Four Pillars of Wellness – Managing Emotions

 

As a health coach, I focus on key areas of well-being: the physical, nutrition, rest, and managing emotions.

 

As I’ve mentioned in blog posts about the other wellness pillars, managing our emotions can be crucial in achieving optimal physical and emotional wellness. It can impact how we sleep, eat and move, to name just a few.

 

The wheel of emotional granularity is the foundation for the range of emotions we can experience. Eight primary emotions serve as the foundation for the incredible range of emotions. They can combine to create different feelings. For example, joy and fear can create guilt, while joy and surprise can create delight. Finally, the combination of joy and trust can create LOVE.  

 

Getting very specific about the emotional experience can enable us to better understand and cope with our emotions and achieve optimal wellness. Of course, it’s never as simple as saying we’ll never have negative emotions, but we can control our response to them and become more resilient over time.

 

The National Center For Emotional Wellness defines emotional wellness as “an awareness, understanding and acceptance of our feelings, and our ability to manage effectively through challenges and change.”

 

Being able to do this effectively is known as emotional intelligence and is linked to a stronger ability to cope with stress and anxiety.

 

The first step is to be aware of our thoughts and reactions to the world around us. Emotions usually come from our thoughts, and although we may only sometimes be instantly aware of where these thoughts ultimately come from, they are deeply ingrained into our subconscious mind. Therefore, knowing what is behind our thoughts and emotions is crucial to managing them.

 

All emotions are valid, whether positive or negative, pleasant or less pleasant. However, it’s often the case that we try to move past our feelings, which can increase the negative impact on our well-being.

 

Give yourself permission to sit with your emotions rather than trying to push them away or act on them immediately. If we allow ourselves to feel an emotion and sit with it, even for a short time, it will last for less time and won’t fight to be acknowledged. But if we try to fight it without doing this, it can be much harder to move past it, and the effect on our well-being can be much more substantial.