Create Space For Negative Emotions

"A common reaction to painful emotions like doubt, fear, or anger is to squash them down and pretend they're not there. You'll actually find it a lot more tolerable if you create space for them, instead. Imagine whatever painful emotion you're feeling as a compact ball of energy at your heart. Now expand that ball of energy to take up the whole room, the whole street, the whole planet, the whole universe. As it diffuses outward, the strength of the emotion wanes. As you pay attention to it, it loses power."

I would say that identifying negative emotions as a thing rather than part of me has helped me feel like a winner on... well... the admittedly few occasions that I remember to do this. Recently I received an e-mail that could easily have been interpreted as a subtle message that I was not doing my part. Or it was definitely much harder to interpret it as a compliment! The concern over that played with my mind a little longer than I'd like. Still, by turning my mind to other productive things, it passed. Now I re-read the e-mail in a different light, no problem. It has, as the quote says, lost whatever power it once had.