Emotional self-management

[snowqueen]

I taught her emotional self-management btw, not maths!
.

I had a pm from someone requesting that I expand on what I meant by this.

I basically had some conversations with my daughter about internal and external motivation. Bearing in mind she was 8 - I explained to her in simple terms that if she depended on an adult to praise her in order to feel motivated to study at school, then she was giving away her power. I explained that in life, people don't always behave in helpful ways towards you regardless of whether you deserve it or not. Therefore, the only way to ensure that you consistently did well was to work hard for your own satisfaction. You couldn't depend on others to make you feel good about yourself.

I thought this was a pretty tough message to have to teach an 8 year old given they are keen to please their teachers and gain approval. But I think it taught her a valuable lesson. She is incredibly self-motivated and needs absolutely no prompting from me to study hard.

My other daughter is very moody and dislikes feeling bad. So I told her that one thing you could be sure of with emotions is that they will change and pass so you just notice how you feel and eventually the bad feeling will go away. She told me recently this was one of the most useful things I'd ever taught her. She also reminded me of it the other day when I was moaning about how miserable I felt. Damn kids.

So nothing major - just some tips which seemed to work. I wish someone had taught me stuff like that when I was young - it's tremendously hard to change at my age.

Has anyone else received useful advice on this - or have useful advice to offer?

 

[nightowl]

Excellent post, snowqueen!

One thing I am really learning is to pay more attention and dig deeper into what factors are triggering my more undesirable emotions and reactions. I am finding (this is embarassing because it seems so obvious now) that what I may believe are the causes are actually not. Expressed another way, the external circumstances are not the real problems but rather my reactions to them. Once I really explore and analyze why I am feeling and reacting in certain ways allows the opportunity for personal growth.

 

[preilemus]

I had a similar revelation a few days ago.

first you need to know that I am quite unmotivated about a great many of things. i dont (well, didnt) care about anything that I ought to consider important, including school, homework, work, etc. most of my interests are fleeting, as in i may stay interested in something for a few weeks before I eventually lose interest, and drop it altogether.

one of these activities was playing guitar. i picked it up a year ago, took some lessons for 2 months, and then one day, i just stopped going to the lessons, and stopped playing altogether. then, 3 days ago i had an amazing idea for a concept album, and after months of indifference towards it, that guitar now has a very real appeal to me, because i now have a reason to learn to play again. that internal motivation is what I had been missing the whole time.

thank you for your post Snowqueen, because its an affirmation of what I went through, and is a discovery i might not have pieced together until weeks or even months from now.

 

[Ermine]

Excellent! It's a great reminder. I wasn't specifically taught these things by my parents, but I learned through experience and example. However, like Preilemus, the execution is sometimes lacking. I also play guitar and used to be pretty good, but now I don't really know what my motivation is. I need to make it a bit more concrete.

 

[Vrecknidj]

Has anyone else received useful advice on this - or have useful advice to offer?

A counselor of mine gave me a few useful bits; let's see what I can recall.

Your feelings are a great guide to your feelings. (Tautological, but more useful than it sounds.)

Emotions, like food, sometimes need time to digest. And, like physical digestion, if you mess with the process especially by trying to slow it or accelerate it, you're pretty likely to end up feeling upset.

This next one I picked up on my own when I was in my late teens. It dawned on me that I knew more at that time than I did a couple years before; and it struck me that in a few years hence, I'd probably know more then than I did presently. It then occurred to me that this would probably always be true, and that at no time was I likely to be so right about anything that a little more time couldn't help.

Dave

 

[Vrecknidj]

... Expressed another way, the external circumstances are not the real problems but rather my reactions to them. Once I really explore and analyze why I am feeling and reacting in certain ways allows the opportunity for personal growth.

QFT

There's nothing quite like turning inward to try to find both the causes of my problems and the solutions to my problems.

Dave

 

[Artifice Orisit]

Has anyone else received useful advice on this - or have useful advice to offer?

-Don't deny fear, don't try to suppress it; just acknowledge it, accept it, then move on.
-When making be decisions it's important to ask yourself: "but will I be happy?"

And some other good advice,
"There's usually two ways of doing things, the right way, and the fun way"-Cognisant

 

[echoplex]

That's great advice, snowqueen. INTP parents ftw (and peanut butter sandwiches too! )

I suppose that I've received somewhat similar advice in my life, but never quite so explicitly. It was something that was hinted around but was ultimately not something I really "got" until I figured it out for myself. My motivation for studying in school was always the simple fact that I didn't want to fail or feel stupid. It wasn't really about earning praise, which always made me feel uncomfortable anyway.

The part about emotions is something I think I've pretty much always done. I've been intellectualizing my feelings almost as long as I can remember. The hard part for me though has always been allowing myself to feel and still be in control. I usually regain control by just forcing the feelings out.

@Cog: Those are good. I'm afraid the last one is mostly true.