Strong negative emotions and feelings are like dragons. They are just as uncontrollable and also ready to destroy all living things around with the fire of passions. If you are faced with the fact that by force of will you cannot keep your dragons in check, if you understand that a negative feeling is overwhelming and prevents you from living happily, if there is a war with others in your world, then it’s time to put yourself in order.
The very first step in mastering your emotions is to honestly admit to yourself that you are angry, angry or resentful and emotions overwhelm your thoughts and body in such a way that they prevent you from living happily. Once you’ve admitted this to yourself, you’re ready for the second step: the regular job of a documentary journalist.
Take a piece of paper or open a Word document on your computer and describe everything that happens to you.
Write everything that comes to mind about the situation and your feelings in it, tell about all the participants in these events. Throwing out everything that has accumulated on paper is much better than on a person, or leaving it to burn in the depths of one’s own soul. Since no one will read this except you, you can afford complete frankness and honesty.
The third step will require very little from you: drink tea or coffee, wash the dishes or do 50 squats, you can take a walk in the fresh air. You need a break to switch yourself into a new role.
The new role will be the role of Expert. Imagine that you are now an Expert who is completely unfamiliar with the author of your manuscript, did not take part in what happened, and will read everything for the first time. Personally, you care about what happens in your life, and your Expert is absolutely indifferent to what is happening. He is a calm and confident person with a huge life experience. His main task is to assess the situation and give a wise hint to the author of this letter. With that attitude, open your notes and read them as if you didn’t feel anything. It is as if you are reading a letter from your barely known, but good person for the first time and you are not at all offended by what he writes. You are an Expert at work and parse e-mail. If you feel that you have fallen out of the role of an Expert, then … do another 50 squats, they will help you return to the desired image.
The Expert has an important task: he needs to answer a number of questions in WRITTEN in order to send reasonable recommendations to the author of the letter. The author of the letter asks the Expert to answer a number of questions.
1) What happened in the life of the author of the letter? The expert is obliged to state the facts of what happened in three sentences. Only facts and no descriptions of feelings and emotions. Once again: only the facts of what happened!
2) To whom are the emotions and feelings of the author of the letter addressed? The expert is obliged to make a list of all persons present, to whom the emotions and feelings of the author are addressed. It happens that the addressees did not participate in the situation, but exists in the past or present. (This may turn out to be, for example, mother, whose intonation was spoken by the most important enemy). Therefore, the Expert must be calm and attentive when reading the letter.
3) What does the author of the letter want from those people to whom his emotions and feelings are addressed? The expert will calmly and measuredly list all those desires that he sees from the letter or that the author of the letter had in mind. Usually, at this stage, emotions and feelings are already greatly subsiding, but you should continue your work on yourself, since this is a temporary phenomenon. Unsolved problems can habitually cause negative emotions. We continue our work.
4) When both the addressees are known and the desires are determined, it is necessary to prepare solutions to the situation. Your desires are already known to your Expert, so the task of the Expert is to determine the desires of other participants in what was happening. Again he makes a wish list in writing, but now of other people. This is necessary in order to understand how other people can be interested in resolving the situation in favor of the author of the letter.
5) As the next step, the Expert prepares a plan (scenario) of negotiations, thinks over ways to reach agreements. If possible, it is best to take the help of specialists in this matter and go to negotiation training. There you can prepare a plan (scenario) of negotiations and practice it. But if this is not possible, then we continue on our own.
6) Trust your Expert to come up with a few DIFFERENT ways for the writer to behave in a negotiation scenario. It is best to come up with at least ten different ways of behavior of the AUTHOR of the letter! Humorous, serious, tragic, comic, guiding, parental, strategic, emotional, unemotional, journalistic, psychotherapeutic, childish, teenage, utopian, philosophical, how else can the author of the letter behave? There can be many ways. For convenience, you can try on different roles for the author of the letter: how would he, the author, behave in negotiations if he were a professor, leader, librarian, fireman, boss, subordinate, random thief, guest from the Far North or a foreigner. This completes the work of the Expert. And you have a scenario of negotiations and your actions. As you understand, you have already agreed with the dragons of emotions and they are ready to obey you!
You can go even further and make lemonade out of sweetened lemon. Invite your friends to visit and try to play the negotiation scenario with them. This is both fun entertainment and working out the scenario of successful negotiations and smart tips from benevolent disinterested people. Such a role play is often funny, adds flavor to life and is remembered for a long time. And as a result, you will have a very strong trump card in the upcoming negotiations: you have already experienced them, received good advice and even won. It remains the smallest thing — to implement everything in life. Good luck with your dragon taming!