Recognize that emotions exist whether you confront them or not. Choosing denial or compartmentalization will inevitably lead to these neglected emotions controlling your behavior.
Learn to break down your emotions into their most basic forms, such as simple feelings (affect), rather than immediately constructing complex emotional narratives. This practice, similar to mindfulness meditation, allows you to experience sensations in their rawest form.
When experiencing high arousal or jitters, especially before a challenging task, consciously reframe these sensations as determination instead of anxiety. This shift in meaning can improve performance and change the trajectory of your life.
Actively practice interpreting your body’s sensations in multiple ways to build resilience. This skill, like driving, becomes more automatic and less metabolically costly with consistent practice outside of high-stress moments.
When feeling generally unpleasant or ’like crap,’ reframe this as your ‘body budget running a deficit’ rather than immediately attributing it to psychological issues like anger or sadness. This prevents escalating simple feelings into unhelpful emotional narratives.
If you identify a ‘body budget deficit,’ take practical steps to replenish resources, such as getting more sleep, hydrating, or using a small amount of caffeine if needed. This focuses on physical well-being rather than emotional overthinking.
Instead of reacting with immediate anger or frustration to events or people, try to cultivate curiosity about the situation. This allows for a different, potentially more productive, response.
Dedicate five minutes each day to intentionally practice feeling awe, even if you are skeptical. Viewing yourself as a ‘speck’ in the vastness of existence can reduce the perceived burden of your personal problems by lowering the metabolic cost on your body budget.
Train yourself to find moments of awe in everyday things, such as a weed growing through a crack in the sidewalk. This practice helps expand your capacity for awe and shifts your perspective.
When someone’s actions provoke anger or frustration (e.g., being cut off in traffic), consciously consider alternative, more charitable explanations for their behavior. This can prevent automatic negative emotional responses and influence your own body budget.
Be mindful not to excessively deconstruct emotions to the point of only experiencing them as physical symptoms, as this can be unhealthy and prevent you from addressing underlying psychological problems.
Understand that you are continuously cultivating your past experiences, which in turn predict who you will become in the future. This implies intentionality in how you process and learn from experiences to build a more flexible and resilient brain.