24 STRATEGIES FOR PEACE ADVENT CALENDAR - DAY 5: E - EMOTION

Our emotions are powerful forces.

Their primary function is to protect and perpetuate our life.

Fear warns us about potential danger, anxiety indicates uncertainty about a possibly unfavorable future as well as lack of preparedness, anger signals that someone has transgressed us.

Happiness, lust and love draws us towards certain people, places and situations. It motivates us to enter into relationships, start a family, have children.

None of our emotions are “negative”. All of our emotions are simply our internal guidance system.

Since our life is a collection of the results of our actions and every action of ours is propelled by an energy in motion or emotion, it becomes of critical importance to learn how to systematically observe, understand, accept and adequately interpret all our emotions so we can learn how to manage them effectively so we can control them instead of allowing them to control us.

When we are lacking emotional awareness we are at the mercy of our emotions often reacting with a knee jerk fight - flight - freeze survival impulse. We even tend to blame other people, events, circumstances or our past for making us angry, frustrated, sad, depressed etc. Thus we give our power away. We grant other people control over our state of mind.

To get our power back we need to learn that:

1. every emotion we are experiencing is for our highest good
2. we do not have to react to any of our emotions - instead we can respond to them
3. there can be many interpretations of each emotion e.g. bored = I need a snack or bored = I need a walk
4. we mirror how we express our emotions based on what we experienced growing up

I talk with my mother Halina every day on the phone. Due to the lock down I am unable to visit her. She has Alzheimer’s disease and lives in a facility. 16 of the patients and 11 of the staff members are sick with COVID virus. Several of them died. However my mom does not panic. She survived Nazi occupation during the Second World War and harsh times of the communist regime in Poland. She remains calm. She does not remember I called a day before so our conversations resemble each other. She is aware of the pandemic as she cannot leave her room and travel to her apartment like she used to, nor have visitors or even go for walks.

Every time we talk on the phone she repeats that since she has no control over things she is not going to worry about them. That was always her mantra that helped her survive hardship in life. I need that repetition. In my 50-ties I am still learning from my mom. We are talking about how wonderful it will be when I finally can visit her.

How can we remain calm during stressful times when our future is uncertain and there is a threat to our livelihood and even our life which triggers heightened levels of fear and anxiety?

Step 1: Remember Halina’s lesson: if you have no control over the situation accept it and make the best out of it.

Step 2: Create space between your emotion and reaction. Notice your emotion. Name it with one word. Describe this emotion as if you were describing it to an alien. Process your emotion by allowing it to pass through your body. Breathe it out. Emotion is just a vibration. It cannot harm you. It will not kill you. By releasing it you gain authority over your emotion.

Step 3: Select how you want to respond to the trigger. Successful people aim to create as many options as possible.

A key thing to know here is understanding that we have a choice between reacting and responding to our emotions. We have a choice between holding on and releasing our emotions. Releasing our emotion creates a space.

This space gives birth to peace.