Emotional flexibility: the key to feeling better

Sometimes, trying to make everything make sense and be organized perfectly, we become a little rigid.. What happens if we also do it with our emotions? We would not allow life to flow; Therefore, it is important to have emotional flexibility.

It consists of accepting perfection, even discarding it as a way of not carrying so much tension.. This is how we give wings to self-confidence, promoting a healthier environment, thus achieving a higher quality of life.

We invite you to take a tour of emotional flexibility. We will tell you what it is about, how to get it and what the benefits of doing so are.

What does emotional flexibility mean?

It is the ability we have to adapt to emotional circumstances. So, it consists of the ability to let our emotions flow and be tolerant of changes; This must occur in different contexts.

In other words, It is the art of emotionally adjusting to the events that arise. Furthermore, it is a difficult skill to practice and achieve, because constant changes are being generated in life, and it can be overwhelming to systematically discard a good solution in order to go for the best one.

However, it is possible, the important thing is to try to be assertive so that our emotions always have room to breathe.

How to be flexible on an emotional level?

There are various ways to increase emotional tolerance. If that is the path you want to take, we provide you with some strategies to help you:

Let go to make the path lighter. Why hold on to what hurts us? Leaving aside what is toxic to you frees us, and allows us to better adjust to the changes that come.Be aware that every emotion has its value. Keeping them away from us is not healthy, since each one fulfills a function; Each one has an energy from which we can nourish ourselves and a message from which we can learn.Cultivate resilience. It is about the ability to get ahead of problems. No matter how frustrated we are, we can transform those feelings into courage and effort, which will later be rewarded with great moments.Learn from the past. There are times when it is easy to lose control; If we learn from them, we can use this preventive teaching to warn us what could happen if we follow the same steps.Goodbye remorse. The feeling of guilt exhausts us, and makes us stay in the past. While it is important to learn, it is not healthy for us to remain clinging to something that has already happened and we cannot change.Let’s embrace our fears. It is difficult for fear not to arise since it constitutes the most powerful part of our alarm system. So, instead of turning a blind eye, that is, pretending they don’t exist; rather, let us embrace them, let us come into deep contact with them; Knowing their origins will also help us know ourselves better.Let’s give ourselves permission. It’s about letting emotions flow. To allow them to be there, and to live with them.Cultivate healthy relationships. For this we need to draw on our self-knowledge and self-esteem, if we give ourselves value and know what we are like, we can be more flexible and forge relationships that are based on this ability. Furthermore, it is essential that we surround ourselves with people who are not toxic, as this weakens our emotional flexibility.Perform activity. For example, sport helps us be more focused and feel better thanks to the neurotransmitters and endorphins that we release when doing so. And, art allows us to transform our anxieties into something that is pleasant.

Besides, We must remember that we do not have all the answers. Therefore, it is essential that we also give space to the subjective, listening to the opinions of others. His truth, in this sense, will always improve ours.

We must also not forget that sometimes we have to release emotional control. It’s okay to cry, scream or laugh. Being irrational, we discover irrational and contradictory is good for us. By accepting ourselves, dissonance will stop threatening us, demanding the right to update in the present what we do or think without anyone acquiring the right to judge us.

To have our emotional flexibility, We also need to be connected with our thoughts and actions. To do this, we can count on various practices, for example: mindfulness and self-compassion.

In fact, Shadi Beshai, Jennifer L. Prentice, and Vivian Huang, in an article called “Building blocks of emotional flexibility: Trait Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Are Associated with Positive and Negative Mood Shifts,” published in the journal Mindfulness, show a study in which they found that mindfulness and self-compassion act as protective agents against mood drops and mood swings.

What are the benefits of having emotional flexibility?

The advantages that we can have when we make emotional flexibility a present skill in our lives are the following, among others:

Greater self-knowledge.Increases our self-esteem.Greater emotional management.Increase our tolerance.Greater capacity for mindfulness.Increases our self-compassion.Improves the relationship with others, with ourselves and with the environment.Improves the ability we have to make decisions.Constant learning.There is release of tension.Greater capacity for resilience.Toxic relationships and environments decrease.

In summary, emotional flexibility can be summarized as the ability to assume that the range of emotions that can invade us is wide, from which an emotional mixture almost always emanates and not a pure emotion.

Thus, it has a lot to do with acceptance without judgment, with honesty with oneself, with an emotional intelligence that unites us with the most primitive, and perhaps richest, part of our nature.

Cultivating it will help us see each emotion as unique and valuable. Also to know when it is best or not to express it, and to transform moments of chaos into moments of harmony; to yes, we will move towards a better quality of life.

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