Rationality AND Emotion

It is very obvious that we have two sides: Our hearts and our heads. And we all know that sometimes they contradict each other. Sometimes we know that something is right even though it feels wrong or the other way around. Both rationality and emotion are incredibly beautiful powers. And both can help us live a better life, be a better person and be happier, or make us miserable and feel like we have nothing left to live for. But how do we handle them, when they contradict each other? How can we handle them at all and how can we use them to our advantage.

The first step to a healthy balance between rationality and emotion is understanding, that both are important and both exist in their own right. Banishing either from our lives will lead to imbalance and pain. We need to acknowledge our emotion. We need to understand how we feel. We live in a world, where we are either over-focused on rationality or over-focused on “feeling good”. The problem with the first is obvious: If we never focus on emotion, we are emotionally immature, meaning, we have no idea what we feel and how to handle it. Focusing too much on “feeling good” is problematic, because it does not allow for pain and anger and their negative siblings and we cannot deal with something that we do not acknowledge.

Everything we experience we need to handle on an emotional and a rational level. Imagine, we had a fight with our best friend. The rational level to deal with that is to understand where our friend was coming from and to admit the points where we were wrong ourselves. But that is not it: It is natural and good that a fight with our friend will trigger some emotion. Sadness, anger, pain. We need to realize that we do feel them and handle them. Maybe we need to talk or journal about them, maybe we want to deal with our anger by working out, or cry. However most obviously it would not be wise, to just deal with the fight emotionally and never talk to our friend about it. And never rationally dissolve it.

Sometimes we feel emotions that seem out of place. And that is alright as well. We can try to make sense of our emotion, but sometimes, there is no real reason for why we feel a certain way, but that is no reason to push the emotion aside and not allow us to feel it. Emotions are beautiful. Being able to express them and show them is not a sign of weakness or a sign that we have no self-control. It is a sign, that we are human. It is a sign that we know ourselves. And frankly once we learn how we can deal with our emotion, it becomes a super power. Because it is how we truly end and argument.

But we do not only feel negative emotion. The interesting thing is: when we learn to handle our sadness and anger we also become happier. Because we learn to recognize not only our negative emotion. We learn to recognize when we are happy. And when we enjoy ourselves, and consequently we learn to understand what got us into a positive state and we learn to repeat that. And when we have dealt with the negativity there is room for happiness inside us.

But it is not all about emotion. There are emotions, that are very persistent and difficult to deal with. We do our best, but we simply cannot handle them. A good example is guilt about past actions. We cannot change what happened and we feel bad about it. And the more we focus on it, the worse we feel. This is one of the points in time, where we need to understand that we cannot handle it emotionally anymore, but we have to be rational and let it go. Move on and maybe come back to it at some point and try to deal with it then. A similar situation is, when we fall in love even though we may be married. Feeling attracted to someone is not something we can control. It is an emotion. It is nothing we have to feel guilty about, but pushing that kind of emotion aside will allow us, to keep living a happy life with our husband.

Just because something is the right thing to do does not mean, it is easy on our emotion. And it is alright to feel that emotion, as long as we do not make a mistake because we based our decision purely on emotion. There is a healthy balance between doing what we have to and doing what we feel like. But it is good to know what we feel like. It does not mean, we have to act upon it. And sometimes acting on an emotion is a good thing. For instance when you feel like telling a team mate, that you enjoyed working with him. That will lift up both you and the team mate, so why would you not say something.

It is important, to control how we act on our emotion, because we may cause harm. But it is just as important to not suppress all emotion. If I feel like crying at the movies, I should. The worst thing that could happen is that I end up with ruined make up. Yes, we will need to do our jobs, even if we don’t feel like it, but maybe we can get ourselves into a bubble bath afterwards.

It is important to tend to our rational side and do the things our head tells us we need to do. Because if we do not do them, we will feel bad about ourselves and this will affect our emotions as well. But it is just as important to take care of our emotion. And it starts with acknowledging them, and then we get to figure out, what helps us feel better. Different emotions will call for different measures and it is journey to find out how to deal with which emotion and when to push an emotion aside for a bit.

The Recovery Journal

I stumbled upon this in a video and I think it is something many people can benefit from. Because it is not only about getting better, is about getting motivated. And we all have times where we do not feel motivated and a source of motivation of positivity can be so helpful in those situations.

A Recovery Journal the way I was introduced to is a place that is entirely positive and contains two parts:

A section for quotes
A section for reasons to recover

The first one is just a collection of quotes that speak to our hearts. Quotes that touch us. Move us. Motivate us.

The second is broader than just “quotes”. When we think about it, there are a ton of reasons to recover:

We want to own a pet
We want to publish a book
We want to graduate
We want to marry
We want to eat our favorite cake
We want to see a close friend again
We want to own a fancy dress
etc.

Anything can go on that list, as long as it is positive. It reminds me a little of a positive bucket-list, that contains everything we want to do and become, the little things and the big things. There is no limit as long as it is positive.

I personally added a Gratitude Section. This is not a substitute for a Gratitude Log but it is a place to write down all the great things in our lives that we are grateful for. Things like:

Our friends and family
Our hobbies
Our passions
etc.

I find that adding a list titled: “Where my worth comes from” or “The Value I add to this world” it is something I have spoken about before on this blog and it is really just about remembering the good that is in us, that we so easily tend to forget, when we are in a dark place.

Another thing that might be helpful to keep in a Recovery Journal is a list of triggers. And what helps avoiding them or dealing with them. Yes, the Recovery Journal is supposed to be a place of positivity. But there are two reasons for such a list: The first is that we cannot fight something that we cannot name. And knowing what triggers us is therefore crucial. And the other point simply is: this page can show us, how often we actually managed to get out of a triggering situation, or deal with a trigger. Therefore I think it has the right for a page in the Journal.

But what do we do next? What do we do, when we have a few quotes and reasons to recover, identified and put down a few triggers?

We keep going. We come back to these lists and read them, when we are not so well, we keep those lists growing, whenever we see the opportunity. Whenever we see a good quote, we write it down. Whenever someone tells us, what helps them, and we want to try that to deal with a trigger, we write it down and see if it helps. Whenever we think of a new thing we want to do, we write it down.

And as for all of these things writing it down on actual paper makes a lot of sense, because what we have written down we remember better. I like to keep my Recovery Journal in my Book of Lists, to always have it on me. But you could totally have a designated journal for it or just use sheets of paper and file them. You can go crazy and decorate it, if you feel like it, or you can keep it to the bare minimum. Your choice. Just remember that it should never be a source of pressure. You should like to go back to your journal and read through those lists and remember the good things.

I think the Recovery Journal is a step in the right direction, because it helps having a more positive mindset. And maintaining one, is an act of the will showing that we want to get better, even if we struggle to feel like that in our everyday lives.

Gratitude: A step towards a Positive Mindset

I keep talking about positivity. And a friend of mine recently asked me, how on earth one simply “acquires” the mindset of positivity. How do you simply “choose” to be positive. Chances are I will keep spiraling back to this, because the way I see it, this is key to becoming happy (really who could have guessed that?).

I am trying to elaborate on actionable steps to have a more positive mindset, to remind oneself of the good things on a regular basis. The first thing that comes to my mind here is a gratitude journal or a gratitude log. In essence we write one line starting with “I am grateful for…” at the end of every day. This may be in a designated journal or in your calendar. I would recommend actually writing it down on paper, rather than typing it in some form. Because what we actually wrote down we remember better.

But why would we do this? Where is the benefit? Why being grateful? Well… because this is exactly how we can actually switch into more positive thinking. Because when we are grateful, when we take the time to think about what was good in on that day, we start thinking “This is something I can write in my gratititude log” tonight. And that is the point, where we start remembering the good things in our daily lives.

But what if the world around us is too dark for us to see the positive. What if we cannot find something we want to be grateful for? I find that this can have two causes: Either we cannot see the good things, or we think we can only be grateful for the mindblowing things. And that is an issue. Why not be grateful for the little things? Those little things, that make our lives better, day after day. I once wrote into my diary: “I am grateful for my Google Calendar.” No kidding. The other reason is a bit trickier. Not bein able to see the good things has a lot to do with not wanting to see them. Which is a whole other issue that I have not found a solution to yet.