Cutting Out the Crap 2/3: Negative Emotions

Simply put, these are the emotions you should banish from your life. I just picked the five worst emotions I could think of because the list would get quite lengthy otherwise :)

Regret

..is feeling bad for something you have done in the past, something you cannot change. Maybe you’re feeling it because of guilt or simply because you did something foolish. Either way, regret is not doing you any good. The past is the past, and your regret is not going to change or mend it. Every hour you spend regretting is an hour you could have been using to do something good with the knowledge from your mistake.

Worry

..is like regret but for the future. The future cannot be controlled so worrying is just sucking up your focus and energy in the current moment. Most things tend to just work out if you let me them and if they don’t mind, you’ll deal with it then. This is life! It’s not supposed to go right all the time or even most of the time. Expect and accept problems and look at them as learning experiences, fun little mole hills in your life experience. I also like the saying, “If you’re thinking about the millions of ways you could miss the baseball, how in the hell are you going to hit it?” Worrying is not only useless, it’s toxic to confidence and ability.  Read any self-help book out there and you’ll see stated very clearly that worry is extremely counter-intuitive to success.

Indecision

What do you want? You should decide what you want out of this life and do everything to get it. Indecision is laziness. Choose and act upon your decision!

Hatred

I am far from Christian but I agree with this the “Love thy enemy” concept completely. First off, if you hate someone so much that you know you won’t be able to drop it, refer to Part 1 of this series. Otherwise you should try to acknowledge that hatred is hurting you more than it’s hurting the object of your hatred. If someone has given you reason to hate them, I seriously doubt they care how you feel about them. Now please ask yourself “is this hatred bettering my life in any way?” If your answer is yes, I’d love to hear some reasons in the comments! If that isn’t good enough, think about how satisfying it would be to give an honest, warmhearted smile to someone that hates your guts :)

Impatience

You’re sitting in traffic, the doctor’s office or maybe your date is running late. You’re a pretty patient person but this wait is just too much and you’re starting to get anxious and annoyed. But why? You are putting yourself in bad mood over something you cannot change. Nothing you do (besides maybe jumping out of your car and running through traffic) is going to help things move faster! I hope you’re seeing the trend of futility here…

So how do you get rid of these?

1) Rationalize — Give yourself some sound logic as to why the emotion is not doing you any good or even harming you.
2) Stop and Smile — Whenever you find yourself feeling that emotion, stop for a moment. Take a deep breath, smile and think about something positive. Associate some happiness with whatever is causing that emotion.
3) Freak Out! — If you’re still seething with hatred through those smiles, you’ll need to take this a step further. Just go crazy. Scream, pound on walls, feel that negative emotion burn through your soul. Get it out of your system with a bang and maybe some broken furniture. It’s worth it to get that crappy emotion out of your head for good.
Have any other emotions you hate (Ha irony!) or release techniques you want to share? Please take out your anger on the comment section below!