How To Manage Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You

Your emotions don’t just happen to you like the weather. They follow a path, and once you learn to shape that path, everything changes: your decisions, your relationships, your focus, and the life you’re building.

I walk through a practical framework for emotional regulation and emotional management using tools from psychologist and neuroscience researcher Ethan Kross (Shift: How to Manage Your Emotions So They Don’t Manage You) and Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence director Marc Brackett (Dealing With Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want).

We start with a simple but powerful idea: the first surge of emotion can be automatic, but what comes next is where you have leverage. That’s the difference between feeling stressed for a moment and carrying stress all day.

You’ll learn how to become a conscious mood designer with “external shifters” like your environment, your people, and your culture, plus “internal shifters” like sensory inputs, attention shifting, and distancing techniques that help you regain perspective fast. We also talk about the concept of body budget: sleep, balanced nutrition, hydration, and movement as the biological foundation for emotional intelligence, stress management, and resilience.

If you want to feel like an “emotional Jedi,” this is your toolkit.

If it helps, share it with a friend, leave a rating and review, and subscribe so you don’t miss the next step: how to turn these tools into a daily practice.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Promise

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shorina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change, personal collective transformation and evolution, and just someone who is passionate, dedicated, and on a mission to unlock more human potential, to use and explore more of our potential to live the most extraordinary lives and create the most extraordinary world all around us. Today, guys, by the end of this podcast, you're gonna learn pretty much everything there is to learn, as it is right now, about emotional regulation, emotional management. So you learn how to use your emotions, how to direct, how to manage them in the best possible way to build the life you want. You're gonna learn how to manage your emotions so they don't manage you. And I'm gonna tell you a couple of stories and gonna bring tools from a couple of books, and it's gonna be a really interesting episode. So stay tuned till the end. You're gonna feel like you are an emotional Jedi after this podcast. And the only thing that will be between you and a mastery of your emotions is daily practice, which we will talk about how to actually put that into daily practice on our next episode. So stay tuned for that as well. So let's jump in and let's start with a story. Let's start with a hike to the mountaintop that I do every Friday morning, sunrise hike with a group of entrepreneurs here in Cape Town that we do at 5:55 a.m. sharp once at parking lot. If you are ever in Cape Town, let's begin. A phrase that kind of stuck with me, a friend said, on the top of the mountain after watching the sunrise. I didn't expect to feel that good after watching the sunrise. Or the sense that you're part of something bigger than yourself, that your problems, real as they are, aren't as permanent, aren't as big as they felt yesterday. That you'll be just fine. Actually, much better than fine. That's the feeling I keep going back for every Friday morning. Say mountain, sunrise hike with local entrepreneurs here in Cape Town. The feeling is as reliable as the sweetness of a chocolate cookie. Most people treat their feelings like weather. Something that just happens to them. By the way, I'm reading to you from my blog on Substock that I write every single day. It is linked in the show notes, so check it out. Most people treat their feelings like weather. Something that just happens to them. Unpredictable, uncontrollable, completely out of their hands. But feelings aren't weather. They're more like the warmth you feel when you add or remove layers of clothing on a cold day. The chill outside doesn't change. But how warm you feel, that's up to you. Your problems might still be there at the top of the mountain, your deadlines, the conversation you've had been avoiding, the thing that woke you up at 2 a.m. But how happy they feel, how they affect what you think and do and carry into the rest of your day, that part has more levers than most people realize. Places are one of those levers. You get out there on the top of the mountain and you watch the sunrise, and you can't help yourself but start feeling uplifted, elevated, in awe. You don't have to try to feel that way. It just happens. Not everyone has a mountain in their backyard, and you can't order sunrise every time you're feeling low, but you can make deliberate choices about the spaces you inhabit, what surrounds you, what you look at, where you spend your hours. Psychologist and neuroscience researcher Isan Cross, the author of Shift, how to manage your emotions so they don't manage you, calls this external emotional shifters. The idea that your physical environment is an active tool for shaping how you feel inside. We humans, for better and sometimes for worse, are the most adaptable species on the planet. And what's around us is always affecting how we feel, what we think, and what we do, whether we are paying attention to it or not, whether we like it or not. And the invitation that Ethan extends to all of us is to become more conscious mood designers, to stop letting your environment happen to you by default and start shaping it with intention, dialing up the feeling you want more of, and dialing down the ones that you want to let go of. Alright, so the first tool here is your feel-good places. What are some of your places where you go, where you spend time at that make you feel better? Like you go there, you go for that walk, you go for the tiger, you just walk around, maybe in the city, your favorite cafe, your favorite view. What are those places that make you feel like good and better? And that you know, you might even describe that specific feeling. And guess what? When you need it, it's there. Go there, it's worth it. But you don't always have the ability to go, you know, where you want to go and experience the emotions that you want to experience through places, but you can always add something or remove something from the place where you are, your workplace, your home environment, wherever you spend a lot of your time. You can add pictures there, you can add some textures and some cloth, you can add some color, all of those things. You know, that's why so many people love to organize, love to decorate their workplaces. Maybe putting pictures of their loved ones, or just adding things that make them feel warmer, less stressed, and more at warm and more like themselves, maybe more creative. You can have a lot of impact and leverage on the places where you spend a lot of your time, and also avoiding places and people, and you'll learn about in a in a couple of minutes that don't make you feel good. You're not a tree, you can move to move where you feel good. So that is tool number one: shifting places to shift how you feel inside, and not just shifting places, but also organizing, designing intentionally the places where you spend your time so that they make you feel good. I don't know about you, for example, but certain bright colors like orange and pinkish and yellow always make me feel better than gray and brown and black. That is actually quite universal. Black and brown and gray usually aren't colors that promote optimism, but other like brighter colors are. So use it and also learn about yourself. What makes you feel good? What when you see it, it makes you feel better somehow, right? So that's one tool into your emotional regulation uh toolkit shifting your places where you are and designing them intentionally to change your feelings. Let's dig deeper into more emotional regulation techniques and tools from two people specifically, Ethan Cross, that I that you just learned about. He is a psychologist, a neuroscientist, a researcher, and a writer. One of his books that well, actually, I recommend to pick up all of his books, but specifically, I'm giving you tools from his latest book, Shift, How to Manage Your Feelings So They Don't Manage You. Where Ethan brings about a framework that we're gonna go through right now, and then we're gonna switch to another feeling researcher, Mark Brackett. Mark Brackett, an American researcher, psychologist, and writer, he's the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and he wrote a book Dealing with Feeling with subtitle Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want. So we're gonna use some tools from his book as well. I highly recommend people who really want to dial in their emotional intelligence and management, picking up both books, Dealing with Feeling by Mark Brackett, and Ethan Kross Cheft, How to Manage Your Emotions, so they don't manage you. They both gonna be both books gonna be linked in the show notes as my daily sub stack. So let's dig into other tools. So Ethan Kross, first of all, he talks about this notion that that is agreed on by I don't know all of the researchers that I listen to, that emotion has two parts. It's the automatic response that you have no control over, like something happens and you have a reaction in your body that that's gonna happen. Probably with practice, you can also regulate that. Like if you always do cold plunges, they don't create the same reaction of stress in your body. It's still stressful, but not as if you were a complete newbie. You get used to things. And then, but then the part where you have the most control and leverage is the trajectory of your feeling, of your emotion, what lasts and stays with you. And that trajectory you can define with the tools that you're about to learn. So Ethan Cross in his book Shift divides tools into internal shifters, which basically depend more what you do with your inner world, and then external shifters, which are things outside of yourself, like spaces or people or culture. So excuse me, uh internal shifters. Let's start with sensory shifters. Uh, those are the things that change your feelings through sensory experiences, like listening to the music, for example. Have you ever felt better because you listened to some music? Or maybe something deepened your feeling of sadness because you were feeling because you were listening to that sad song. Maybe something made you feel more romantic, right? Music does that. So sensory experiences shift the way you feel. So maybe eating certain foods, uh, nature shifts uh a lot of your internal feelings, spending time with dogs and cats and uh as I mentioned, music, different sensations, maybe spending time in a hot bathtub with some essential oils, all of these like sensational experiences that change the way um the way your mood goes, the change how you feel in terms of feeling. So let's continue with attention shifting. That is another tool that will help you to shift how you feel, the trajectory of your feelings. Attention shifting, what does it mean? It means what you pay attention to, and believe it or not, despite what social media and all the I don't know, advertising and things that are in our outer world do to you, you can also intentionally shift your attention. I'll give you a very simple example. Uh it happened to me yesterday. I was sitting, it was 7 p.m. Friday night. I was sitting there waiting for a business strategy call, and the person was late, and I was getting grumpy. It was 7 p.m. Friday night, you know, like I had like a whole week behind me. And I started thinking to myself, oh, why do I have to do this? Like I when I could be enjoying some well-deserved rest. And I caught myself thinking that. And I started I I made myself pay attention to a different thing by asking questions and self-distancing. I asked myself, Angela, why why is this narrative? Like, who made you schedule this call? And well, like I I scheduled it. And why did you schedule it? Well, because I want to work on my business, because it is important to me, because I want to experience different levels of uh financial affluence, I want to experience different levels of like quality of life, etc. Besides helping more people and really loving my work. I'm like, okay, so you are about to work on a thing that is actually really important to you. And when you change it, it's gonna produce a whole lot of benefits that you will really enjoy. So aren't you excited? Why aren't you excited? And I thought to myself, like, why aren't I excited? And I said I said to myself, sort of, I get to do this, I get to work on the business that I absolutely love, helping more people with the things that I love, about the things that I care about. And I almost immediately was like, I got excited and I was super looking forward for this call. In like a few seconds, the person jumped on the call, and we had a completely different call because I was in a completely different state. But the main thing that happened there, I stopped paying attention to the fact that it is Friday night and it was a long week, and I am kind of tired. And I started paying attention to the fact that I am working on the vision of my life that I'm super excited about. And shifting my attention, shifted my feeling, and shifted what I did. And that you might say changed everything. We might have had completely different conversations with that person because you know, conversation is a two-way street, and if the other if one person on the call is grumpy, the other person will feel it and will shift their conversation and their actions accordingly, right? So that's how you shift your attention. One of the ways you shift your attention through questions and uh things like speaking to yourself in a uh second or third person. Also, you shift your attention by uh distancing, as I just mentioned to you, talking to yourself in the second and third person. You can also do spatial distancing, thinking about the places that might produce positive emotion. Obviously, it is all it all depends. Like spatial shifting, I use when, for example, I'm in a situation like going to a dentist, and I don't like to be on a dentist, it's like painful, it's not pleasant, no matter like what positive spin you put on it. So, what I do is when the whole procedure starts, I start thinking about being somewhere on the beach, watching sunrise or sunset, being with someone uh I enjoy company of, and maybe drinking this hot chocolate or something like that. And for quite some time, I'm there. And that's how I use spatial distancing to change my feelings, to make myself feel better while going through less unpleasant experience. And it's very helpful because you also feel less pain and you have less resistance to the dentist in general, and you probably calm down your nervous system, which helps with the whole procedure and healing process. So that's what where I would use spatial healing or spatial distancing. Another one is temporal distancing, and I also that's what I also used for that Friday night call. I thought about the future that I want beyond the present moment of unpleasantness and being tired. I thought about hey, that is there is a future that I actually really, really want, and this minor inconvenience doesn't really mean a lot on a bigger scale of my life. So I'm gonna actually make myself feel good for this moment because I'm actually working on my the future that I'm very excited about, right? So I shifted my perspective, which is also again perspective shifting, is another tool of internal shifting of your mood that creates different long-term feeling that helps you to think better, make better long-term decisions, and take better long-term actions, right? So, in terms of internal shifters, you can use sensors like music, nature, dogs, walks by the beach, etc. You can do attention shifting, telling yourself a different story, or traveling in your mind to some amazing place or into the future, or maybe into the past, which uh might also have a lot of pleasant moments. Perspective shifting, right? Asking yourself questions to pay attention to a different side of the experience, not the unpleasantness of late-night cold, but the excitement about the future that you are building. So that is all internal shifting. Then you have internal external shifting of your mood of your feelings, which also you are in quite a bit good control of spaces. We already talked about that in the at the beginning. So, right, going to view that sunrise or that sunset that actually gives you a lasting, like good feeling. So, what are your spaces where you feel really good? Or what can you do about the spaces that you spend a lot of time in to make you feel better, to make yourself more effective for your life, for the tasks at hand, but also to have a better life experience. Your life experience is all about your feelings, it's not about what around you, it's what you feel inside, and you can change that. Then people. I am such a fan of being a curator of your social life, the social media you watch, the I don't know, all kinds of channels and podcasts you listen to, and obviously people in your life. Like if there are people who make you feel not that great, spend less with that people if you can't avoid them. If it's your relative that you need to spend time with, spend less time with. Say you're busy, and then uh figure out a way how to escape that and spend more time with her virtually, virtually, or in person with people who get the best out of you, right? Sometimes it's also people who are dead and you read their uh biographies, but when you think about them, they always make you like feel better and do better. So your people that you choose to associate yourself with, to think about even, will change how you feel, and that will change how you experience your life and what you do with that life. And then culture. We live in different countries, we live in different cultural contexts, you have different cultures at work and at home and your nationality, the way you look, your genes, like we all have this like different cultures and subculture that we are part of. But here, you know, you you can't always choose what culture you're part of. Although if you join, let's say, some fitness club, you also become a part of that culture that then shapes your action. If you become again a part of this fitness and health group of any sort, where people talk about healthy living and healthy eating and managing your emotions and managing your stress, taking care of yourself. You cannot help yourself but do more of that. That's why they say if you want to change your habits, find friends with those habits or join some movement. That is really helpful. That's why religions are so powerful, because people associate themselves with this larger community with certain practices, and that helps them to manage themselves and their life better and create a better life experience. But in terms of culture, I also want you to give an example from my personal life. When I was growing up in my family, we used to celebrate holidays like most of the other people with a lot of eating, you know, there was alcohol involved. But then over the course of our sort of family evolution, we figured, hey, for example, celebrating New Year night with eating a lot and drinking a lot actually feels next morning, the first day of the year of your new year like crap. And we kind of don't want that. So how about we just spend some, I don't know, good quality uh quiet time or quieter time. We maybe watch some fireworks at 12 pm, and then maybe in about 30 minutes to an hour we go to bed, and all the food stuff and family breakfast and lunches and dinners, we can schedule for January 1st, where and we also will make better decisions. And yes, we'll enjoy some holiday food, but not but in moderation, which actually gives you the best of both worlds. You kind of get to enjoy your cake and not feel like crap, and that is really amazing. And then alcohol for many different reasons also became not a part of our life. Everyone is happier and better because of that. And that is how we shifted our, you know, small the culture on a small scale in our family. And that made all the difference in the lives of so many people. So, culture, you can become part of different cultures. You can pick and choose the kind of culture that works best for you and incorporate more of the elements of this culture into your life. Like let's say if you're a fan of certain aspects of Japanese culture, like katsugi, this practice of fixing broken things with these layers of gold that make them look better than they were before they were broken, and it has so many metaphorical meanings that are applicable for human development in our life, right? If that's something you really love, guess what? You can learn katsuki and make it part of your own culture and even share it with people you love, your friends, your family, and um make it a living value among people that you know relate with. So culture, yes, we are part of global culture and what's happening in the world, and there are so many cultures that we didn't choose, and they're part of us, but also you have a lot more leverage in practicing practices from different cultures that make you feel better about yourself, about the world, about and do better things. So your life is better. To sum up, let's sum up this part because after that, we're gonna shift into a smaller part of our conversation, but no less important. I would argue that as actually a foundation that makes everything else easier. So, but before we jump into that, we're gonna do the recap. But before we do that, please guys, let's talk about sharing. Don't forget to share this podcast episode, rate, a review on different platforms because it helps me to reach more people so we cultivate better inner world, so we create things more beautiful things in the outer world. So share this podcast episode, screenshot, send it to the person who might also enjoy it, cultivate that culture of emotional mastery so we create more beautiful experiences for all of us, right? So share, rate of you. I truly appreciate that, means means a lot to me. And now back to the episode. So we talked about this idea that what happens to you, like automatic responses, are not up to you, but there is a whole bunch of leverage in how you change the trajectory, the lasting feeling that you then carry into the rest of your life. So we talked about different ways of shifting that trajectory of how you feel and what you carry into your life forward. We talked about internal shifters and external shifters. We talked about sensory shifters, like listening to your favorite music or playing with dog with a cat or spending time also with people you love, but also we're gonna talk about more in external shifters about that. We also talked about attention shifting, right? Not I have to do that, but I get to do this call because it's gonna build my business. So this minor nuisance of waiting for a few minutes or being on a call or on a Friday night, it's like nothing compared to the future that I'm getting to experience. And then perspective shifting, right? Temporal distancing, going into your the future or into the past that make your present better, or spatial distancing, going to your emotional oasis while at the dentist office, or self-distancing when you get outside of your head and talk to yourself like a friend would, so you get more balanced perspective on things. So those are internal shifters, external shifters, your spaces, you're not a tree, you can move and you can design the spaces where you spend a lot of time in, and that will affect your lasting feeling. Let's say also your place is dark. Natural light improves how you feel, hands down. So sit by the window, right? Move your chair, move your desk. Now, people, you have a choice who you think about, who you spend time with, whether that's virtually or in person. So design your social circle, associate yourself with people who make you better. Culture. You are a part of many different cultures in the world, but also you can choose what cultures to be a part of, like fitness club culture or some other culture. And you can also choose practices from different cultures like Katsugian Japanese culture, if those things make you better, make your life better, right? You can share that also with people that you love. And then last but not least, we're gonna talk about body budget. Uh the concept that I learned in the book by Mark Brackett, I don't think he invented this, it was some other researcher, but this idea that is based on very solid research that is unquestionable. That idea that when you take care of biological requirements of your body, sleeping well, eating well, moving and exercising, guess what? You feel better, you are healthier, you are fitter, you have more confidence, your energy is better, and energy changes your mood alone. And that's the bottom line. When you take care of yourself and honor, respect the requirements of good maintenance of this body machine that you have, this vehicle that you get to move through life when you sleep well, when you eat balanced food, not some kind of you know crazy diet, but balance with all the essential nutrients like the proteins, the essential fats, the water, the fiber, etc. Right? Micronutrients, all the vitamins and minerals. When you sleep enough and sleep well, when you move and exercise, guess what? Your brain is healthier, that creates uh better brain body chemistry, that creates better moods and feelings that last, and also that makes that internal shifting a lot more better. You are more present, you are less reactive, you are more responsive, you are more mindful, you learn better, you process your emotional experiences hard or pleasant, a lot better. You're just a better human being when you take care of yourself, and that is undeniable. Research truth, hands down, and is in your control to a huge degree. So, body budget, how's yours? And what do you do on a daily basis? What can you improve to make your body budget higher? So you get to become a better mood designer easier instead of struggling with that. Like, for example, if you get one night of really like crappy sleep the next day, forget about it. All the emotional regulation, they say it's the person gonna be about or more, 60% more reactive to things. You're just not a good human when you have crappy sleep, especially if it's consistent. So, from body budget to external and internal shifters, and that understanding that your emotion has two parts one that you don't really have a lot of control of this initial response, and the other the trajectory and the lasting nature of your feelings. So that's what we talked about today. Really listen to this podcast episode anytime you feel like your emotional life is not what you'd like to have in your life. And ask yourself what one tool I can start using this week consistently to make myself feel better consistently. If I were to choose, I would start either with places or people, besides getting good quality sleep. That for me is like foundational. Without that, like forget about the rest of the stuff. So maybe body budget is the first thing to start. Well, thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening. I've been rambling about all this for 30 minutes. I think that's enough, and you have all the tools that you need for additional studying. If you really want to become master of your emotions, pick up a couple of books that are linked in the show notes. Shift how to manage emotions so they don't manage you and dealing with feeling. How to let me actually view the subtitle Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want. Thank you for listening. Until next time, well, manage your emotions better and don't forget about your body budget and keep growing.