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Twoshoes -> RE: Outside influence affect your behavior? (12/18/2010 4:40:05 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: crazyml
There may be some out there with enormous reserves of zen-like self control, but, if I've had a tiring and/or stressful day it does have an impact on my expectations.
Well, if everyone were like that, then no one would notice and those people wouldn't feel special. [:)]
However, self-control is a huge misnomer. People who think emotions can be controlled are doing it wrong. "I'm telling myself to not be upset, so I'm not upset." won't get you any further than denial - if even that.
It's actually all about self-knowledge. The better you know yourself and are cognizant of what's happening to your mood, the more power you have over it.
The area in the brain responsible for mood changes simply reacts to your own completely subjective assessments of what is occurring and will choose whatever mood seems likely to get the current most desired outcome (whether that's to be left alone, to get the point across, to hurt someone, etc). This assessment works like a scale - adding/subtracting things from either side will definitely influence the resulting mood. So, if you can tell a situation is in the process of changing your mood, you can usually alter this assessment by creating physical distance from the stimuli or even by using internal dialog to convince your brain its assessment is inaccurate (adding weight to whichever side of the scale you choose).
"This person is trying to manipulate/provoke/control me, because they are helpless and don't know how to alleviate their problem in any sort of positive way." It's fairly hard to feel upset at someone whose weakness you're highlighting.
"If I got upset, I'd say things I'll regret later." I tend to know exactly what hurts people the deepest and the few times I've done that, I've felt so incredibly bad afterwards and spent days apologizing. When it's hurtful but completely true, you can be forgiven, but you can't really take it back and no one ever forgets such things.
"I'm somewhat responsible for this situation." So, if you decide to go home when you know there is often traffic, why would you get upset about the traffic? Someone who doesn't feel helpless to change their place of work or schedule simply won't get upset over traffic.
Conversely, exaggerating the importance of specific things from your internal assessment is a pretty good way to work yourself into any mood, really.
There have a been a few times, where I've actually enjoyed the helplessness of someone's anger (over something as trivial as traffic and never about anything serious), which always freaks me out, considering I try to be an ethical, good person.
Not that I'm saying everyone should worry about any of this and I actually think if you can use anger in a healthy way, you may as well. In my case emotional stability is one of my priorities and it doesn't take me much effort.
And actually, I'm a lot more creative when I'm unhappy and genuinely interested in helping others feel better, which means I'm drawn to sadness and sadness draws out the best in me, essentially. I'd be really screwed if I didn't have emotional awareness.
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