5 Ways Of Clearing Your Life Of Emotional Drama
Which one of us doesn't love tuning into a good daytime soap? While they’re entertaining on tv, personal drama is no fun at all. After all, too much emotional drama interferes with our lives and personal growth. Here are 5 tips on how you can accelerate your personal growth by getting rid of all that emotional drama.
1. Manage strong emotional reactions
Learn to recognize the onset of these emotionals and be aware of cues in your own behavior. Pretending that you're not affected have long-term effects that bog us down. If necessary, you can always ask someone trustworthy to give you feedback on your emotional reactions. Now stop, and take a deep breath. You can visualize something that brings you peace, or enjoyment, and relax for a few minutes. Distract yourself from replaying the mental movie that triggered the emotion and call a friend or listen to some music. Do try to stay away from negative coping strategies such as alcohol or drugs - they are only temporary and don't tackle the problem at the root.
2. Change your core beliefs
Your old patterns of emotional indulgence are due to how you think, react, and behave. So firstly, you need to be aware of what your core beliefs are, and identifying the maladaptive ones, or the ones you want to change. The moment a negative thought crosses your mind, say "Cancel" to yourself. Tell yourself to cancel that thought – it’s no longer true for the new you. Now release it, and recite your new belief.
3. Do listen to your inner voice… but only selectively
We all have these little inner voices that usually give us a hand in times of trouble. But it's a double-edged sword. Often, these voices tell us stories, and play mental movies over and over again. You need to be able to choose what to listen to. When these pointless stories and mental movies start playing, consciously choose to turn to an activity that will engage you and completely absorb your attention. Continue to do so until you’re able to talk to yourself calmly and rationally.
4. Develop healthy relationships
Communication and respect are two key components of a healthy relationship. But both of them come hand-in-hand with honesty. A relationship without honesty is like a car without wheels, it will not go anywhere. Honesty breeds trust, and mutual respect.
5. Allow love and happiness in your life
The expression of love encourages the creation of happiness and internal joy. It is what you choose to focus your attention and interpret your experiences that trigger the type of emotions you create. So focus on generating positive emotions like joy and allow love to flow through you instead of focusing on maladaptive emotions such as anger and hate.
Truth is, breaking free of emotional drama is not extremely difficult. But, it takes diligence. Personal growth comes from repetition and practice that is not much different from strength-training workouts at the gym. So practice these 5 tips with diligence and you’ll be on your way to conquering another milestone in personal development.