An emotional response is the single greatest barrier to anything you want.

They cloud reason, and if you cannot see the emotion you cannot have any control. If you allow your emotions to dictate how to act, you will not live a good life.

There is a difference between being aware of our emotions and being emotional. Being able to pause and recognise your emotions - ‘I feel angry right now, why’ - that’s being aware of your emotions.

Whereas, expressing every emotion as you feel it, is being emotional.

The biggest problem is, it can make you do things which are not in your best interest for you goals ahead. One emotional outburst can burn every bridge you built and destroy everything you worked for.

We’ve seen it happen to athletes, saying something out of anger, they slip up and use a word they shouldn’t, then they get dropped by all their sponsors, banned and just like that 20 years of hard work erased by one emotional outburst. Whereas if they had just controlled it for 2 minutes, they would still be pursuing their purpose.

Anger is the strongest.

It holds the most power. Reacting to something with anger will rarely result in a positive outcome.

Anger seems effective in the short term, everything goes quiet, or you solicit the response you wanted.

But often in the long term it means people avoid you, lose respect for you, and ultimately you lose emotional control.

The immediate satisfaction does not result in true benefit.

If you think about any angry person you know, you tend to avoid them, not like them, and overall a strong feeling of resentment. Being unliked by everyone who has come across you will not play out for you well. It breeds hostile situations which stop people providing you with valuable resources which you need to progress towards your goals.

Love and attraction is also very powerful.

It blinds you from what’s in your best interest.

You cant repress the feelings, but learning to be able to express them and control them is greater for your own outcomes. You shouldn’t let these cloud your plans.

Often affection deviates your full focus. Now this is ok, but you mustn’t let it derail your mission.

These emotions are so strong you can become overwhelmed by feelings of affection and begin to prioritise the partners feelings over your own aspirations. This can lead to a diversion of time, energy, and resources away from personal growth and goal attainment.

Moreover, the emotional intensity of love and affection can cloud judgment and rational decision-making, potentially leading individuals to ignore warning signs that may hinder their progress.

While love and affection are essential aspects of our experience in life, it's crucial to maintain a balance and ensure that personal goals and aspirations are not compromised in the pursuit of romantic fulfilment.

Emotions change a million times throughout the day, they’re all over the place, all of time.

However, if you yourself are emotional, that means you’re all over the place, all of the time.

Your emotions distract you from where you want to be. They will tail you far off course - but only if you let them.

You feel tired so you skip the gym, you feel lonely so you just load up porn again, you feel bored so you go on social media again and again.

This does not make you happy.

Following your purpose no matter your emotions is what makes you happy.

If you feel a slight bit of anger and you shout every time you feel it, no one wants to be around you because you always shout.

Work on observing your emotions and no matter what stay with your goals. There’s a time and a place for recognising your emotions, when you are sad, ask yourself why, but don’t let it become your identity.

You are not sad, just just feel sad. This is putting you in the drivers seat.

Don’t try and suppress them but don’t let them be control you.

Understanding that it’s not bad for you to feel emotional but letting that control how you live, is.

Actually controlling your emotions seems impossible if you don’t really know they’re there until afterwards.

You didn’t realise you were so angry until after you’ve calmed down.

If you can become aware of yourself and your emotions it’s like being given power of control over yourself. You choose and dictate what goes on no matter what.

For me personally this started with recognising that I lived ONLY through my emotions and feelings. Everything I did was a result of emotions. During Highschool I had cemented a habit of serving my emotions and I didn’t realise I was doing it until I was in college.

One day the penny just sort of dropped. I only revised if I felt like it, I was only happy if something good had happened earlier, if something irritated me then my whole day was a write off because all I could think about was whatever it was irritating me. I watched porn when I was bored, scrolled social media all day and night, ate bad food if I felt tired, skipped doing cardio if could’t be bothered, it really was like I was just floating through life with no meaning.

Every time I was feeling some way or doing something unconsciously, I would catch myself in it and take a second to think about what I was doing. If you can be conscious and mindful of everything you feel you can manipulate yourself to feel how you want to.

Starting meditation and time away from my phone is how I ‘built up’ my mindfulness. Overtime it became more and more natural until it is second nature.

Then, you are aware of your emotions all the time.

When you are mindful of emotions it means you now have the opportunity to control them. The more awareness you have the easier it is. The best use of this is turning anything into happiness, or making sure emotions don’t stop you from pursuing a purpose.

Th best way to control you emotions is to reason with yourself. You feel sad, ask yourself this, does feeling sad get you anywhere? No.

Being sad about something is normal, but ultimately your goals don’t care if you’re sad.

Being mindful allows you to reason with yourself and often rule it out as a stupid thing in the first place.

When you’re feeling the emotion, it can take you down the rabbit hole, of becoming that emotion. By manipulating your emotions, you avoid this trap as you feel only what is beneficial to your goal.

So the key to feeling a certain way is to act as if we already were. If you don’t *feel* like smiling, force yourself to smile or do a cheerful whistle, act as if you were already happy and it will tend to make you feel happy.