The Art of Happiness: Emotional Management and Meditation
41. Mastering the mind by mastering the emotion
To mastering the mind, mastering the life, and mastering the self, the best way is to mastering emotion. There are four fundamental things we should know about emotional management.
Firstly, I have always questioned Aristotle's statement about anger: Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. Aristotle
I always wondered to clarify the word right to understand this point.
Secondly, let go to the next definition of emotional management or self -management to understand the word right
Emotional management is the art of using emotion to achieve desired goals in the happy and effective way. I want to clarify the keywords here are art, emotion and desired goals, happy and effective way.
Thirdly, facts or stimulus to individual creates the response. There is a silent pause before the response. We should take advantages of this silence pause. Imagine the situation: you, your child and your obsessed objects like flowerpots, expensive phones or precious wine. If your child accidentally breaks your items, how will you do? Can you remember your previous experiences have a pattern like this? If you surf through the pages of newspapers or observe around, you will see varieties of scripts that people may react crucially with their beloved people in unwanted situations. The way of responding will lead to different results or even tragedies in life. Most of them do not know the causes they create with negative emotion. It is not the environment or stimulus from environment determines your life. It is the way you perceive, think and feel with the stimulus from the environment; and the way you react to the stimulus. The feeling, thinking and action you have when contact with the environment will determine your destiny mental life, physical life, spiritual life and social life. Quality of a meal does not come from the food on the table, but the quality of meal comes from the emotion and attitude of people enjoy the food. Unfortunately, most people, parents create so many negative causes on the life of children and surrounding people.
Fourthly, the difference between the ordinary people and the successful ones can be summarized in the table:
Table 26: Differences between ordinary people and successful people
Criteria | Successful person | Ordinary people |
1. Values, belief, attitude | Have clear values and belief | Most do not have or fuzzy |
2. Goals, visions | Have short and long terms | Most do not have or fuzzy |
3. The mission of life | Have clear mission | Most do not have, fuzzy |
4. The action is driven by | Goals, long vision and principles | Irrational, emotions and without purpose |
5. Pause between stimulating and responding | Pause for contemplating results with compassion and love | No pause, quick and immediately take action, rarely contemplating |
Fact about the human being, people usually only work or act when they think they are right when doing it. People are angry, scolded and repressed come from the result of they think it is the right thing, they should do it, and it is the right way. Some people even beat brothers, friends, wife, children, and coworkers with the thinking that this is the right thing to do. Our subsequent actions and choices will always show consistency with the previous conclusion. Hasty people always cling to their own opinion and try to protect it. We may fall into the illusion of assumptions, expectations, and emotions.
The destiny of people is the accumulation of decisions they made, no matter these are small or big decisions. The decisions come from the emotion at the time of making decisions. Emotion people have in each situation is influenced by the feeling just before they approach the situation. If people are happy then they will look at things in the direction of fun, positive. They may have much more fun emotions. If they are upset, angry, they tend to see things with annoyance. The potential of the brain will make their negative emotion increase. They may create stress situation if they do not pay attention to their feelings. The second things influence people’s emotion is the angle they choose to look at things, the points they focus looking on thin, and the essence of situations. One situation comes from the combination of countless facts. Unfortunately, the quick-tempered people will quickly and shallowly grasp on several facts then quickly jump to conclusion. They may blindly shut their mind and stubbornly attached to the conclusion. The third things influenced people’s emotion is their greedy expectation. If they have an unwanted perception of the situation, their perceptions are worse than their expectation, they will be upset, angry, even get mad with their beloved ones.
In each time of making decisions, we collect data on cost and data of benefit. If the cost is more than the benefit then we do not make a decision. On the other hand, if the cost is lower than the benefit that we will make the decision to move forward. For example, to decide to enroll a college education or MBA course, people always measure the cost and the benefit of the decision to participate or not participate in studies. In buying a jacket, people always make calculate the cost and the benefit in mind. In purchasing a house, a luxury car or an expensive leather bag, people always have calculated the cost and the benefit in their mind. Cost and effect also have an influence on contract or start up a business. People spend the time to measure the cost and the benefit before each decision. If the cost is over the benefit of taking action, we will not take action. If the cost is smaller than the benefit, we will make the decision to take action and ready to bear the cost. Cost includes all the things and fee we think we will lose in taking action. The benefit includes all things and money we assume we will get in taking action. Unfortunately, cost and benefit are the assumptions of most people; these are the relative values. With hasty people, the data of cost and benefit usually be distorted by strong emotion. The data getting from the situation may vary a lot. The varieties of data we collect from situation depend mainly on the dots in mind, the ability to control the mind. The facts depend on our feeling, the angle we look at things and our expectations. When we feel sure about the data we collected, clear about cost and benefit, we will feel sure to make the decision. We will think this is the right decision.
In dealing with failures, pressing situations with huge loses in life and in business, most people like I, you, your spouse Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, President Lincoln, and the president will make a different decision. The differences come from different feelings because we all have different belief systems, the pattern of thinking, perspective, set of values and principles. Astonishingly, we all think our decisions are the right decisions. The more we understand common principles, set of values, big visions, and understanding, the more effective we are.
We are so different in the pattern of thinking, belief, mind, and brain that all seven billion people in the world, all identical twins in the world, there is no two individuals have the same fingerprint. So how we can jealously compare, compete and judge others. |
The individual has own personal belief system, individual use it to see in the world, to interpret things they contact. This paradigm is like glasses individual wearing. Through each lens, people perceive meaning and emotions from the environment. Energy or emotion comes from focusing on the mind. By focusing on richness, focus mind on the things we have: legs, arms, eyes, health, friends, weathers, family, parents, properties, the country we live in, our job and so on. These are the things that billions of people desire to have one of these things we have. When focusing on things we have, we will live with a grateful mind. We are grateful for many things. Millions of things we inherit, we use but we do not have to build like phone, technology, television, cars, churches, pagodas, and knowledge; which are the result of passion, effort, and sacrifice of billion people. I am grateful for the valuable knowledge of all humankind accumulates in thousands of years have been put in a single book. With grateful attitude, we will make serving actions with joy and happiness. The more we are grateful, the less we expect from our action. With gratitude and contentment, we will know how rich we are, how lucky we are.
We feel sad, angry or depressed because we do not get things we want, we do not get the things we expect. The best way to bring for us happiness is by reducing the want by getting objective understanding, then taking responsibility to maximize our ability to create wanted changes in the world. |
We feel sad, angry or depressed because we do not get things we want, we do not get the things we expect. The best way to bring for us happiness is by reducing the want by getting objective understanding, then taking responsibility to maximize abilities to create wanted changes in the world. The fuel for this process comes from the imagination of the mind. The powerful mind has the ability of imagination, with vivid imagination the mind cannot distinguish the reality with the imagination. So when focus on grateful things, grateful moments and proud events we need to make it as vivid as possible with senses, sound, smell, and feeling. This process of imagination mobilizes every part of the brain to relive the happy feeling. We need to relive the happy moments. The mind thinks that we have to get the things we want so it active the happy chemicals. Just by focusing the mind on imagination to visions and proud moments, we can create a happy state of mind. The brain in happy state mobilizes a lot of hormones, chemicals to create powerful energy for our body to take action, to serve and to give. The more actions we take the closer to the success we are. Only five to ten minutes of focusing the mind on grateful state each day, we can control our feeling and we can master our mind.
I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet. Denis Waitley |
Unfortunately, most people fall to negative feeling or depressed state because of comparing with others. They often focus on the things they do not have but other people have. Moreover, they have so many needs and desires that even they live in richness and abundance but their mind still scans for the desired things that they do not have. Miserable people focus on lack. The more lacking they focus, the more miserable they feel. Then the mind activates the stress state because of their obsessed desires are not satisfied. Greedy people see others with envy and angry eyes. Their unconscious mind of and the unconscious mind of people may detect the irritating signals all day, even they may live in richness. The mind actives the stress chemical in the body; it makes people feel stress, anger, misery in the life of abundance. This is the reason why many famous people seem to be the success in life, career but still want to kill themselves, affect depression and addict drugs. They are more miserable than most of us can imagine. It is the focus of uncontrolled mind makes them feel miserable and get stress.
To enjoy richness, we have to control the focus of the mind. We need to do gratitude exercise five to ten minutes every day. The more grateful we are, the richer and happier we become. We can put the body in the state of high emotion and high energy just by focusing the mind. In the book Man’s search for the meaning of Viktor Frankl, the author has given a lot of stories about how powerful the mind can be. The human mind can create happy state even in the worst circumstance of living. With this peak emotion, the peak of energy, people can easily make peak performance. The happy state of mind fuels the energy to pull us into taking action.
On the other hand, to take massive action, some people need to push into taking action. By focusing the mind on the tragedy caused by procrastination, bad habits, bad thought accumulating with time. The tragedy like broke, divorces, illness, diseases, severe pain accidentally caused by children, and so on, the people may feel miserable caused by their wrong habits. Surfing on the media, newspaper, tabloid we can see millions of the misery tragedies, with the game if then, we can use these tragedies to scare us to death. With the time of contemplation, we can see the results from our habits. Sometimes, we need to be scared to death by others’ misfortune, just by imagining that these tragedies can fall on us, we can experience pain enough that it will push us into taking action. We need to be pushed into changing, push into acting to move out of comfort zone. The imaginative tragedies make us feel stressed and frightened, and our unconscious mind will memorize feeling and patterns these tragedies; the subconscious mind will send us gut signals if we fall into the traps of these tragedies. It will send us the urge to take action to stay away from misery.
With gratitude and imagination, we can create enough energy to take action from our mind. We have taken the first step of control our mind.
Emotional is like energy, it is transmissible. When you go home from work and join to the dining table. If you eat under stress, the stress chemicals are stimulated, adrenalin, norepinephrine, and cortisone secreted into your body unconsciously, it makes you feel chill, alert and irritated. You will overreact with little stimulation. Other members may also just annoyed from work. They are more sensible and uncomfortable when seeing your negative expression and your actions. All subconscious minds alerted, if the alertness is not reduced, the conflict or argument might happen. Every family member will fall into extreme stress. People will argue over others, skip meals or loss of appetite. This is the script we may meet every day. Our small babies are the most hurtful people with the stress in the family.
“A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety. “ Aesop |
The story of the father went home late in evening, although he was very tired, but before he entered home, he took off his jacket and hung up the robe at the door, shaking himself three times to change his state. Entering his home with a different state: vivacious, agile and fun. Neighbors questioned why he has such a habit before entering the house, the actions: put off the jacket, shaking body then change the entire state of mind. He said he do this because he wants to put off negative things from work, put off the fatigue and stress he had all day, then shaking the body to get in a new state of mind. He said he knew how his emotion would affect his children, and he knows what his children really need from him.
To deal with negative emotion, some experts teach that we should neglect or suppress negative emotions. I think this is not a good idea, because the negative emotions are still inside us. When in a stressful situation, the hidden things have a chance to jump out with worse consequences. We need to have new approaches to destroy the negative emotion. Negative emotions arise when our expectation not matched by the condition. It means too much need with expectation and the unsatisfied condition can create negative emotion and stress. By reducing needs, removing expectations, or gaining the ability to change the circumstance, we can destroy negative emotion. And by looking deep to the negative emotion to understand it, understanding help us control the emotion. Enlighten people understand life, themselves, others and emotion so that they can control emotion since emotion is weak.
Some powerful techniques to control emotions
A. The first way is to remove the personal assumption
Coming in with knowing nothing, without assumptions, we will try to find the views of others, freely swap the positions of partners to create understanding and sympathy for others.
You have to step out of yourself, immerse yourself in someone else's position to know and live with their perspective and emotions. Having the feeling of sympathy and understand others’ point of views before judging.
By swapping positions: putting on shoes’ of other people and walk for two miles to have empathy before making conclusions or judging others. Changing perspective leads to a change of mindset that creates empathy. When we get angry with someone, if we understand their pain, their loss, and their difficulty, our emotions will change. We will more open to communicating for deeper understanding; for creating the depth of listening and questioning so that we have compassion for others. We understand better the needs, intentions, and motives of the other people.
When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say. Abraham Lincoln
The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me. Oprah Winfrey |
B. The second way is the power of time.
Over time, the level of anger will be subsidized, or the emotions will decrease its energy. When we are angry, we make a lot of irrational action. Once anger has gone we will make more rational decisions.This is the reason why experts recommend that when in anger, we need stop before reaction; getting out of the situation when we know we are angry or upset. When calm down we can come back. There is old saying can prevent us from regretting:
“Do not promise when you are happy,
Do not take action when you are angry.”
To destroy negative emotions, to get in a peaceful state of mind; we need to understand more about the nature of life, the complexity of life. Accept that we are small and ignorant creatures. Think of the famous teaching of Socrates I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing. Knowing we know nothing, we will have an open mind to absorb ideas, ignoring all our assumptions we will look more deeply at the situation, looking for data, referencing all angles. We will pick up the right information, real facts from the event. People with a lot of assumptions and prejudices, instead of picking up the objective information, their mind only pick up distorted information, which reinforces our previous assumptions.
C. The third way to control emotion can find in Buddha’s and Confucius teaching.
The misery in life can be prevented by followed the teaching of Buddha: three things make us miserable in life are our desires, our anger, and our ignorance. Reducing desires and expectations, we will get real information instead of distorted information; realizing the appearance and development of anger, we can control the anger instead of letting anger control us. Accepting our ignorance, we will open to new ideas. We can practice the detachment with wrong opinions, carefully with forming the conclusion.
People usually evaluate themselves and their actions according to their purposes; adversely, they often evaluate other people and others’ actions according to the behaviors. |
People usually evaluate themselves and their actions according to their purposes; adversely, they often evaluate other people and others’ actions according to the behaviors. This is how we justify for ourselves, justify for our angry emotion, easily blame others for our problems and rarely accept responsibility. If continues, conflict with anger and stress will dominate the relationships. By awakening and swapping positions, we can break the trap of shallow thinking and wrong conclusions. When evaluating the actions of an individual, look for three things in the teaching of Confucius Look at the means, which a man employs; consider his motives, and observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!
Injustice, when investigating a case, people investing in the means, the motives and the actions by answer three important questions
- What happened?
- How it happened?
- Why it happened?
Only get enough right answers for the three questions, the course of justice will pass a judgment on someone. In the investigation of the judgment, the motives are much more important than the action. The motives can be viewed as an evidence to reduce or increase the sentence. This is the way to create just judgment from good justices. This is also the way of the approaching problem of a kind, smart people. They get right clues for the important questions before giving any judgment. They can prevent themselves from falling into the trap of irrational thinking, the trap of emotion, and psychological traps.
The scenario or a pattern of conflict, misery we see every day
Ha, a seven-year-old girl, wanted to help her mother to prepare for dinner before her mother comes home from work. She was very excited about the idea, she runs out quickly from the table full of toys. After washing vegetable, she moved the bowls, forks, and chopsticks from the basket to the rack. While moving, unfortunately, she broke a beautiful plate, which her mother loved the most. Ha was frightened shaking. At that moment her mother returned, she just exasperated from the work, seeing her broken plate, messy home. The mother was angry, scolding and beating Ha then knocking her into her room without saying a word. Ha was very frightened, painful and disappointed. Even worse, her mother was very annoyed angry and stressful, with a little of shame for beating her beloved child. Her anger could be more serious if her husband went home with some unwanted news or unwanted things.
This scenario, the injustice we encounter every day, in many families, in works place and even in our own family. Hope that before angry with anyone, especially with children, the dependent individuals, we need pause and switch the position to have a deeper look at their purpose or motives. Take time to think or separate ourselves to the situation. Do not dive too much into the anger, awake with our tempting but hurting action. When taking time to look deep inside the wrong behaviors of others people, we may be touched with their noble purposes.
This may reveal the noble purposes of great men in their actions. The stories of the calmness and retreat of great men who encountered crucial events, that they acted differently or contradictory compare with most of the ordinary people. The ordinary people blamed bad reputation for them because of action. They were bearing bad reputation until the next generation of hundred years later can understand and clarify their noble purpose. Rarely great men on the world get support from all other ordinary people. Perhaps there is the big difference in the way of perceiving ideas because of the difference in understanding above three questions. Great men perfecting the noble purpose before employ any actions and methods of actions; their actions are driven by vision, noble purpose and long-term gain, they are glad to welcome short-term pain. Ordinary men perfecting the action and method of action before choosing suitable purpose; their actions driven by the praise and recognition of other people, by emotion, the ego and with short-term gain. The great men listen to the emotion, calm the irritating, and let he mind to look deeper into the situation, they got a different point of views with most of us then they act in a different, even shameful ways. They have controlled their mind, their emotion and their actions directly to noble purposes. Most of us do not get this high state of mind so we need to train a lot to understand them or at least do not harm or prevent them from taking action.
In daily interactions, we need to find the answers to these three questions too. We need a quiet and still mind to get real facts to make a better judgment; we need understand the motives for empathy. We need to understand the way of action, not just go deep to know what and how. With understanding, we can control our mind to get the best result of the interaction in life. With understanding, we can create interdependent living; we can multiply the power of each separate individual. We can resolve all conflict and prevent useless stress in our life. This is the biggest present we can give to our spouses, children, family members and all other people around us. D. The fourth way to control emotion is by taking action.
Doing physical exercises, participating in gymnastics, jumping, cheering, singing out loud, playing with kids, celebrating with the victory are the acts create energy. Massive action, especial massive action with joy, stimulates the brain to create chemicals of happiness. In a happy state, we will feel more joy, less pain, more open to opinions. We take more actions of love, caring, and generosity. The happy state makes us feel more confident and powerful than stress state so that we tend to take more challenges, accepting more unwanted things and looking to the bright side of problems. The bodies of happy people push out the toxic chemicals and activate the process of healing. Happy people associating with laughing, a lot of muscles combine together to create the laugh. In reverse, laughing stimulates the happy state; it is like the conditioned response between the mind and body. Many laughter yoga clubs found all over the world to help people have more joy and happiness in daily life.
Individuals do not control their mind can be easily stimulated by tiny things. Subconscious mind detects unwanted things very quickly, it sends a signal to the mind to arouse a stress state. Just seeing a small part of the action or a part of the way of action taken, the shallow mind very sensitive to these unwanted things, the mind will be stimulated. Without realizing and taming it down, the mind will agitate more aggressively, and stop looking deeper into the motive of action. A sequence of wrong events or wrong action has taken place, this is the first stage of misery in life. This is the scriptural pattern of conflict in life, in the family, and in society; where there is no understanding, no empathy, less sharing, less love people will find a lot of annoying and stressful signals. This can be called hell on earth. Individuals in these place hunger for love, connection and significance.
The emotion has been exploiting skillfully in business. Sale men, shopping centers, and luxury products are the masters at creating and increasing the emotion of prospects and customers. By telling attracting stories, creating noble emotions, noble images, and noble purposes, they make customers think that happy mean possessing luxury products and pain with not possessing the luxury products. When emotion goes up because of satisfying customers deepen needs, customers will passionate the luxury products. Customers are moved from not interested in the products to a keen desire of possessing the product unconsciously. With the obsessed desire of possessing the product, customers’ mind will collect data to support the happiness relating to possessing products. Moreover, their mind tends to ignore the opposite information. At peak emotion, people easily take a credit card to buy the expensive products; people make a decision by emotion. Peak emotion makes people blind in the calculation of real cost and real benefit in buying the product; peak emotion is the multiplier and divider with the varieties in the calculation of cost and benefit before making a decision. The luxury brands master at seducing emotions. Rarely an individual wake up and buy a five thousand dollar bag. In order to have a moment of paying big money for a luxury bag, the image of possessing the product with extreme happiness has been infused to the individual’s mind the long time before; moreover, on the way look at the luxury product, lot of happy and noble feelings has been put vividly in the mind of the prospects. Most people including you and me do not have the ability to resist the temptation of satisfying obsessed desire when in high emotion. We will fail if we do not practice to control the mind and desire. This is our weakness that we need to know; this is our ignorance. Shopping and having more can reduce stress for a short time with irrational and emotional individuals, whom usually driven by emotion. In fact, individuals who have been led by emotion in one area tend to be leaders in other areas. The indicators of our weakness in controlling emotion often appear in many decisions we have made. If we do not aware of this weakness, we can create misery in our life, our family and our society unconsciously. Adversely, we use self-talk, the stories, and wrong assumptions to justify our wrong behaviors; we consciously think we are right.
Great men can control emotion and resist the temptation; they have the deepest look at themselves and at objects of thought, with throughout understanding. They got wisdom in knowing others and they got the enlightenment in knowing themselves. How peaceful, how tranquil, how happy and how motivated we got when watching, hearing the great men, Mother Teresa, great monks, Buddha, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln walk, act and talk. On the other hand, how annoyed, how nauseous, how terrible and how depressed we got when watching, hearing rich, stingy and jealous men walk, act and talk. It may be the good luck for people near caring, loving and generous individuals; and the bad luck for people near selfish, jealous and stingy individuals. There might be no difference in names of action they take, but there is the biggest difference in how much love, how much consideration, how much caring, how much empathy, how much pain and how much joy they put in the actions. If people pay attention to the invisible in actions, they not only can reduce misery, pain, and stress in life but also they can create warm, happiness, and the satisfaction of deepening needs inside for all relating individuals. This is the effective way of eradicating mental diseases, mental problems and other problems in family, school, and society. It is useless if we use anti-depressive medications to treat patients with depression without removing the sources of stress. The failure of treating patients with depression is mainly caused by patients are still living in the stressful environment. A large number of stress chemicals running throughout the body of patients antagonize all the effects of the medications.
To succeed in combating the self to create happiness, we need persistence in personal development, sharpen the skills. The process of personal development associates with changing oneself, and changing the attitude form demanding to serve. We cannot develop ourselves with the concept of self-help; we can only develop ourselves with the concept of helping others, Mother Teresa is an example. Owning for personal development, we can develop ourselves big enough to have talent and courage to create changes with changeable things in the environment to meet our needs. Moreover, with the process training and practicing, we gain wisdom and enlightenment to correct ourselves by reducing unnecessary needs, limiting the useless desires, controlling the anger, knowing our ignorance. With wisdom and enlightenment, we happily open to new idea and opinions; we can get a better understanding of other people. Understanding creates compassion and love. Persisting in practicing, we may develop ourselves big enough that we can gain peace and stillness of mind in chaos; we may gladly accept the unchangeable problems or the facts of life in our environment. Change is inevitable to gain happiness and peace of mind.
The best advice for a successful but unhappy individual is taken a course of meditation or managing oneself. After months or years of practicing, they may gain the big changes inside and get different belief system. It is like the process of changing from dark, timid lenses to bright lenses to view the environment. Previously, with dark and timid lenses, they only see misery, upset and injustice from the environment; the perception of life makes them angry and stressful, which leads to endless problems and diseases for themselves. After months or years of training oneself, they get the bright lenses to view the world, they see joy, gratefulness, and generosity from the same environment; the new perception of life makes them grateful and happy, which leads to endless wealth and wonderment in life. Life gets better not because of changes in the environment, but because of people changing themselves. Interestingly, by changing themselves, people become big enough that they can create the changes they want to see in the world.
CITATION
Van D. Dao.(2017). Awaken You Wonderful we: How do we create heaven on earth?The secret of one-page table reveal all the real causes of all phenomena and problems: Most phenomena, physical problems, mental problems, social problems and how to solve them: Ability, Autoimmune diseases, Belief system, Gut feelings, Hysteria, Learning, Learning difficulties, Mental problems, ADHD, ...Talent. https://www.amazon.com/Awaken-you-wonderful-phenomena-problems/dp/1549843524
