How Your Mind Messes With Your Emotions!

Amber Dias delves into how our minds play tricks on us and mess with our emotions.

- Amber Dias

A brand new day and with a spring in your step, you begin tackling the mountain of work sitting on your desk. On her way past your desk, your boss tells you she wants to see you in her office after lunch. At once, your mood drops and you become angry and grumpy, even insecure, as thoughts of being reprimanded or worse, getting fired, flood your mind. However, it turns out that you are being put in charge of a new project.

It’s the oldest scenario in the book – when the unknown hangs over our heads, the mind immediately projects scenarios of what might be and more often than not, those projections go down a gloomy path. The result: You feel angry, sad, abandoned and even depressed. But why is that?

OUR TWO WORLDS  

In his essay ‘How The Mind Affects Your Happiness’, life coach Gary van Warmerdam explains that as human beings, we live in two worlds – the physical world in which we go about our daily tasks and the world of our mind and imagination; a virtual reality of sorts that can appear and feel just as real as the physical world. And in our quest for fulfillment and happiness, it is changes in this virtual reality rather than changes in the external world that have a lasting impact. Simply put, you could have a good job, more money than you know what to do with and a loving family, but if your mind does not accept this as enough to be happy, you will still feel inadequate.

PERCEPTION MATTERS

This may sound a little strange, but experts from across the globe agree that the mind is an entity that has a life of its own, one that enjoys the control it has over our emotions. It tricks you into believing that happiness can be found only through accomplishments and when you put your focus on achieving that, you inadvertently allow the mind to control how you perceive the world and your emotional reaction to those perceptions.