Everyone has experienced anger, sadness, disappointment and frustration.
If improperly managed, these negative emotions can break a relationship, ruin a project and even take a person’s life.
I’ve learnt an emotion management skill that I find very effective.
I’ll share with you today.
Imagine you can separate your feelings into different rooms. The skill is to simply keep different emotion in different room and never mix different emotions in one room.
For example, I may be very frustrated with work, but once I am not on the issue, that room is closed. When I work on other project or talk to other people, my emotion will be neutral.
I have 3 kids. When one kid made me angry, I will not bring my anger to the other kids.
Every room starts with a neutral emotion.
I’m not saying you should suppress your emotion. In fact, it’s bad to suppress your emotion.
Don’t suppress. Let it out, but let it out fast.
I practice the 5 minute rule.
That means I will not hold on to a negative emotion for more than 5 minute.
Well, I didn’t really time it, but once I have let out my emotion, I’m done.
I’ll simply keep it in the room and close it.
Just remember, your emotion ends with the event.
Over the years, I’ve learnt to switch my emotion real fast.
Most important of all, I’ve learnt not to bring the emotion from one room to another room.
This skill has helped me to overcome my business and investment failure. It has been instrumental in keeping my mindset positive.
If you have a spouse, let your spouse know about this skill.
My wife practices the same skill and it has worked very well for us.
We may have an argument over certain things but our emotions end with that argument.
Next moment, we can happily discuss where to have dinner or have fun with our kids.