to get the emotions that you want to feel and have.

3. Most importantly, ACT upon it. Take actions and take control over the “triggers”, either to manage it or simply create a new trigger that allows you to feel the way you want to feel.

Hope that you can start to possess the emotions that will make your lives extraordinary, from now onwards!