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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Your Emotions are Action Signals

by

The Health Plus team -Arnold Best
2133 days ago
20190419

When I work with clients, the first thing I try to un­der­stand is what emo­tions they are feel­ing in the mo­ment (when they are ex­plain­ing their sit­u­a­tion). Every emo­tion has a mes­sage for you. Ap­pre­ci­ate the mes­sage. Neg­a­tive emo­tions are a sig­nal that change is need­ed. Once you learn to mas­ter your emo­tions and use them as a call to ac­tion, you can ei­ther change your per­cep­tion or change your ap­proach.

What if you knew that de­spite any neg­a­tive emo­tion you are feel­ing, you could get out of that feel­ing in a mo­ment or two? Do you know that at any mo­ment when you feel neg­a­tive emo­tion, the first step is to iden­ti­fy the Ac­tion Sig­nal? The Ac­tion Sig­nal is the mes­sage that the par­tic­u­lar neg­a­tive emo­tion is send­ing. The next step, af­ter you have clar­i­fied the Ac­tion Sig­nal, is to take ac­tion by ei­ther chang­ing your per­cep­tion or chang­ing your pro­ce­dure. You change your per­cep­tion by chang­ing how you look at it or what you fo­cus on. You change your pro­ce­dure by chang­ing your ap­proach or how you are re­spond­ing in the sit­u­a­tion.

The list be­low are 10 types of emo­tions we feel on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. I cre­at­ed a short list of what these emo­tions may mean to you:

Un­com­fort­able—Im­pa­tient, un­easy, dis­tressed, mild­ly em­bar­rassed.

Fear—Con­cern, ap­pre­hen­sion, scared, ter­ri­fied.

Hurt—Sense of loss.

Anger—Mild­ly ir­ri­tat­ed, re­sent­ful, livid, rage.

Frus­tra­tion—Held back or hin­dered in the pur­suit of some­thing.

Dis­ap­point­ment—Sad, de­feat­ed.

Guilt—Emo­tions or re­gret.

In­ad­e­qua­cy—Less than or un­wor­thy.

Over­loaded—Over­whelmed, hope­less, or de­pressed.

Lone­li­ness—Apart or sep­a­rate from.

This is the set of neg­a­tive emo­tions that you will turn in­to Ac­tion Sig­nals. In­stead of get­ting con­trolled by these emo­tions, you will use them as sig­nals to take ac­tion—that ac­tion is to ei­ther change your per­cep­tion or change your be­hav­iour.

Now here are what the 10 Ac­tion Sig­nals mean:

Un­com­fort­able­—When you feel un­com­fort­able, this is a sig­nal to change your state. Clar­i­fy what you want, then take ac­tion in that di­rec­tion.

Fear—Fear is a sig­nal to pre­pare your­self or get pre­pared to deal with some­thing that is about to come. If it’s be­yond your con­trol, then change your per­cep­tion and let it go.

Hurt—Hurt is a sig­nal that you have an ex­pec­ta­tion that is not be­ing met or you have a sense of loss. Eval­u­ate whether there re­al­ly is a loss, then change your per­cep­tion, way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing your needs or be­hav­iour.

Anger—This is a sig­nal that an im­por­tant rule you have in your life has been vi­o­lat­ed by some­one—maybe even you. Clar­i­fy your rules or ad­just them. Your rules might not match oth­er peo­ple’s rules so if you don’t change them, you might be an­gry the rest of your life.

Frus­tra­tion—The sig­nal is you are do­ing the same thing re­peat­ed­ly and ex­pect­ing a dif­fer­ent re­sult. You need to change your ap­proach to achiev­ing your goal.

Dis­ap­point­ment—This is a sig­nal that you need to re­alise re­gard­ing an ex­pec­ta­tion or an out­come that is not go­ing to hap­pen. You there­fore need to change your ex­pec­ta­tion. For ex­am­ple, your time-frame—maybe it was too short.

Guilt—Guilt is a sig­nal that you vi­o­lat­ed one of your stan­dards. Don’t stay in guilt, but don’t de­ny it. Make things right when you screw up. When you can’t change the past, change your present and fu­ture be­hav­iours. Recog­nise when you’re feel­ing guilty and you shouldn’t be, change your per­cep­tion, and let it go.

In­ad­e­qua­cy—This is a sig­nal that you need to do some­thing to get bet­ter. Get up and do some­thing to get bet­ter or change your cri­te­ria. Maybe your rules are too harsh. You don’t have to be per­fect—you sim­ply need to start tak­ing ac­tion.

Over­loaded—This is a sig­nal to reeval­u­ate what is most im­por­tant to you in this sit­u­a­tion. Dis­tin­guish be­tween what is a ne­ces­si­ty ver­sus what is a de­sire. Pri­ori­tise your list. Take the first one on your list and do some­thing about it in or­der to take con­trol of events in­stead of let­ting them con­trol you. The sim­plest way is to chunk it down, take one thing and act on it.

Lone­li­ness—The sig­nal is that we need a con­nec­tion with peo­ple. Clar­i­fy what kind of con­nec­tion you need: ba­sic friend­ship, some­body to laugh with, some­body to lis­ten to you and so on. Then, change your ap­proach or change your per­cep­tion.

This is the most prac­ti­cal, ef­fec­tive and ac­tion­able guid­ance I can of­fer you when it comes to man­ag­ing your emo­tions. So the next time any of these emo­tions pop up, and they will, rather than sim­ply dis­miss­ing or sup­press­ing them, em­brace them quick­ly and use them to in­spire ac­tion. It is a way to em­pow­er your­self to make mean­ing­ful changes in your life, and make the most of any neg­a­tive emo­tion. You con­trol your emo­tions in­stead of let­ting your emo­tions con­trol you.


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