Self Control

Being human is hard, not only because of our fragility and our mortality, but also because of our emotions. Feeling emotions is a natural thing of course, and there`s nothing wrong with that, but feeling too much can certainly become a problem.

Many times, our feelings and impulses prevent us from doing what we have to do, it often takes our focus away from important things such as work, studies, or even our health. Everyone knows that too much anger or sadness is bad for us, but even those emotions regarded as being positive, like love or happiness, can also affect us negatively by making us do nonsensical things. The fact is that we must be in control of our emotions, otherwise they will control us.

You will find that this is easier in theory than in practice, but there are many things you can do to try to keep your emotions in check. In my experience the most effective way to do that is with meditation, if you never tried it, you should. If you don`t have time or a place to meditate, a few deep breaths should also do the trick, and give you a momentary glimpse of clarity, but it will never be as powerful as meditation.

I`m not saying that emotions are always the enemy, sometimes they can be used as motivation to help us achieve our objectives, yet they are a huge obstacle when they do the opposite. So the answer is not to give up on all emotion whatsoever like a Vulcan, but to understand our feelings and use them as tool to be more productive and make our lives more enjoyable.