How To Be Emotionally Healthy

I'm a middle child from a loud and emotionally expressive family. Growing up, everyone expressed how they felt - except me. I decided at a young age to hide my feelings and live inside my head. Not a strategy I would recommend.

If you want to go deeper on managing difficult emotions—especially anger—check out this episode of the Decide Your Legacy Podcast. 

From age 16 to 22, I used negative coping mechanisms to numb and attempt to control my feelings (e.g., worry, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, social isolation, etc.). I would live at the extremes, getting consumed by any current interest (e.g., fraternity, religion, exercise, work, etc.). Some of these coping mechanisms are still temptations I face today.

But there's hope! The healthier you become emotionally, the better your life gets. I know this from research and personal experience.

The Damage of Stuffing Your Emotions

1. You don't get to experience the full range of emotions (e.g., joy, excitement).
2. It leads to loneliness and the feeling that nobody understands you or what you're going through.
3. You become stuck in anxiety and depression.
4. You won't know yourself well, hindering your life direction.
5. People will struggle to trust you because they'll view you as guarded.
6. Your relationships stay at the surface level rather than growing deep.
7. You'll get uncomfortable with other people's emotions and therefore push them away.

Watch the FREE Shatterproof Yourself Lite course—on your desktop or in the Decide Your Legacy app—and learn the 7 steps to a major boost in your confidence.

4 Tools for Becoming Emotionally Healthy

Tool #1. Identify Your Emotional Experiences

A couple of times each day, write what emotions you've experienced recently. Then answer 3 questions about each feeling.

Question 1. What am I feeling? Write down the feeling, positive or negative.

Question 2. Why am I feeling this way, or what happened that caused this feeling?

Question 3. What am I learning about myself, or what insight have I gained because of this emotional experience?

Here's a resource of 40 Common Emotions & Their Definitions (20 positive & 20 negative) to help you with this activity.

Tool #2. Communicate How You Feel

Express some of these feelings with friends, family, or co-workers. This can be done verbally or in writing (text, email, card, etc.). You can share your answers to the above questions. It might feel awkward at first, but if your motive is simply to be more open and emotionally healthier, that will help you get past the fear. Don't let how you think others might respond to your openness keep you from sharing.

One huge benefit to being emotionally open is that people will view you as safer because you're no longer a mystery.

Being emotionally open also improves your leadership capacity. According to Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, emotionally smart people have 5 traits that make them better leaders.

“Live in your head, you’re dead” - Tony Robbins

Tool #3. Increase Your Emotional Vocabulary

Practice identifying feelings you notice in yourself and in others. Expand your emotional vocabulary by studying the definitions of different emotions. This Decide Your Legacy Emotions Bookmark and the feelings wheel below are excellent resources.

Tool #4. Chart Your Emotional Experiences

For any given period of time, identify the frequency you've felt a specific emotion and the frequency you've expressed that same emotion. You may discover that you rarely share certain feelings. Increase your sharing (verbally and nonverbally) of the emotions you rarely express yet often feel.

Increasing your emotional intelligence takes practice. Try engaging in one of the above exercises each day. It is a helpful book on the topic, too. In my next post, I will share 2 more tools to increase your emotional intelligence.

Watch the FREE Shatterproof Yourself Lite course—on your desktop or in the Decide Your Legacy app—and learn the 7 steps to a major boost in your confidence.

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