Habits of emotionally stable people
The side effect of gossiping and complaining is that it causes other people to respect you less. 1 2
Fear of Disappointing others (FODO). You’re stressed out because you can’t say no. And you’re unwilling to say no because you’re afraid someone will feel disappointed with you. This means that if you want to deal with your chronic stress (or anxiety, burnout, overwhelm, etc) you have to deal with the root cause, which in many cases is actually a hidden fear of disappointing others. 3
Emotional thinking vs intellectual thinking. “Emotional thinker” tends to make sense of experiences and make decisions based primarily on how the person feels emotionally. And “Intellectual thinking” is more rational or analytical in how the person makes sense of experiences and decisions.
Don’t make it emotional vs intellectual. Emotions can certainly be helpful in our thinking and decision making, as can analytical thought. The key is to listen and be aware of what our emotions are telling us, use them when helpful, but not be afraid to disregard them when they’re unhelpful. Similarly, analytical reasoning can be a very helpful tool in many situations, but it can be less helpful in others. Most big decisions will probably require a mixture of both emotional and intellectual thinking (they’re not mutually exclusive). The trick, of course, is to adjust the balance depending on the demands of the situation.
Filter your emotions through your values. When emotions lead to unhelpful decisions, it’s usually because our primary motivation is to feel better in the moment rather than doing what will lead to our long-term best interest. In other words, problematic emotional reasoning is problematic because the behaviors it encourages don’t align with our values. So, rather than trying to do less “emotional thinking” generally, try to filter your emotional decisions through the lens of your values—that is, when your emotions push you in one direction, ask: “Does this behavior align with my values or go contrary to them?”