A thought becomes a feeling, and that feeling becomes an emotion that makes us either emotionally strong or weak.
When I was a teen boy, I would throw tantrums at anyone who did anything against my will. Sadly, the person that was most affected by my tantrums was my dear Ma. I had made my sweet Ma’s life hell. I would yell at her over trivial matters. If she washed my already-worn, dirty T-shirt, I would yell at her like hell, “Mamma, why did you do that? I wanted to wear that T-shirt again, it was not that dirty. You should’ve asked me. Never touch my clothes without my permission. I don’t like that!”
I was the only vegetarian in our family (actually an eggetarian, and I still am). So, whenever my Ma cooked any non-vegetarian specials for the rest of our family, and if she didn’t cook any vegetarian specials for me, I would verbally assault her like hell, “You don’t love me. You guys enjoy your non-veg food and let me die from hunger. What the hell will I eat now? I don’t want to eat this rice and vegetables. I want my favorite special food. I hate you!”
Then, my Ma would immediately rustle up some vegetarian or egg specials for me, such as potato or spinach fritters, egg curry, egg sandwiches, etc. She always dealt with me calmly, no matter how savagely I often treated her.
I would treat my friends and little brother the same way, so nobody really liked being around me. I was otherwise a good kid, but my anger always got the best of me. I was impatient and would get frustrated over trivial matters as if they were matters of life and death.
And then, I lost my father to his alcohol addiction when I was 19 and he was only 42. My father’s passing was the first ever death I had witnessed in my life, and it made me stoic for a while, but then I overcame it with time and my Ma’s love and support.
Years passed, and I graduated and started working jobs, but my lack of control over my emotions and tantrums didn’t change. Then my Ma got sick out of the blue for no reason, and it turned out to be terminal. Finally, she made her final transition a few years ago. Once again, I was sad and directionless. My emotions would always run high, which got me into many verbal fights with my colleagues and friends. I had fallen into a depressed state.
Whenever I faced any failures in life, I would think that it was the end of the world and I couldn’t do anything worthwhile anymore. And then, I fell in love with a nice girl, and we started a romantic relationship and had many verbal fights and arguments at the beginning of our relationship, but now, we have a better understanding of each other’s emotions.
Please read my article, 9 Pillars of A Healthy Romantic Relationship, where I talk about how one can have a healthy romantic relationship with one’s partner.
This anger and frustrating behavior had made me weak over the years. And then, one fine day, I summoned the courage to follow my life’s passion, which was to become a writer. So, I learned website design and created this website, and I started writing blogs and articles here.
As I started writing, I also started reading a lot. I remembered all of Ma’s wisdom and life teachings and began to develop my wisdom for life.
In the process, I’ve become a calmer and more reasonable person now. Of course, I still get angry but only if it is justifiable. I’ve stopped getting angry over trivial matters. I have become patient, and I don’t stay frustrated or angry for a long time like I used to. I feel like I’m now emotionally in control of myself.
Of course, I learn and grow emotionally stronger each day.
I’ve become a stronger believer now. I’m so motivated by Jesus Christ’s life story and His message of peace and love that I’ve started following Him and His teachings fervently and judiciously. Jesus is a great friend and a teacher to me now.
Well, this spiritual thing is my personal experience, and note that I’m not trying to convert anybody to Christianity or anything here. Please read my article Most Inspiring Bible Verses for A Better Living, where I’ve included some of the most inspiring Bible verses for a righteous living, and I also provide my perspective on religions.
Overall, I feel like I’ve become emotionally stronger and more mellow.
So, here are some things that have helped me in my quest to achieve emotional strength, and you can consider incorporating them into your life also to become emotionally strong:
1. Start observing your thoughts and emotions.
As humans, we think millions of thoughts every day, but only a few of those thoughts make sense and are useful for our mental growth leading us to more knowledge and wisdom.
So, always watch how you think, and every time you feel any powerful thoughts beginning to overwhelm you, observe how they are making you feel.
There are two kinds of powerful thoughts a human mind can have —
- Positive Powerful thoughts. 2. Negative Powerful thoughts.
Positive Powerful thoughts are the ones that make us feel good and inspired.
And Negative Powerful thoughts are the ones that make us feel depressed and stressed.
So, when you know how to separate positive thoughts from negative ones, you’ll have the power to choose which ones to keep and which ones to let go of, and this power will make you emotionally strong.
2. Acknowledge your thoughts and emotions.
The thoughts we think make us feel how we feel, and these feelings are nothing but the emotions we exhibit and communicate to ourselves and others.
Whether you think positive thoughts and feel positive emotions or negative thoughts and negative emotions, it’s always essential that you acknowledge all of those powerful emotions and thoughts.
After you acknowledge a particular emotion or thought and you realize it is not making you feel any good, you talk to that thought or emotion, “Hey, listen, I acknowledge you hitting my mind, but you’re not making me feel any good. I’m afraid I must let go of you.” And then, gradually, let go of such thought or emotion.
Always try to retain the powerful positive thoughts or emotions that make you feel inspired and good. Use these positive emotions to your advantage to better your life by achieving your goals, improving your relationships with your loved ones, and improving your overall health.
Once you learn how to use your Positive Powerful thoughts to your advantage, you’ll have command over your life, and you’ll feel emotionally strong.
3. Choose the thoughts and emotions that bring you peace.
What’s the purpose of every human soul trying to make its journey here on earth?
I believe ‘peace’ is the ultimate purpose of every human soul here on earth because peace makes us feel good and happy. A peaceful mind is capable of handling any of life’s turmoil. On the other hand, a troubled mind only ends up multiplying life’s chaos.
So, we need to be watchful of our thoughts and emotions because only in this way will we be able to differentiate between the thoughts and emotions that make us feel good and keep us at peace from the ones that weigh us down and make us sad.
Both positive and negative thoughts carry a similar power and intensity in them, but we mostly end up getting overwhelmed by the negative thoughts, and these thoughts are reflected in our lives and define how we live –whether in depression or cheerfully at peace.
So, always choose the thoughts that become the positive emotions that bring you peace and cheerfulness. When you make cheerfulness and peace your priority in life, you’ll find yourself becoming emotionally strong.
4. Stop comparing your life to others and focus on yourself.
When we compare ourselves to others, we lose our individuality, and we willingly give our power to others, so it drains us emotionally. Therefore, if you want to be emotionally strong, you must never compare yourself and your life to others.
You must understand YOUR life is YOURS only, and it’s very UNIQUE in every sense — your physical appearance, thoughts, and abilities. Only you can look the way you look and think the thoughts you think, nobody else can be the way you are.
The pain you suffer in your life, nobody else can feel all that, not even those to who you compare yourself. So, embrace the way you are but always remain in pursuit of bettering yourself. I want you to read that previous sentence over and over until it becomes a part of you.
When you start living and improving YOUR life, your emotions will be under your power.
5. Stop making a mountain of a molehill.
As I mentioned earlier, when I was a teen, I would blow everything out of proportion and it always caused me and my loved ones a lot of trouble, mainly my sweet Ma. And now that she is with God, I realize I could’ve treated her better if I had not made mountains of molehills. I could’ve loved her more if I had not wasted my emotions on trivial matters.
These thoughts and feelings of guilt and regret make me weak, but then, I remember how my Ma loved me and always treated me with unconditional care and love, and that love of hers continues to warm my heart and soul even to this day, so this positive awareness makes me feel strong.
Therefore, it’s necessary to identify trivial matters and never spend any emotions on them.
Once you stop making mountains of molehills, you’ll find yourself becoming emotionally strong.
6. Prioritize your health.
Health is everything. Only with good health can we feel strong and positive about our lives. When we struggle with our health, be it mental or physical health, no matter how hard we try to stay strong, we always feel weak, so we must prioritize our health.
Right from what you eat to how you think will contribute toward the status of your health. So, you must eat healthily and concentrate only on the thoughts that make you feel good and positive.
Please read my article Health is Wealth – It Has to Be Prioritized, where I talk about the importance of health based on my personal experience.
When you are healthy in your body and mind, you’ll find the strength to rationalize your emotions and select only the positive ones that make you feel cheerful about life.
7. Have a purpose for your life.
I believe life without purpose is no life at all. When you have a definitive purpose for your life, you’ll spend most of your time and emotions trying to serve and fulfill that purpose. And, when you chase after your life’s purpose diligently, you’ll become a person of strength, even if you stumble upon a few failures along the way.
So, have some purpose for your life and dedicate yourself to it.
8. Broaden your horizon.
Always keep learning and experimenting with new things in life. In my case, I always try to find ways to write better, so I read a lot and write a lot.
Nowadays, I’ve also started taking video creation and video editing seriously along with my writing, because this is a digital world, so I try to learn new methods and techniques to make some engaging videos for YouTube and Instagram spaces. My videos are not as popular yet, but I enjoy creating them. I get to learn and create something new each day that helps me to hone my existing skills.
All of these engagements have given me excitement as well as added the strength to live my life in a meaningful way because I don’t waste most of my time on negative thinking anymore.
So, keep learning, experimenting, and improving your skills and knowledge. When you broaden your horizon, you’ll find yourself emotionally well-balanced because you won’t have the time for negative thoughts and emotions.
9. Live one hour, one day at a time.
When you have a lot on your plate, you tend to be overwhelmed by all that, and then you get stuck and feel anxious about everything. Whenever you feel overwhelmed, breathe in and out slowly, break your big tasks into small parts, and try to complete those small parts one at a time. Don’t overthink about how you are going to do it, complete one small task and then move on to the next one and finish that one too, and so forth.
Be in the present and take it one hour at a time and one day at a time. Don’t worry about the future, and let go of the past, because none benefits your present.
10. Understand the essence of this human life.
As stated earlier, I lost my pa when I was a teenage boy because of his alcohol addiction and lost my Ma when I was in my early 30s because of a terminal sickness. The passing of my loved ones has made me realize how precious this human life is. Of course, losing my parents at such early stages of my life left a big, dark void in my life, but at the same time, I understood the worth of love in life which is very high.
This human life is very fleeting, therefore, it’s very precious, and you cannot waste it by being angry and frustrated at all times. If you believe you need to fix something in your life, then do everything morally possible to fix it. And if there’s something that you cannot fix, keep praying and looking for ways to do it. Don’t give up.
There’s no sense at all in wasting your time whining over trivial things because if this precious life is once lost, it cannot be regained. Therefore, the essence of this human life is to thrive emotionally and intellectually by remaining peaceful and loving the people in your life, who love you selflessly. Once you know this, no bad feelings or emotions will try to weaken you anymore, you’ll always prevail over all that weakness and emerge as an emotionally strong person.
So, these are some of the ways to bring emotional strength to your life. However, as we are humans, we are defined by our circumstances and situations, so there will always come a time when you feel weak again, and that’s natural because we cannot be emotionally strong at all times.
We battle our negative thoughts and emotions every moment, and whenever your battle becomes intense, remind yourself of the points you’ve just read in this article to keep yourself emotionally strong for a long time, if not forever.
Your life is your life, and whether to be strong or weak, only you get to choose that, so always choose to be strong.