We all experience emotions and we experience them differently. But is there a way that we can take advantage of our emotions and use them in an effective manner?
In this article I will show how to use emotions to your advantage with a few examples.
Emotions in Motion
Remember, emotions are only the physical sensations like a racing heartbeat, sweaty palms and so forth.
Feelings on the other hand are your subjective interpretation of your emotions. These are accommodated by thoughts and depending on your interpretation it can actually increase your physical emotional state.
Thus, the one affects the other. We can find ourselves in a loop and, unless we find ways to stop this loop, we can get stuck. Either we find a way to regulate our emotions or we can use it to our advantage.
Firstly, we have to understand the difference between positive and negative emotions.
Positive and Negative Emotions: The Physical Aspect
Positive emotions are accompanied by positive feelings and thoughts. According to Kendra Cherry, there are six basic emotions. They are happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, disgust and anger.
Physically these emotions have the following effect on us:
- Happiness. Cortisol is lowered while there is an increase in endorphins and serotonin. A happy person may even experience rising levels of salivation, body temperature, sweating and metabolism.
- Surprise. Adrenaline and dopamine is released. Surprise can be either positive or negative, depending on the situation, but the physical sensations are the same. The heart rate lowers while blood pressure goes up.
- Sadness. This emotion affects the heart by altering levels of stress-related opioids in the brain and increases levels of inflammatory proteins. Increases heart rate and dilates blood vessels.
- Fear. Blood pressure and heart rate increases from the increase in cortisol and adrenaline. This also causes your breathing to increase.
- Disgust. Heart rate may slow down; feeling of nausea may set in which would then increase salivation.
- Anger. Increased heart rate, cortisol and adrenaline. There’s also an increase in body temperature, blood pressure and breathing. It weakens the immune system and can increase chances of heart problems.
Although I did not mention all the physical aspects of each of the main emotions, it’s clear to see that some have a lot of similarities in physical traits. It’s up to our thoughts and feelings’ interpretation to tell us whether what we are experiencing is either positive or negative.
So, the question remains: How can you use emotions to your advantage?
Ways to Use Emotions to Your Advantage
Finally, we get to the good part where we can learn to use our emotions, whether positive or negative, to our advantage. The first step is to read my article: Regulation of Emotions as Adults.
Happiness
Not surprisingly, happiness fuels success. The happier we are, the more successful we will be. However, success is subjective and some people believe that just to be happy is achieving success. According to Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage,
“When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive. This discovery has been repeatedly supported by research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the world.”
This is a sure way to improve performance and maximize your potential. A definite must-read. If you’re someone who struggles a lot with creativity, it would be best to tackle a creative task or project when you are at your happiest.
Surprise
According to Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger, surprise can bring vitality to our lives whether good or bad. Surprise increases dopamine levels which help us to focus our attention and inspires us to look at our situation in different ways.
They outline four stages of surprise which can be used to our advantage:
- Freeze. Part of the fight or flight reaction. This causes us to take in as much information as we possibly can in the shortest amount of time.
- Find. It can promote curiosity which can shape our worldview.
- Shift. Shifting our perspectives, based on conflicting findings.
- Share. Sharing can help us savour the experience and relieve us of the “cognitive burden” of the surprise. In my opinion, it also increases communication and can even elevate it.
Imagine you’re talking to someone with conflicting ideas but you find yourself being surprised by the sane conversation. You start to ask more questions and learn quite a lot that you didn’t know before and this can possibly change the way you think about the topic. Afterwards you go home and tell your partner about everything which sparks up a great conversation and shifting of perspectives.
Sadness
Psychologists believe that negative feelings may alert us to things we need to respond to. In the case of feeling sad, there are multiple benefits including (Steven Mehta, Mediation Offices):
- Increases memory retention by cutting down on distractions like false, irrelevant or misleading information.
- May remove biases and distortions. It also reduces gullibility and increase scepticism.
- Having a bad mood may lead to increased perseverance.
- Improved communication by being more attentive and having a detailed thinking style.
- May lead to more persuasive and effective arguments and a better understanding of ambiguous sentences.
Fear
Emotion theorists believe that fear can serve a functional purpose. Corrective action may be the message that someone with fear is receiving.
Fear my serve as a motivator to persevere. Notice how both fear and sadness have the same or similar physical reactions by increasing heart rate, blood pressure and release of similar hormones. Therefore, they can serve the same benefits.
Disgust
One of the first things we do when we experience disgust is turn our heads away from that which causes disgust. Therefore, it would make sense that we would avoid risky situations when experiencing disgust.
Disgust can keep us from eating old of off food since it can lead to food poisoning. But it can also motivate us to not do something that we find, well, disgusting.
Some examples would include being disgusted by certain (deviant) sexual acts. Some of which, like rape, could land you in jail. Or doing some “spicy” sexual act could cause trauma, hence why we react to it in a negative manner.
Anger
Individuals filled with anger may be less likely to think in a systematic manner and more likely to improvise. This means they become more flexible and unstructured in their thought processes.
This thought processes is akin to seeing the “bigger picture” which is beneficial for brain storming sessions
Anger can also generate sustained attention which is required for problem solving. Researchers have also found a link between anger and increased performance in negotiations.
Again, both sadness and anger display similar physiological sensations and therefore share a lot of the same benefits.
Conclusion
There you have it: How to use emotions to your advantage. Whether positive or negative, they can be put to great use in a positive way.
I do recommend finding ways to regulate and become aware of your emotions first, especially when they are negative emotions, before learning how to use emotions to your advantage.
It may be a bit too challenging to find yourself in a heated discussion and then try to solve a problem without first having control over your emotions. Therefore, first regain control before taking advantage.
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