How to develop emotional stability in life?

To cultivate emotional stability will take time. It is not something you do one day, and the next morning you are emotionally stable as a boulder on the bed of a river. 

 To succeed in anything in life, you just have to remember the below line:

We are what we repeatedly do. 

If your emotions are unstable because that is how you grew up unconsciously as you reacted whenever someone threw a stone on you. Also, you got depressed whenever your parents scolded you.

You got angry whenever your brother took the remote of the television and put his favorite channel. 

Whatever you are today, whatever your thinking today is all because of the repetition of your life experience. 

You did it unconsciously, or maybe because of wrong parenting, but now you can change yourself consciously because neuroscience has found that the human brain physically changes whenever we do something repeatedly. 

New neural connections are built, and it changes us, changes our personality, our skills, our thoughts, and we also know that we can shrink bad connections by not repeating it.

With this information, let’s begin the ways to develop emotional stability.

1. Let it flow: 

According to Nicole Gravenga, a PhD neuroscientist, “ Emotional instability is caused by a lifetime of trying to control your emotions. Controlling your emotions, tamping them down, or limiting yourself to short periods of expression, for years or decades causes emotions to back up. Humans require regular emotional hygiene, and if you haven’t been doing that kind of thing, then you are probably backed up emotionally.” 

Don’t suppress your emotions inside you. It will continually build-up, and someday it will burst. Just acknowledge it and let it flow. Because nobody said, life will be fair when you step outside into the real world. Uncomfortable things happen, and it will keep happening in the future. 

There may be thousands of problems in the outside world, and it will be there, till there is life, but you are not bothered by it. You are ok. You will keep moving.

This kind of mentality will be a start for your emotional stability. 

2. Mindfulness

Rick Nauert PhD, an associate professor for Rocky Mountain University, mentioned in his blog that mindfulness helps in emotional stability. In his blog he mentioned, “ University of Utah researchers discovered individuals who describe themselves as being more mindful have more stable emotions and perceive themselves to have better control over their mood and behaviour throughout the day.

More mindful people also describe less cognitive and physiological activation before bedtime, suggesting that greater emotional stability during the day might even translate into better sleep.” 

Mindfulness is being aware of your present and looks at the internal and external factors without judgment.

During mindfulness, whenever we stumble upon external or internal distractions, we just look into it from a third person and understand how the distraction makes us feel without any personal judgment or preconception.

Yes, the neighbours are shouting, and you are trying to focus on your work, how does that make you feel?

You are thinking, what disturbance feels like as you go to the root of it and try to understand it without any biased judgment. 

When you are washing your cloth, you focus on washing your clothes. You are present at the moment. You notice the water running from the tap. You notice the foam or the sloshing sound the clothes are making. You are aware of your presence.

Of course, mindfulness comes with practice and to make sense of the above lines you need to experience it first. Mindful meditation is the best way to achieve mindfulness. 

3. Focus on now.

I know you have 100 tasks to complete for the day. You are overwhelmed and stressed about how you are going to finish your work. But, thinking about the whole day or whole life will burden you with imaginary problems that you may or may not have. 

You can plan for the whole day, but don’t commit to finishing all of your tasks in the day. Just focus on the next task for five minutes.

Remember, in the above; I mentioned we become what we do. It means that this mindset of not thinking about the future continuously will also develop with practice. 

4. Right Parenting.

In a study recently published in the Journal of Moral Education, researchers led by Alexandra Davis, assistant professor in family and child studies at The University of New Mexico’s College of Education, found that having a caring and understanding mother affects the behaviour of their children.

The children represent empathy, provide selfless love to others, and which result in more excellent emotional stability.

Of course, you already grew up, and if your parenting was wrong, there is no way to go back. 

But, you can make your children emotionally stable when you do the right parenting. 

5. Illeism:

David Robson, a science writer, specializing in the extremes of the human brain, body, and behaviour, mentioned in his blog about illeism. It basically means speaking with yourself in the third person. 

For example, if you have an emotional imbalance because of a fight with a friend, you can say to yourself like, “He is feeling bad because…” 

The idea behind this is the change of perspective. A small shift of perspective will reduce the intense emotion you are feeling because of the fight.

Just, try to talk to yourself when you are alone or silently when you are in public because talking to oneself will be questioned as mental instability by others.

On the other hand, if you are not bothered by others’ opinions, then you will be okay with this technique.