Shift: Managing Your Emotions—So They Don't Manage You

“He knows that success, in this moment or any, is not about turning his emotions off; it’s about understanding how to use emotions skillfully without letting them completely take over. And that’s a critically important insight because experiencing emotions for humans is like breathing air: Our emotions are both unavoidable and crucial to our survival.”

This quote about Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam exemplifies the key takeaway to Embrace Emotions as Adaptive Signals Rather Than Obstacles. It highlights that high performers don’t suppress their emotions but instead learn to work with them skillfully, recognizing their informational value while maintaining control over their responses.

“‘Emotion’ is an umbrella term that describes a loosely coordinated response that includes what we feel, think, and experience in our bodies in response to events we judge to be meaningful.”

This definition clarifies that emotions are multifaceted experiences involving cognitive, physical, and subjective components, not just feelings. Understanding this complexity helps one recognize that emotional regulation involves addressing all these components, not just trying to change how one feels.

“First, despite the cultural trope depicting emotions as the antithesis of rational thought, cognition—what we colloquially refer to as thinking—is actually a key building block of emotion. How we think about our circumstances shapes the emotions we experience; then those emotions reverberate back to influence how we think.”

This quote challenges the false dichotomy, common in Western philosophy, between emotions and rational thought, explaining their reciprocal relationship. It highlights how changing one’s thoughts about situations can transform one’s emotional experiences while also acknowledging how emotions subsequently influence one’s thinking.