1. Control your attention, not your emotions
Our usual response to difficult emotions is to try and control them, which makes sense given how good at exerting control we are in most areas of life:
You’re good at exerting control and generating creative solutions at work.
You’re good at exerting control and fixing a leaky drain under the sink at home.
You’re good at exerting control and asking for help at the grocery store when you can’t find something.
In many areas of our life, it’s helpful and productive to exert control over our problems.
But here’s the thing…
Emotions aren’t under our direct control.
Go ahead and try it:
I want you to take control of your mood right now and make yourself really happy.
Or, make yourself stop feeling anxious.
Of course, these are ridiculous experiments to run because you don’t have a happiness dial you can just adjust at will. Or an anxiety button you can just turn on and off.
You can only control your emotions indirectly, primarily through how you choose to think and what you choose to pay attention to.
For example:
If you’re feeling ashamed about a mistake you made at work, focusing your attention on replaying the details of that mistake over and over again is going to make you feel even more ashamed. On the other hand, if you can switch your attention to correcting the problem or learning from it, you’re likely to start to feel better much faster.
When you try to control things you don’t have control over — like your feelings — you’ll only create more pain and suffering for yourself in the long run.
Mentally strong people take control over their attention and what they choose to focus on. Instead of letting their mind bounce around according to the whims of instinct, they practice holding their attention on what matters and avoid getting sucked into unhelpful thought patterns like rumination or worry.