Chip Conley: How to Control Your Emotion (1) Emotional Equation

If a man can control his passion, troubles and fears, he is superior to the king.

John Milton

1, despair = suffering-meaning

I forced myself to reread a book I read many years ago, which was an epoch-making memoir of psychologist Victor frankl-Pursuing the meaning of life. Dr frankl's book is a spiritual comfort to me. I think since he can endure the torture of Nazi concentration camps, I can also solve the challenges in life. Although I am strongly aware that the company needs new solutions to deal with problems, I am more concerned about changing my life. If I succeed, the company may also have a big turning point.

I told the story in Pursuing the Meaning of Life to my friends and colleagues, and most of them didn't understand why I was so obsessed with this book. Although they were indifferent, I continued to read frankl's book and began to extract the essence of the book and turn it into a simple equation:

Despair = Suffering-Meaning

In other words, despair is the result of pain becoming meaningless. In a person's trough (for frankl, when he was put into a concentration camp), suffering is actually a constant, so in order to reduce the sense of despair, it is best to turn our attention to seek more meaning.

Pay attention to the meaning of pain: discomfort

You should force yourself to do something that you always avoid, instead of procrastinating. Although this will make you feel uncomfortable, you should see the corresponding meaning. In this way, you can avoid the anxiety and fear caused by procrastination, and you can also feel the sense of accomplishment and control of completing the task ahead of schedule.

By constantly enduring discomfort, you can improve your endurance and let yourself persist in the face of pain and never give up.

2. Emotional equation

This little spiritual code became my lighthouse. From morning till night, especially during exams, I will memorize this equation to remind myself not to care too much about suffering, and to focus on what I can learn. Because the service industry all over the world has been hit hard in this economic recession, the management team of Happy Life Hotel Group is living in "quiet despair"-but in some cases, it is not very quiet. Once, when I hosted a series of leadership training for the company's top management, I realized their pain. I decided to talk about my vulnerability and anxiety and introduced my own "meaning of life" equation to them. These managers really put it into action-they started sending short messages to the employees below and sending Weibo online. When I woke up, they invited me to a class on how to control my emotions. To this day, I am still teaching all employees of Happy Life Hotel Group how to use "how to control their emotions" to develop their insight and foresight, and achieve happiness and success. Here are some of the most popular equations:

Disappointment = expectation-reality

Workaholic = What are you running from? /What are you living for?

Authenticity = self-awareness * courage

Happiness = love-fear

3. Fear: "What are you imprisoned for?"

Although most people were neither put into concentration camps nor as miserable as the CEO of the company, many people became prisoners of their own thoughts. So in this book, I want to ask you "what are you imprisoned for" and provide you with some keys to open this prison door. Frankl's "meaning" equation gives me a sense of freedom, freeing me from my habit and fearful way of thinking. Fear is a constraint that makes you helpless in the face of some things and isolated in the crowd. But the ancient meaning of "fear" is "ship fee", and passengers have to pay a certain ship fee to get from one place to another. Perhaps in this difficult economic ocean, the ticket of "fear" will lead us into another life world.

As Winston Churchill suggested in World War II, "If you have to go through hell, go!" Now, we also need to understand that those dark days can be seen as a new way to find strength-strength that we don't even realize ourselves. There is no doubt that you are facing some situations that require you to be more mature, and these challenges require you to be aware of your emotions. As the poet Ji Bolun said, "Your pain is to break the shell that imprisons your thoughts." In my difficult times, I keep asking questions in the work of applying the "meaning" equation: What are the breakthrough points in my life that can make me and the people around me develop new things?

4. "Emotion precedes thinking"

Emotion existed before we could describe it in words. The emotional center of the human brain (medulla oblongata) is formed before the part of the brain used for thinking (neocortex). From Darwin and Paul ekman to Frans de Waal and Jane Goodall, these scientists have found the same emotion in all animals, including humans. Pioneering research by scientists Antonio damasio, Kanda Pat, Joseph Ledu and others shows that our thoughts and emotions are part of a complex physical and mental ecosystem. Emotion provides a way to protect and promote life, whether it is a real response to "fight or flight" that belongs to our survival instinct or love for our partner.

5. Self-esteem = success/vanity

In the19th century, william james was probably the first psychologist to create the emotional equation. He pointed out that self-esteem equals success divided by vanity:

Self-esteem = success/vanity

Of course, the answer depends largely on how we define success and vanity. James's point of view is that if we know the status quo, that is, our achievements (success) exceed our potential, that is, what we think should be achieved (vanity), we will feel very good about ourselves.

6. "What is emotion?"

184 1 year, James wrote an epoch-making article about "what is emotion?" . Since then, psychologists have been arguing about which comes first, the chicken or the egg. The question James studied was: Does the external stimulus make you angry, your nostrils valgus, your body tense, or does the internal psychological reaction lead to your emotional reaction? Experts have confirmed that because emotions are quite unconscious reactions to most of us, we are in danger of being controlled by emotions. The truth of life is that the more we ignore our emotions, the more likely they are to become a powerful force affecting us.

7. "Be a smart inner weatherman"

What does all this mean to you? The Latin root of "emotion" means "movement", which means that emotion equals energy plus movement. Emotion is a tool to change or promote your life. They are neither stable nor dull. Just like the weather, it will not be sunny every day, nor will it be stormy every day. Emotions come and go in a hurry. The special weather conditions we feel all the time are the result of many factors, such as air pressure, humidity, temperature and altitude, and so are emotions. Depression may be a mixture of surprise and sadness, while joy may be bittersweet.

When an emotion stagnates on us, we will find ourselves in a state of depression, which is usually defined as anger that has not been vented. Suppressing emotions can lead to emotional loss of control, so learning how to vent emotions is a meaningful thing you can do for yourself and others.

Think about this question: do you use external weather as a means to transfer your internal weather? Being a smart inner weather forecaster allows me to keep abreast of my psychological changes in the past few years of struggle. In addition, to my comfort, I know that I am still suffering from a terrible emotional storm at this moment, but the next moment will be sunny.

8. placzek's Emotional Color Wheel Fear and sadness are basic emotions, just like green and blue are primary colors. Happiness and sadness are opposite emotions, just as yellow and purple are opposite colors. Between and around the main emotions are other emotions with different expressions. When adults are shown faces with different expressions in photos, they can almost accurately judge which basic emotions are represented by the expressions on their faces. The same is true when most people are asked to distinguish different primary colors. But when we are asked to distinguish many different colors and chromatograms, only God can help the color blindness in this world (including me, although I call myself "color idiot"). In fact, not only color-blind people are at a loss to distinguish many shades, but many people who don't pay attention to color research can't see much difference between Catharanthus roseus and lavender. Similarly, when we meet someone face to face, it is difficult for us to distinguish each other's complex emotions (unless he is a child, because children tend to express their emotions openly, whether they are sad, surprised, angry or happy). When it is difficult for you to get the information you want from someone's expression, you will feel that you are "emotionally blind" or "emotionally stupid", but this book is like giving you a pair of corrective glasses and starting to understand colorful emotions.

9. Event+reaction = Results Many people can't tell what happened to them from their reaction to this matter. But events or situations can't control emotions, but our beliefs lead to our reactions. When you have the same reaction many times, such as scolding children, being anxious when dealing with bosses or customers, or feeling angry when being overtaken on the highway, you will form an instinctive habitual reaction. In other words, you have an "ERO": event (E)+ reaction (R)= result (O). This description, which is similar to knee jumping, is actually an important hint that you can control your emotions to some extent. As Victor frankl wrote: "There is a space between stimulus and response, and in this space, we have the right to choose the response. Our response reflects our growth and freedom. " You have the right to choose your reaction. You are the product of your decision, not the product of the environment.

The distance between stimulus and response

If we live unconsciously, we will be bound by thoughts and emotions.

Thoughts and emotions are produced automatically, and they are the result of external stimuli and internal beliefs.

However, we are not those inherent beliefs that we choose independently, but are formed by the influence of environment and others in the process of growing up. Many of these beliefs are unreasonable and will make us fear or suffer.

Therefore, we should be aware of those automatically generated thoughts and emotions, so as to make a new choice.

We should also be aware of our own beliefs and try to replace those wrong beliefs with more reasonable ones.

10, break the habitual reaction

In order to break your habitual reaction, you need to recognize the information conveyed by emotions and treat emotions as information that allows you to choose freely, so take defensive measures against fear, learn from regret, release sadness, make full use of joy and unite with sympathy. Emotion will not happen to you, as if you were a willing victim. Emotion is like clay, you can make it into a work of art, and that is your life. You have the ability to transcend a series of resentment and distress. In fact, the life span of individual emotions is only about 90 seconds, and what we ordinary people have been repeating and experiencing is the subsequent influence of emotions.

Thoughts and emotions will not stop.

We fall into negative thoughts and emotions because the initial negative thoughts and emotions trigger our memory, which leads to more negative thoughts and emotions constantly appearing.

We should learn to let go, and the premise of letting go is consciousness.

Our freedom lies in the distance between stimulus and response, and we can have different responses to the same stimulus.

The master can be happy in any environment.

Explain the model, pessimists and optimists will have completely different feelings in the same situation.

Perspective, everything is a question of perspective and belief.

1 1. Rebuild your relationship with emotions. It is healthy for emotions to appear on you, but it is unhealthy for you to control them. Controlling emotions requires some observation or monitoring. For me, in operation, our company will enter a predictable low season of seasonal fluctuations, accompanied by a shortage of cash flow, which means "fear is coming again." In order to prevent the shortage of cash flow from deteriorating into chest tightness and nervous action, I need to detect the initial signal of an emotion, including where it appears in my body and what colors of emotions are accompanying it in the emotional "color wheel". This is where Emotional Equation becomes my ally. In the past few years, when I was overwhelmed by many emotions, I would find a quiet place, take a few deep breaths, and then write down all the physical feelings and emotional language that flowed through me at that moment. Then I will look at what I have written down and start to think clearly about how different emotions are combined. Finally, I found that this process is like solving a mathematical equation. Some of these emotions, together with some of those emotions, constitute my emotions. Decompose emotions, understand emotions and classify them, so that I can avoid collapse.

Emotional equation has become my psychological positioning system, which enables me to measure difficult or unknown terrain. This helps me to effectively detect, transform, control and guide emotions, making them more rational and clear, rather than scattered and chaotic. Anger can be transformed into courage, and jealousy can be broadened.

12, anxiety = uncertainty × powerlessness

Anxiety = uncertainty × powerlessness. Why should I multiply these two emotional states (or characteristics) instead of adding them? I think multiplying what you don't know (uncertainty) with what you can't control (powerlessness) will produce a greater emotion-anxiety than the sum of the two. Research shows that you will have such an experience yourself. The most terrible thing in life is not facing the unknown, but the great fear that comes with those uncertain things because you are unprepared or powerless. In this case, it is very helpful to reduce your sense of uncertainty or powerlessness as much as possible.

How to reduce uncertainty and powerlessness? Coping with anxiety

We should have confidence and believe that everything is perfect. Faith can give us great power and create a better reality.

We should improve our ability to deal with problems and difficulties.

Anxiety = threat * worry

We should realize that some so-called threats are just our imagination and our inadaptability to uncertainty.

When we pay attention to something and feel threatened, we will be anxious, so we have two choices to deal with anxiety:

1, reduce the attention to things, that is, learn to be detached. In this respect, pessimism can help us. When we realize that life is just a dream, everything is illusory, and everyone is equal before death, we can be detached.

2, reduce the expectation of threats, optimists can always look on the bright side, I believe that the problem will always be solved and everything will be perfect.

13, happiness = what you want (contentment) ÷ what you want (desire)

This seems to be a brain teaser. We can think of it this way: "What you want" is like practicing gratitude, which means cherishing the good luck in your life. To me, "having what you want" means that you are pursuing something that will bring you satisfaction, but potentially ignore what you already have. In other words, the confrontation between gratitude and satisfaction is being staged in modern society. Although we have many ways to implant gratitude into our lives, as long as our need for satisfaction raises our desire, our happiness will be fleeting; Before we catch it, we always have the next goal or experience to accomplish.

14, happiness = practicing gratitude and pursuing satisfaction.

This equation makes me see clearly that most of us are on the treadmill of "pursuing happiness". This equation helps many people I know understand the difference between practicing happiness and pursuing happiness. When my sense of happiness is elusive, I will ask myself: "What things are I not grateful for now, and what things have diverted my gratitude from my pursuit?" In the next chapter on division, you will see that I suggest that we change the result by cutting the dividend or divisor. You should pay special attention to this, because it will have a far-reaching impact on your emotional state.