I probably should give an introduction to the structure of the title “Emotional journey”. Define it and give a build up to the mechanical approach but then, that would bore you out and more so, I chose to be lazy while doing this. Hence, please permit me the short writeup and enjoy your reading as you seek a little bit of extra knowledge to emotional journey.
PREFACE
Engaging my mind with the title I choose to write upon has helped me understand people more and connect with their mood. I get to predict what my readers thought of before opening this write up, what she/he was going through from all sphere of their life and approach the content with the aim of giving answers to the questions in their mind.
So here are my findings, that there are two category of people reading this currently:
- Those who are bored with the whole lockdown and quarantine drama. Tired of online classes (even if you are a drop out), those who have gone through every social media on their device and have been well updated on every notification with nothing else to look into other than spend some more data checking ‘Tiktoks’, funny videos, and images on the gram or laughing at the 'bants' on Twitter. P.S: you would notice I didn’t make mention of Facebook, that’s because I don’t expect any millennial to spend more than ten minute in that app.
- Those who are actually sincere about learning a thing or two on emotional journey. May be you are going through some tough time emotionally, may be you don’t understand why your mood swings easily, may be your boyfriend just broke up with you, or your girlfriend is giving you a hard time. May be love is the cause of the emotional break, may be you find it difficult relating with people, may be you are an introvert, may be attention from friends, may be psychologically due to the lock down and social distancing, may be you cry too easily when engaging in a hot discussion, may be you can’t tell how you feel sometimes emotionally, may be you need to read this to find out more of what exactly the cause of your emotional state of mind is presently.
Whichever it is, be rest assured to grab some insight here.
EMOTIONS
They make scientist look like fools because there are no chemicals to add up together, no formula to use in calculating emotions, no specific experiment can be termed “successful in understanding the emotions of a human”. Those who dared to carry out experiments, experimented on the wrong gender or and their combinations — the female gender. Quickest mood swings ever to be recorded (I won’t say beyond that).
Emotions are a combination of the human feelings, body reactions, expressive movements, and behaviors. Before we turn this write up to a Psychological text book, let’s just go straight up to the mechanical approach/ view of emotional journey.
MECHANICAL APPROACH
Here we would make use of a car and an automatic transmission car which majority are familiar with these days. So present in an automatic transmission car we have:
- The driver.
- The body of the car.
- The engine of the car.
- The control panel.
- The gear shift.
Quick puzzle.
“After securing that scholarship or job, or getting those material kiks you have always wanted, or getting a brand new phone, a car, your own house, or all those travels we planned in our imaginative journey to the moon and back when the money finally comes into the account, or those little goals you have set Materialistically, did you feel emotionally balanced for just that brief moment you received them or for a longer time.”
The real question is, can having all you seek fill up your emotional state without having social connection with People?
Let’s take a look at few of my friends:
- Poor in Love: There are many who are poor in love no doubt, they can choose other items in place of a human’s affection. This may sound weird but really the emotions you express now are a combination of the lags you had in the past or otherwise. When you see a person who never connect with people, it may be because from their tender age, their emotional tank was neglected by those around them. Their parent could get them stuffs, toys and take them to the heavens and back but those things don’t fill up the emotional need of that child. Up until when you are old. You can hold your chest high and say you don’t need people, but deep down, the real you needs your emotional tank to be attended to. Why? Because money can satisfy more when you have people around you showing you attention and filling up your emotional tank.
- Personal Circle: They find comfort in a scrutinized selected group of people. Yes! they do because growing up they could only trust few to attend to their emotional need. So when parents went out and have been busy back to back all week, they sneak out to their best friend’s apartment and play till they grew up to believe they didn’t need many people (this philosophy may be wrong no doubt as yours might be slightly different from how I defined it).
- Extreme silent: I had a friend back at college who never spoke to any one during classes from my level two to final year. He was looked at like a weirdo. Comes in silently with a very weird look and left with no announcements. It was impossible to tell who his friends were because you could just never tell. Yes! They exist and it’s not their making. He could talk and make friends if he wanted to but something may have been missing from a tender age that drove him to choosing silence and self isolation. This kinds could be dangerous and advised to approach with extreme caution because you never can predict what is going on in their head as they stare at you while you talk for minutes.
- Materialistic: This category choose to believe that true emotional balance is found in having all the riches in the world. Slightly similar to “poor in love” but these ones are extreme. They can go the extra mile in getting their materialistic goals met even if it has to include betraying your close friends, and doing some things nasty with people. They may have had a poor background and believed “the world won’t respect you if you don’t have money” and or they could have had all the riches from birth and feel “I need to keep this standard and more so I don’t get disrespected at any time”. Two different people, different goals, different perspective but the same egocentric beliefs.
THE MECHANICAL APPROACH ALREADY!
For better understanding, we would compare our car as our emotions.
- The Driver:
For every machine or technology, there is an operator. Someone controlling the outcome of the use of that vehicle. We do not want to have an “age of Ultron” as in the movie “the avengers” or “Terminators” as in the movie “Terminator” come in to play in our reality. I very much love those movies quite alright, but please let them stay in our imaginations only.
You as the driver of your car (emotion) is fully responsible to operate and control your emotions. Whatever you decide is what happens. No one can fully master your emotions for you or direct your emotions. It is either you choose to be happy or you choose to be sad, you choose to be angry or you choose to be calm. You have been equipped to master the moods, the swings, the stages of your emotions and control them so you can have a perfect life. Father once said, “In the journey of Life, you are solely responsible for how and what you use your life to do”. No matter the storm, the stage of life you are at now, the down time, the good and bad, you have the power and wisdom to control your emotions right. Like we say “Las Las we go dey alright.”
“Remind yourself always that you are a professional at this. It might take time to master all controls but you will get better at this.”
2. The Body of the Car:
This covers our emotional appearances. Remember emotions also involves behaviors and bodily expression. How does the world see us emotionally? What behaviors have we adapted that display who we are? Are you extreme silent, materialistic or the rest, it will eventually show on you. Some could be pretentious and display a very perfect image of themselves to the public but deep down are terrors who need only their emotional needs to be met. Invest less in how you expect the world to see you and do more in your core engines.
3. The Engine of the Car:
Just like our mobile car, there are core engines that keep the vehicle moving. In your emotions are some of those core engines. One of them is your “fuel tank”. This guy must never be empty as you journey. But what are you really fuelling inside your engines. Is it hate, is it love, is it sadness, is it joy and happiness. Whatever you fuel into your engine determines the healthy state of your emotions. You can’t be sad and fuel yourself with more sad songs. You can’t be beaten down and fuel yourself with sad demeaning disappointing words. Even if no one comes to your aid, you as the driver and controller can choose to fill up those fuel tanks with all the positive energy, vibes, and happiness (even if it is hard sometimes). As a Christian, if I ever get down, I retract back to all the good that has happened and all the positivity left in me. Amazing how a short brief pain can cause the loss of many happy thoughts in seconds.
“Whatever you fuel into your engine determines the healthy state of your emotions.”
4. The Control Panel:
Direction without control will lead to multiple crashes. You as the controller must learn to take hold of your control panels timely, else you would follow the winds. Here we have three of the controls to deal with:
- The steering: This is the direction itself. Without this guy here, you would only be speeding up the road. learning the curves of steering in avoiding potholes (negativity, bad vibes etc) intentionally and staying on track to a better road.
- The throttle (acceleration pedal): This is speed itself. Knowing when to speed things up.
- The brakes (stopping pedal): This involves stopping or slowing down on your emotions.
5. The Gear Shift:
Unlike the manual transmission where we have a very stressful way of shifting gears, we can easily master the automatic transmission with just a swipe. So basically following the image above, we have:
- P — Park: This is a time for you to actually bring your emotions to halt. Rest for a moment. Stop jumping on every strand of feelings, just park and do every other thing. Life is not all about emotions, there is the spiritual aspect, the academics, work. Not to say those aspect don’t involve emotions, on the contrary they do, but there are times you loose focus when you attach feelings and emotions to so many other important things in your life. It’s like taking a break and focusing on other things you have set as a goal.
- R — Reverse: This is the Appraisal time, a time you need to take few steps backwards to see into how you have come. What has been the progress of your emotional state? What did you learn to avoid and wave off? what have you improved upon over time? What do you need to do better or more? What do you need to stop completely? Take few moments to appraise your emotional state.
- N — Neutral: Like we said in park, you don’t need to jump at every strand of feelings and moods. Just stay neutral. This minute you are so happy and then the next you read a terrible news on social media and decided to jump at sadness. Calm down and stay neutral in some events. Maintaining your lane and emotions.
- D — Drive: Movement. Here you are progressively intentional about the well-being of your emotions. Choosing to drive on the path that gives you joy, happiness and positivity. Maintaining the good road and bad road at the same time with some positive energy.
*Ignore the S*
Dear esteemed readers, I am glad to inform you that we have come to the end of my Harvard worthy study on emotional journey. I merit some awards at this stage but on God. While we take out time to develop ourselves more and be better as we age, please remember always that 50% of your success is basked in a healthy lifestyle and this should cover your emotional state. Don’t keep silent about whatever you are going through. You may not demand attention and Love from the people close to you but you can speak to them about it and have fun. Decide to stay healthy mentally and emotionally.
Special gratitude goes to everyone who decided to click on the link and read till the end. Y’all are the real MVP.
Three things you would do before you close this tab.
- Clap for this write up (you would see a 👏 clap sign below).
- Follow my profile by clicking on my name below.
- Drop a comment and share the link to everyone you know.
Till I find the strength again to write to my Mvps, I remain yours always. Solanke Olamilekan.
