We have all heard the famous saying: "life is 10% of what happens and 90% of how you react to it." Attitude is everything; it is what shapes our beliefs and our desires. Harsh times will occur throughout our lives, but it is up to us how we interpret them. We should try hard to be in control of our emotions despite any given situation.

By Emile Fakhoury
Controlling our emotions is key to success in life and our professional career, some have called it emotional intelligence that define the capacity to be aware of, control emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.

As we face incidents in our life or changes in our professional careers, we react sometimes negatively which impacts negatively our physical and mental health. It is essential in the beginning to feel sad and to express dissatisfaction naturally but also to be aware of both the time and impact on our life.

We should never forget that we are in control of our life and no one else. We should be able to decide how to behave and handle our life and career by protecting the most valuable thing in our life which is our mental and physical health.

Studies continue to show that practicing high emotional intelligence is essential to our life and career success.

The concept of emotional intelligence has evolved from emotional strength to its current terminology, “emotional intelligence.”

We should train our brains to adapt these 3 skills as we train our bodies to exercise for a better health:

• Self-Awareness – we should recognize and understand our emotions.
• Motivation – Keep the positive energy to commit, follow-through, and achieve our goals.
• Empathy – Understand our emotion and relate to others more effectively 

I believe everyone is capable to get trained to develop emotional intelligence and take control.

• Observe our emotions (Self-Awareness): When we have an emotional reaction to something, it is because mainly we have unsolved issues, and we don’t know how to solve it.

Best thing to do is to listen to our heart and express our emotions and try to think about why you’re experiencing this.

• Practice not React, and Motivate: Responding is a conscious process that involves deciding how to behave.

When you’re more aware of your emotional triggers, you can always think about the way to behave in advance.

If you know that you get angry easily to colleagues when you’re feeling very stressful at work think about what you can do next time when you’re experiencing the same trigger.

Maybe you can get a few minutes of alone time just to calm down yourself first.

Keep motivating yourself as this is not going to work from first experience, you would need to follow-through to gain control.

• Remain Humble and Show Empathy: Instead of judging someone or something, try to think or feel like them: would you do or feel the same too and why?

This will help to understand other people’s thoughts and emotions.

Showing empathy helps us understand other situations and feelings, and also give us back more experiences about ourselves as we are not much different from others.

Emotional intelligence can be learned, it’s a lifetime process. In life, it is never late to learn anything, we need to keep the motivation and positive energy, also the continuous observation of ourselves and practice to get better.

Age doesn’t matter, we can still always learn and make the rest of our life healthier and happier.

Emile Fakhoury is a Business Professional working in the water and energy sector. He publishes regularly on corporate matters at The Levant news.