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Emotions can be difficult to control, especially during life's most stressful moments. Media career coach Ken Lindner argues that you can free yourself from debilitating emotions that often impair good judgment by following his “tried-and-true” steps. Here’s an excerpt.
Your emotions can be killers! They can kill the accomplishment of your plans, the fulfillment of your dreams, and the attainment of the life that you envision and so dearly want for yourself. Potentially poisonous emotions can also trigger behavior that leads to lower self-esteem and self-worth. Essentially, they can destroy your spirit and your positive energy. Obviously, all of this is extremely bad stuff!
When I was a Harvard undergrad, I saw the very smartest people do some of the most unfathomable, self-destructive, and seemingly “stupid” things. In the process, they destroyed themselves and their chances of enjoying exceedingly bright futures. From this apparent irony, I gleaned the following: Just because a person is intellectually gifted or wonderfully talented doesn’t mean that he or she is in control of his or her emotions. In fact, it can be quite the contrary!
Haven’t you, at one time or another, let your feelings of hurt, anger, loneliness, resentment, rage, neediness, insecurity, jealousy, and/or hopelessness cloud your best judgment, resulting in your making a disappointing, self-sabotaging, and/or spirit-deflating life choice? If your response is, “Oh yes, unfortunately far too many times,” have you considered what led to these life-derailing situations?
The answer may well be that you were energized, catalyzed, and led to act in response to the energy charges from potentially poisonous feelings, urges, and impulses because they, at the time, overpowered and thereby negated your intellect and your best judgment. You would up assuaging an intense impulse or urge rather than opting to make a positive life choice. Your actions were not a well thought-out reflection of your very best judgment, as you didn’t take into account what you truly want in and for your life. Instead, you made a self-defeating, emotionally charged choice that was in direct contradiction to what you, in more lucid moments, would want to accomplish. And later, upon clearer reflection, you realized once again that you had compromised your life goals and dreams, as well as your physical, psychological, emotional, and/or spiritual well-being! This failure to do what you generally knew was “right” may also have led to a significant diminution of your overall self-esteem, as well as to a substantial decrease in your core confidence to create and enjoy the life that you crave.
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Sometimes we pay little or no price for poor/self-destructive decision-making. However, many times we cause ourselves, our most dearly held goals, and the ones we love severe or irreparable damage because we are unable to think and reason clearly and toxic-emotion-free at pivotal decision-making moments.
Think of Your Killer Emotions as your emotional survival kit, as it will provide you with a set of clear, tried-and-true steps for acting with absolute intellectual clarity when you are about to make important life and career choices. The key is for you to master your emotions and urges and to turn them into your allies when you are making important life choices. One of the ways by which you will accomplish this is by correctly identifying your unique set of very specific Personal Emotional Triggers (or PETS). As we will discuss, these PETS are so highly super-charged that they will overpower, and thereby nullify, the less potent, competing, and/or sabotaging emotions, urges, and impulses. As a direct result, you will be free to make crystal-clear life choices and take actions that reflect and effect what you most want for yourself and your life in the long term.
There are some things in life that you can control and some that you can’t. I’ve seen way too many individuals make diminishing, destructive, and/or self-sabotaging life choices because they worried about things that they couldn’t control, and they didn’t focus — or lost focus — on controlling the things that they could. You absolutely can control your reasoning and evaluative processes, your choices, and your actions — as long as you master the potentially toxic emotions, urges, and impulses that can compromise or totally dismantle your best judgment when you make your life choices.
So, if making truly great life choices sounds exciting, beneficial, and/or intriguing, let’s get started!
Excerpted from Your Killer Emotions by Ken Lindner. Copyright (c) 2012 by Ken Lindner. Reprinted by arrangement with Greenleaf Book Group Press.
© 2012 MSNBC Interactive
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