I’ve written several blog posts on the emotional formula that you can use to manage how you feel as effectively as possible: Emotions = Desires + Beliefs + Experiences To summarize, the point of these posts have been to help you identify where your emotions come from and how to change the drivers of those feelings so that you can manage your...
Read MoreYou should always listen to your feelings, and they are always being honest with you. However, you shouldn’t always trust them. How is that possible? Well, your feelings are a combination of your desires, beliefs, and experiences. Your feelings are constantly giving you feedback on all three. For example, if you are about to go skydiving and are...
Read MoreEmotions are human responses to internal and external stimuli. They provide both a signal to react to certain conditions in your environment and a reward or incentive for beneficial behaviors (or punishment for harmful behaviors). Freud put it best in his Pleasure Principle that people seek pleasure and avoid pain, but to broaden that point out...
Read MoreThere are two famous books, The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits, that go into detail around how to break or change a habit. This won’t be a rehash of those books, though I do recommend reading them if you’re interested in how habits are formed and how they stick. All that is needed to know for this post is that a habit involves a trigger that...
Read MoreRoger Ebert (the movie critic) famously said, “Your emotions will never lie to you.” In an amusing coincidence, there are plenty of movies that talk about trusting your feelings and going with your gut. Star Wars, detective stories, and romantic comedies offer plenty of examples of tapping into your instincts or gut feelings to make the right...
Read MoreDo you ever have the attitude of, “I’ll change when the world changes?” Yes, this attitude applies to arguments between people (e.g., “I’ll apologize when he apologizes.”) and individual’s behaviors (e.g., Michael Bolton’s “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.” in Office Space), but it also applies to your attitude toward the world. After...
Read MoreI wrote in my previous post about how people focus more on screaming for others to change than thinking about things that they can do. There’s no doubt that most people care about issues—even though many are either pretending or grossly exaggerating their concern (The Office poked fun at this well when Ryan falsely professed his deep love for...
Read MoreEmotions are complicated and can be incredibly annoying if you’re trying to live your life and an emotional state is distracting you from it. It can be so difficult that people often ingest chemicals to manipulate or suppress them. Is there anything you can do about them that is a more healthy approach? Well, to do this effectively, you should...
Read MoreResolving conflicts has never been easy, but it feels like in a world where you can live in your own world that you never have to talk to someone who ever disagrees with you. Even debates are no longer really two people having a conversation to try to influence each other but rather each person talking to an audience to score points and "own" the...
Read More“Happiness is a choice.” If you’ve ever listened to a self-help guru or optimistic person, you’ll have heard this statement. Many respond with, “Easy for you to say…you have ______. If I had that, I’d be happy, too,” or its opposite, “But you don’t have _______. If you had that, you wouldn’t be happy, either.” To many, happiness seems to be a matte...
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