We never want to get rid of negative emotions because they are a useful learning tool, and it is only natural that negativity is experienced throughout our lives. However, if we can cultivate and grow our positive emotions them we can shade the negative emotions when they arise.
I’d like to discuss seven emotions to cultivate in life to put negative emotions in the shade. If you are feeling one emotion you can’t feel another particular emotion at the same time. Hence, if you are feeling a positive emotion you can’t feel a negative emotion at the same time. So the more positive emotions you have the less negative emotions you have.
Seven emotions to cultivate
1 - Gratitude
Gratitude is an extremely powerful emotion to cultivate in your life. First thing in the morning I get up and I always acknowledge that I feel grateful for the people in my life; my wife, my two boys, my mum and dad, my sisters, my father in law, my mother in law and all the family round about me.
This acknowledgment only takes a couple of seconds and I say thanks, not to anyone really other than them, although I acknowledge that we each have different beliefs and I respect that, but for me I thank the people. I’m also thankful for the inanimate objects in my life; car, computer etc. I know they aren’t people or living entities but they do help to enrich my life.
I acknowledge every day that I’m blessed, not only to myself but to those around me, and for what I have and I’m really grateful of everything. Now I’m a silent gratitude person, I say it inwardly, my wife on the other hand is more external. She appreciates everyone outwardly, when she is feeling a particular emotion, she actually verbalises it to whoever it may be, she also expresses it by non-verbal communication. I show it by my actions as well as by acknowledging it internally. Some people keep a gratitude journal, one of my blogging friends Zeenat Syal keeps a gratitude journal and has blogged about this.
2. Passion
The second emotion to cultivate is passion. Without passion there is no way I would have been able to write 450 articles on this blog. But, ultimately I really believed that I could help people to change their lives if they want to . It might not be in this fashion, it might be in book form or on my blog which has been established for years, but what I knew was that if I had the passion, drive and knowledge then I would succeed.
The cultivation of passion keeps us interested and encourages us to experience the emotions that life has to bring. Writing for the blog puts me on a natural high and low, it’s really taken me through on an emotional journey. But, the passion and drive has never left me, and this has what has encouraged me to keep writing.
So cultivate passion in your life, find something that you are interested in, that you believe in or love. It could be your children, husband, friends, yourself, business, your work, really anything that you can invest in.
3 - Confidence
The next emotion we could try and cultivate is one of confidence. If you don’t have confidence in yourself then you really won’t have confidence in the world around you.
The way to start that is to reflect on your past success. Every single person in the world has a past success no matter how small let that small success drive you forward. That small success could be the next step to a bigger success and then another and another etc. So cultivate confidence in your life by looking at past experiences and getting yourself into a state of confidence.
4 - Love
The next emotion to cultivate is one of love. This is a big one for me; I’ve changed my world literally through finding my wife and my kids etc. It’s expressing that emotion of love and I do it every single day. I’m not saying that just to be ‘cheesy’ , I genuinely feel this way and express it every single day because I adore my wife and my kids, and my life and my family round about me as well. So try and express and cultivate the feeling of love within your life and that’s looking at who’s in your life, which can extend to work colleagues and friends as well.
5 - Positivity
The next emotion for cultivation is positivity. I know a lot of people say positivity doesn’t really work. It’s unrealistic to expect the feeling of positivity to last throughout the day, especially in this day and age when there are so many pressures on everyone and it’s only natural to feel negative. How else can you truly appreciate the positive emotions in our lives?
Try and look for the good things in people, stop reading newspapers and listening to the news because that instils an emotion of fear and negativity. We’ve spoken about the sensationalising of negativity that sells newspapers. It’s crucial to balance negative emotions with positive emotions but it’s much easier to find positivity if you are looking for it, negativity needs no assistance to feed your fears.
So look at yourself and cultivate that feeling of positive emotion.
6 - Energy
The next emotion is one of energy, maybe when you have felt energised in the past you probably all felt elation, excitement, pleasure etc. Try and cultivate that by looking at what excites you and elicits energy. Obviously if your body has really slowed down it’s an indication that you need to change something about your lifestyle to give you more energy in your life. So try and look at that and the feeling of cultivating the emotion energy in your life as well.
7 - Giving
The last emotion is the gift of giving. What I mean is doing good for people without expecting anything in return at all just do something nice for someone just for the sake of it, don’t expect anything in return that includes even a thank you.
Just do it and don’t tell anyone about it either. So if you’ve given money to charity don’t tell anyone about it just do it and guaranteed you’ll feel good about yourself and the world around you. And even if you don’t get anything in return you will get noticed, but that is not the aim, it’s about noticing yourself and feeling good about yourself that you have given something back to the world. Hopefully this is what I am doing here, I’m giving something back to the world.
I notice a lot of marketers doing this, they are adopting the emotion of giving, or the feeling of giving, with the clients. So they are saying ‘how can I help you?’ instead of saying to clients ‘you need to give me so much money so you can help me make money’. The world is turning just now and everybody is turning outward and the new phrases in the outward world are 'how can I help you?’ What is it that I can do for you? Without expecting anything in return.
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