Most of us have at least heard of the Japanese Martial Art named Aikido. One of its main principles is the use of an attacker’s momentum against them. This allows much smaller and physically weaker practitioners to best much larger and stronger opponents who rely on brute strength alone.
Well, it turns out that our emotions work in much the same way.
Have you ever tried to will yourself into not being angry about something? Just tried to sit there and make the anger go away, turn it off, make it disappear? Then you know how impossible it is.
In reality, all we can do to affect how we feel is to distract ourselves from our emotions by focusing on something else, redirecting them, numbing them or simply ignoring them.
Here’s the operative principle for most things in life: the harder you fight against something, the more power you give it over you.
I was raised Catholic, and during the liturgical season of Lent, Catholics choose something to give up as a sacrifice to help prepare their hearts for the Easter celebration. Well, I must have been eight or nine years old when I figured I would “outsmart” the system and choose something that other people (in other words, my parents) would think I liked, but that I wouldn’t have any problem living without for 6 weeks or so.
Growing up, like most boys, my favorite cartoon show was The Transformers. I never missed an episode, rerun or not, and I remember shedding copious tears when they actually killed off Optimum Prime in the feature-length film…but I digress.
Another show I liked — but came in at a pretty distant third — was G.I. Joe. Sooooo, instead of giving up watching The Transformers during that Lent, I gave up watching G.I. Joe instead.
Well, guess what happened? Suddenly I found myself obsessed with G. I. Joe. Curiosity about what happened during each episode my brother watched made me crazy! I was caught several times perched at the top of the staircase peering down trying to catch a glimpse of the forbidden show, whereas before all this I couldn’t have cared less about it.
What usually happens when we disagree with someone? They get defensive. What happens when someone tries to sell us aggressively on something? Our walls go up and our suspicions are peaked.
That which you renounce, you make yourself a slave to. Anything you give your focus and attention to — whether in a positive way by focusing on it or in a negative way by renouncing or avoiding it — you give your energy and power to. This is the “brute strength approach.”
So what’s the Aikido approach? Instead of fighting or renouncing your emotions, connect with them instead.
Use their momentum and redirect their energy toward the goals you want to achieve.
How? Simple (but paradoxically difficult): stop treating them like an unwanted distraction that’s taking you away from and preventing you from achieving your goals, and instead make them the center of your attention for a few moments.
When you feel pulled in a direction you don’t necessarily want to go by a strong emotion, especially a negative one, pause what you’re trying to accomplish and give some attention to that emotion.
What am I feeling? Give it a name: anger, sadness, despair, vague anxiety or unease, etc. Address it as you would a member of your family or team. Hey Anger, I feel you pretty intensely just now. What’s up? What’s bothering you? Is there something I did or that I’m about to do that’s making you behave this way? What are you afraid of?
Then listen. You’ll be surprised at the answers you get back; “I’m angry because of the way that other person treated me yesterday (or last week or ten years ago).”
Hey, that makes sense. Tell me more about that. How should I (have) handle(d) it?
Most of the time, just taking a moment to connect with and hear out the part of you that’s acting out is sufficient to help it soften and cede control back to your core self. Often a promise to take some time in a quiet moment sometime in the near future to circle back and dive deeper into what that part was afraid of is enough to get us back on track in a busy moment of our day (just make sure you keep your promises).
If fighting our emotions doesn’t work, and ignoring or numbing them also has some pretty significant downsides, then there is a different way to get them on board our agenda and working as our inner team. This way is by connecting with them and honestly hearing them out. Then they become our trusted and loyal allies and we get to live more and more from our best self, our true core.
To learn more about how to connect with emotions that might be holding you back, click here.
