Ever feel like you are living a life of chaos? Are you feeling overwhelmed and frustrated over these crazy past two years? When difficult things happen or conflict arises, it can be hard to feel peace. Our primitive brain’s flight or fight system may sense fear, anger, hurt, or embarrassment. All those emotions may cause our brain to want to automatically respond by fighting, saying mean, hurtful things, or fleeing, escaping by turning inward, being depressed and blaming ourselves for the whole situation.
Every coping strategy has its consequences. Fighting may cause hurt and harm in a relationship that is important to us, and fleeing can cause damage to our own heart and soul.
So, let’s talk about better ways; I’ve created a five-step process that can help you manage your mind, master your emotions, and feel more peace in the midst of conflict. When you feel overwhelming emotion and you’re tempted to react impulsively.
- Stop and Pause: We can learn to respond to conflict and hard times in a way that contributes to harmony, connection, and peace. When we stop and pause, we allow those thoughts and feelings to catch up to our frontal brain, or our rational brain. Our rational brain is more logical and sounder. Pausing allows us to feel the emotion and then interpret it. It also allows our logical brain to determine how we are perceiving the information or situation. This pause allows us to show up in a challenging situation with calmness. During that pause, our rational brain can do a couple of things.
- Label the Emotion: Breathe and allow yourself to feel the emotions triggered by your primitive brain. Then label or name the emotion. I’m feeling angry. I’m feeling anxious. I’m feeling impatient. This helps you to investigate the emotion more objectively and takes away some of its power. Labeling and naming the emotions also allows acceptance and give sou time and space to feel the emotion.
- Lean in with Curiosity: Next, investigate the emotions. Lean in with curiosity and non-judgment. What is causing the most pain? Ask yourself:
- What are my thoughts about what is happening and why.
- Could there be another explanation?
- When we sit in a place of wonder and curiosity, we learn more about ourselves.
- Practice Compassion: The story I tell myself when I’m upset can be full of many “what if’s” and worst-case scenarios. These scenarios and stories do not bring me peace. We need to stop and take control of our thoughts and our emotions. In these cases, your brain is in judgment mode. You will probably want to say ‘my way is right, my way is better.’ Perhaps it’s time to show compassion in yourself and others. Acknowledge feelings of suffering, frustration, hurt and anger. Recognize that these feelings are unpleasant, and that is okay. Remind yourself that everyone has these feelings from time to time. These are human feelings, and we are all human. Start using some positive self-talk. Research has shown that when you talk to yourself in the third person you actually trigger the pathways in your brain that help you feel cared for, loved, and accepted. After we do this, you can move on to the next step.
- Practice Acceptance: Learning to accept the things that are out of your control can bring you peace. By accepting your thoughts and feelings and accept that other people may act and do things differently. When you fight against the things you cannot change, it is frustrating. Even when you resist your circumstances or situations or events, you create suffering and grief. If you want to feel peace, you need to practice managing your emotions. You need to train hour brain to stop and pause for a minute, and let our rational brain take over so you can show up how you want to show up in this world. This can happen if you apply the above…you will be able to respond calmly and respectfully, however, know that this takes practice. It means taking time to:
- Stop and Pause.
- Label the Emotion.
- Lean in with Curiosity
- Practice Compassion.
- Practice Acceptance.
So, as you can see there are lots of ways you could handle your challenging situations, but first you need to recognize your own emotions, your own thought patterns, and focus on what you want most, that is, if you want to feel love and peace? Do you?