Tips on Channeling Your Emotions in a Positive Direction: You are in Control of Your Emotional Responses

Do you instinctively channel your emotions in a positive direction? Perhaps you have to make an effort to do so. Maybe the thought never occurred to you, but the directions your emotions go can make or break your day.

Consider the following tips on channeling your emotions in a positive direction.

Emotional awareness:

Being alert or conscious of the direction that you are channeling your emotions is the first step to changing your life for the better. For example, your smart phone rings and you respond, but how do you respond? Is it mentally, physically, spiritually or emotionally?

Your response may include all of the above, but depending upon whose name and number shows up on your smart phone, your emotional response may be in a positive direction if you welcome that call or a negative direction, if the call is not one you want to receive.

Being aware that you are making an emotional response allows you to make changes in a positive direction. Even a negative emotional response can turn into one that is positive.     

Assume control:  

As soon as you decide to assume control of your emotions, you are no longer in a position where fluctuating emotions influence or rule your life. Assuming control of your emotions allows you room to grow, as you welcome new, life experiences and learn how to deal with them. You become able to take on new challenges.

For example, you may want to be able to perform in public, but you are afraid as fear controls your actions and behaviors. Intense fear as an emotional response, can result in responses of fight, flight and paralysis.          

Performance anxiety is an elephant-in-the-room sized issue for almost everyone who spends time on stage.

Taking control of your emotions and reducing that elephant to a manageable size takes practice, but it is possible.

Become proactive:

Reacting emotionally to happenstances in everyday life is normal. Choosing how to react, by becoming proactive in a positive direction to those happenstances, instead of allowing your emotions to run rampant, will change your life for the better. At no point is it always going to be easy. Your emotional awareness and ability to assume control over your emotions will make proactive, positive responses easier.

Remember that learning how to channel your emotions in a positive direction is part of emotional growth. This takes time, effort and serious nurturing, but you will find that developing emotional maturity is worth the effort because of new realms of discovery that await your discovery.