Posted by Luke in In a previous post I have been dealing with underlying emotions. In this third part I want to talk about 5 ways that you can recognise underlying emotions. These techniques are well known but they are worthy of repeating here. Here goes:
1. What do others (family, friends and so on) think about you?
I know this seems counterintuitive when we are talking about underlying emotions but the reality is what other people think really matters. If you think I am making this up or it’s not important then you have tunnel vision. If you cannot accept or at least understand what others think then you are not seriously considering the impact you have on others. Knowing this is very important because it can highlight an underlying emotion that dominates your personality. Think for a moment about a bad boss you have had. If you cannot think of a bad boss think of a person who annoys the living crap out of you. Now what’s the first thing, besides insults, that spring to mind when you think about that person. I bet it’s: He is so angry all the time, why is she so pushy, I cannot understand why he is always so surly and so on. This is the first step… knowing what others think. If you don’t know… go ask someone who doesn’t like you. Then you can say: am I really like that?
2. Knowing the outputs from the inputs
Another way to find these underlying emotions is to think about how you feel when something hurts you. Say your daughter says to you, “I hate you” or your mother in law calls you a nasty name. What is your reaction to that? How does it make you feel? Angry? Hurt? Why is that the case? I think a large percentage of the world’s problem’s can be solved through the ‘why is that the case?’ question. People are rational (most of the time) they often act according to some kind of bias or something that acts as the input which leads to the output, in their decision making process. When you observe yourself getting angry … ask yourself why is that the case? You will instantly recognise something deep and underlying that is belting away in your mind. Write it down and study it from every conceivable angle.
3. What makes you feel?
Sometimes you might be watching a television show and something sets off within you and you feel something. It could be a past hurt or something else but you are feeling some-thing. Whenever I hear about a successful entrepreneur something goes off in me. I love shows about business and especially stories of personal success. That’s me, I love to hear that kind of thing because I am made that way. I think there is something in you that makes you feel a certain way. Like the dog who points at the bird, you just need the right set of conditions to draw it out.
4. What do you spend your day thinking about?
One of the key ways you can recognise the underlying emotions is to pay attention to your thoughts. Have you ever seriously listened to your thoughts? No, I mean really have you? I am not talking about thinking about your thoughts I mean really paying attention to the conceptualisation of your thoughts. When your thoughts are forming are you paying attention. Are you really? Have you ever noticed what it is that forms within you. This is a big topic and it’s worthy of a lot more discussion than I have allowed for here. When your thoughts form, the real you is speaking. The words or feelings that emerge from this interchange are really the output of what’s formed on the inside. See if you can learn how to do this… I will be discussing this in a later post in the series.
5. What is it in others that drives you nuts?
The last one in my list is what is it in others that makes you nutty? I know myself that when I see a trait in somebody that I absolutely hate… it’s something that I hate about myself. On the other hand, when I notice something I like in people it’s usually something I like in myself. I find most of the time that when I see traits and characteristics in others that I either admire or despise it reflects some underlying emotion.
In closing this post I want to ask you the question: why are underlying emotions so important? The answer to that is far too broad for me to answer here. What I can tell you is that the more you study the underlying condition of your being the more you will learn about the way you are and what you should be doing with your life. I believe that every person has a purpose in their life that can be found if enough time is spent finding it out. I am not talking about running around the streets beating your chest crying out for your mother… no I am talking about not ignoring those inward emotions that underly our actions. Having children, a love of reading or whatever it is that turns you on is connected to a deep underlying emotion of some sort. The discovery of these things is the beginning of understanding who you are and what you are here for.
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About people driving me nuts, sometimes the trait driving me nuts is not a trait I hate in myself but a trait in common with someone who hurt me in the past.
That is an excellent point.
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