4 Root Causes of Negative Emotions

While I was listening to a goals training (GOALS!) by Brian Tracy, he talked about how negative emotions play such a big part in blocking us from getting what we want (like a job!). I found the info profound enough to dictate it and use it as a resource (below). If any of the info raises any personal awareness, see it is a huge victory that you have exposed this huge weight you’ve been dragging along preventing you from moving toward what you want. Then choose to let go of it.

NEGATIVE EMOTIONS
The greatest enemy of success and happiness are negative emotions, of all kinds. Negative emotions absorb you and control much of your life and your thinking. Negative emotions hold you down, tire you out and take away all of your joy in life.

4 Root Causes of Negative Emotions

JUSTIFICATION
You can only be negative as long as you can justify to yourself and others that you are entitled to be angry or upset for some reason. This is why angry people are continually explaining and elaborating on their reasons for their negative feelings. However, if you cannot justify your negative feelings, you cannot justify being angry.

RATIONALIZATION
When you rationalize, you attempt to give a socially acceptable rationalization for an otherwise socially unacceptable act. You rationalize to explain away or put a favorable light on something you have done that you feel bad or unhappy about. You excuse your behavior or actions by creating an explanation that sounds good even though you know that you were an active agent in whatever occurred. You often create complex ways of putting yourself in the right by explaining that your behavior was really quite acceptable, all things considered. This rationalizing keeps your negative emotions alive.

Rationalization and justification always require that you make someone or something else the source or cause of your problem. You cast yourself in the role of the victim and you make the other person, or organization into the oppressor or the bad guy.

OVERCONCERN OR HYPER-SENSITIVITY TO THE WAY OTHER PEOPLE TREAT YOU
For some people, their entire self-image is determined by the way other people speak to them, talk to them or about them or even look at them. They have little sense of personal value or self-worth apart from the opinions of others. And if those opinions are negative for any reason, real or imagined, the victim immediately experiences anger, embarrassment, shame, feelings of inferiority, and even depression, self-pity and despair.

BLAMING
Blaming is the worst of all the root causes. On the Negative Emotions Tree, think of the trunk of the tree as the propensity to blame other people for our problems. Once you cut down the trunk of the tree, all the fruits of the tree, all the other negative emotions die immediately.

From this point forward, see and think about yourself as the master of your emotions, that you are completely in charge of your emotions. Refuse to whine and complain about things that happened in the past which cannot be changed. Instead, orient yourself toward the future. Think of what you want and where you’re going. Above all, think about your goals. The very act of thinking about your goals makes you positive and purposeful again.

When you take complete responsibility for your life and your emotions, you take the giant step from childhood to adulthood.