Overcoming Emotion

I am taking a Stress Management class during my last semester at USC, and I wanted to share the journal entries that we write every week. They are extremely cathartic for me and great personal exercises to learn more about yourself and what you would like to work on. All of the questions/prompts will be provided in my entries, so feel free to do these exercises yourself too. You'll be surprised at how well you can enlighten yourself just by freeing your thoughts from your cluttered mind.

February 10^th, 2011

Worry, guilt, fear, hostility, anxiety, anger, hostility…Choose an emotion that plagues you and explain why you picked it. Why does it always have a hold on you and why do you let it overcome you? Name three steps you can take to gain more control over this emotion.

WORRY

I often get so preoccupied with the future, whether short term or long term, that I forgot to enjoy the present. I need to work on lessening my worry by accepting the natural order of events and embracing the serendipity of life. Being of the “planner” mindset, there are ways to set goals for myself without stressing over them so much that when I ultimately fulfill them, it isn’t satisfying. Worry has a hold on me because I let it. I fear imperfection and the unexpected. I can make conscious choices to help lessen my worry.

1.  Journal about the things I am worrying about on a weekly basis. Simply getting my worries on paper gets them out of my mind and into view where I can consider how to best deal with them.

2. Instead of worrying about the future and the unknown, I can work on smaller, short-term goals that may or may not lead to what I envisioned. Keeping closer tabs on my goals and keeping them relative to the time I compose will help me to allow them to constantly evolve. Instead of setting huge future goals in stone, it is best to create loose objectives and allow them to evolve over time. Goals are leaving and breathing, not definite.

3. Exercises like dance, yoga, and singing are activities that help me to step outside of my cluttered mind and take a breath of fresh air. Worry overcomes me when I review my anxieties over and over in my mind. Instead of obsessing, it’s good to fold in weely physical activities and soothing time for myself to clear my thoughts and enable better judgment and emotional control.