It’s extremely rare to meet or find someone who is emotionally immature or unwilling or unable to control their emotions who has a productive life. People who lack the discipline to control their emotions rarely find balance, reach a place of calm, and achieve the necessary clarity that is required to become truly self-aware. Emotion rarely brings clarity. It often distorts it.

Having emotions is different than being overemotional. We feel with our hearts, but we should think with our head. Most people never differentiate between the two. If they feel something, they often act impulsively on that feeling. If they perceive something emotionally, they often respond destructively. Wisdom is not being devoid of emotions. It’s the ability to control them instead of allowing them to control you. Most people act as if they are a slave to their emotions, refusing to acknowledge it is their job to master them. When we think back to all of the mistakes and poor choices we have made throughout our life, we can pinpoint almost every one of them to our judgment being clouded by our emotions. Think of a time in your life when you made a wise decision while enraged, terrified, or anguished. It may be a lengthy challenge to find even one case. When we are calm and centered is when we tend to make our best decisions.

For years, people have talked about their level of IQ(Intelligence Quotient), but never understand their life will have no balance and will continue to stagnate if they do not put as much if not more emphasis on their EQ (Emotional Quotient). It has gotten to the point where people justify poor choices and bad decisions based on their feelings, thoughts, and perceptions. The difference between a disciplined and undisciplined person is easily recognizable. The disciplined person controls their emotions, while the undisciplined person chooses not to. If someone cuts you off in traffic, the disciplined person says to themselves, “No one’s been harmed, and no one’s been injured.” They know how to maintain a buffer zone between external events and their internal reactions. The undisciplined person easily feels slighted or disrespected, and wants to even the score.

A way to master your emotions is to learn to not take anything or everything personally. If you can distance yourself from what occurred and how you immediately feel or want to react, you will then allow yourself to reach a place where your emotions have been processed enough that you can make a logical decision. Until you master the art of controlling your emotions, and not acting in a way that’s detrimental to you and others, you will continue to live a life of futility and desperation. Finding balance is something that few ever achieve without understanding it’s a lack of emotional maturity that makes them imbalanced. Allowing yourself to take a step back and reflect is something that is beneficial in almost every situation or circumstance. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I say five minutes of reflection is often worth a lifetime of headaches or outcomes that can’t easily be undone. Focus on three things: breathing, reflecting, and not immediately reacting. Those three things will allow you to develop emotional control, balance, and clarity. Just like the clouds obscure the sun, emotions obscure logic. Once the clouds pass, you feel the warmth of the sun return. Once you allow the emotions to pass, you will see the clarity of wisdom.

Emotional control and emotional maturity do not mean emotional perfection. There is always a deeper level, but having the ability to step back and evaluate one’s own emotional nature persistently and devise strategies to navigate through those deeper layers is enough to provide opportunities for consistent emotional growth.

Emotional clarity in the present time isn’t the only vital component of emotional maturity. The past and future are equally important to living a healthy emotional life. Dr. Alok Trivedi, mentioned in previous articles, assigns much of the emotional character of any human being to what he calls “Root Experiences.” These are childhood experiences that helped shape our emotional nature into what it is today. A method he uses to balance emotions caused by root experiences is getting people to see beyond the judgment they have of them. To see anything in a way that is non-polarized, it is necessary to see both sides of the equation– For example: Most people see a lack of money in their lives as “bad.” There can be any number of reasons behind that, including root experiences where we were taught that not having money leads to nothing but unfavorable outcomes. Anxiety about a lack of money can increase stress, make us lose sleep, gain weight, increase blood pressure, and contribute to any number of health-related illnesses. Dr. Trivedi will ask people to look at the other side. “How does having a lack of money benefit you?” is a question he would ask. As counter-intuitive of a question as that may be, it gets people thinking in more of a balanced way. “It forces me to become more resourceful with my money and find different ways to serve and get more money,” is a possible answer. Having a balance between the benefits and drawbacks, and not ignoring the drawbacks and “being positive” is the goal of such work.

Fear and anxiety about a future event is also something that plagues a lot of people. Fear about a future event is often based on a previous experience that we haven’t yet matured from emotionally. Once again, if we get to the root of an emotion, view it with love and understanding rather than harsh judgment, then it can no longer act as a parasite that hijacks our nervous system without our conscious awareness. Having a cool head will put us in a better position to deal with whatever challenges the future brings anyway.

Emotional extremism occurs when we can only see one side of something. When we put any form of judgment aside on an issue, it becomes easier to have more emotional balance concerning the issue. It’s a skill that takes much inner work and evaluation, and there is nothing easy about it because most of us aren’t taught how to do that by anyone growing up or even in our adult life. One of the biggest obstacles is being able to emotionally detach from an experience that we have convinced ourselves is good or bad. Once that happens, then emotional healing and growth can occur.

Our emotions can even influence what we eat. It’s very common that when someone feels depressed they might indulge in more sugary foods that boost their energy and mood, even if only temporarily. Mastering our emotions means choosing what we want to do from a place of reason rather than by impulse. Instead of dipping into that gallon of ice cream, we may instead think about what is bothering us, “rewire” it, and choose something healthy to eat instead.

Emotions can live invisibly within us for as long as decades until an external event acts as a trigger. Those triggers are great opportunities for us to go within and get to the root of what is eating us, without blaming our environment for the way we react. Despite emotional health being more abstract and intangible in some ways than physical health, it is just as important as how we treat our bodies, because it is all connected. Having emotional control, balance, and clarity are all vital components to be cultivated on the path to self-fulfillment.