Emotion is your decision rather than reaction

At the speech, I asked the students, "who thinks they are masters of emotional intelligence ?" A middle-aged woman in the front row immediately raised her hand: "I think I have a high emotional intelligence, as long as no one else is angry with me !" The audience burst into laughter.

I'm afraid many people may feel this way, and their happiness is often ruined by others. Therefore, we often have a mantra: "It's you! You make me angry !" Or "It's you. You put a lot of pressure on me !" This sounds familiar to me! Haha! In fact, this kind of thinking is our biggest misunderstanding of happiness, and it will often make us fall into negative emotions, so we can't extricate ourselves for a long time.

I want to share with you a secret: emotion is not a reaction, but a decision.

This sentence means that if we think that emotion is an intuitive reaction to external stimuli, we will find that we are angry with everything. Our idea is: Didn't you see how he treats me? Didn't you hear anything he said in a vicious tone? Now that he has done something he shouldn't do and I have been treated as he shouldn't, I should naturally be angry with him.

However, EQ masters know that emotion is not a reaction, but a decision. That is to say, it is one thing that others should not treat me in this way; and it is another thing that I should be furious because the way he treats me is unreasonable. The difference is that emotion is not a passive reaction, but an active decision.

Why? Think about it. For example, if he is dating a friend, he is half an hour late. In this situation, some people may feel very angry. How can they be late? Someone may feel worried: Will something happen to him? Some people may think that he must be late for the last reason, but he feels considerate. Now you should understand that all our emotions are our active decisions after interpreting the incident.

Happy people will choose to be masters of their emotions and decide how to respond to what happened to us in our lives. For example, he is very rude to me. I should first think about the emotion to respond to this matter. You can also say that I won't let it affect myself. If you think so, you are still angry, then it will be an emotional decision you make.

I learned the secret of emotions, and it is a big benefit that we will be responsible for our own emotions from now on, rather than leaving our emotional responsibilities to others. Throwing emotional responsibilities to others will cause a fatal injury and we will expect to change others so that we can change ourselves. We want others to change their attitudes towards us so that we can be happy. To be honest, we don't care about others. We have no control over how others treat us. Therefore, such a logic will put itself into a trap: I want him to change, but he does not change. I felt frustrated and finally felt depressed and desperate.

Happy people will be responsible for their own emotions. If I am angry with you because of your attitude towards me, it is because I decided to be angry; if I am sad because of your way to me, that's because I decided to be sad. When your emotional master is yourself, you will find that the world is suddenly open.

Don't forget to remind yourself that the mood is determined by you and me next time you lose happiness due to ups and downs!

Text/Zhang Yiyun "Happiness is actually very simple"