Why Do We Have Emotions?

Have you ever wondered why you are emotional about something or why this one specific emotion is holding you back in life?

One of the things that I have found is that humans were incredibly designed. The presupposition (presumed assumption) that I usually work with is that a person is always making the best decision available to them at the time with the resources they currently have.

This is one of the first NLP presuppositions that can help you see the world in an empowering way, but the thought thus implies that everything a human is doing is for their best interest all the time.

And I have seen this to be true.

With very little exception, pretty much everything someone is doing in their life and the actions that they are taking are serving them for their best interest, in however they view their best interest to be. This part is important.

It’s not that they are always making the best decision that will actually serve them in their life. It is that in their mind, in their map of the world, the person is making the best decision that they can for themselves.

This doesn’t always mean that they will make good decisions, but with what they have available they will do the best they can to achieve the success they deem in their life. What happens though is people develop maps of the world that contradict and don’t always serve them in the best way.

This happens with emotions too.

Our emotions are there to protect and serve us. They are designed for our best interest and highest intention so that we can survive and reproduce (biologically). While some of them get in the way at times and prevent us from becoming our best selves, they serve an important purpose and are needed for that success in our lives.

You just jumped into a lion’s cage and now you are in a confrontational stare down with this powerful king of the jungle. The emotions of fear, anxiety, and distress likely will all contribute to you having a new awareness of the situation.

Emotions allow us to gain more information.

Becoming more aware in a heightened sense of being you can acknowledge that fear that you have in the lion’s cage, but likely that fear isn’t going to prevent you from taking action. More often than not a person faced with a dangerous situation such as this one will do what it takes to get themselves to a place of safety.

This is where emotions serve us in the best way. These emotions of fear provided the information for you that this situation was extremely dangerous and it allowed you to give your full attention to the problem at hand taking decisive action.

Likely you jump out of the cage or run away to safety. Whatever you would have needed to do to survive was the action that was probably taken.

In other times when we don’t acknowledge our emotions or when don’t take the information that they are giving us it can lead to the emotions holding us back.

Somewhere in life you could have learned to develop this same kind of fear or anxiety that you had with the lion about living the life you want to live. It could be the case that someone could have these emotions when they are thinking about the goals they want to pursue and the challenges that come in the way of accomplishing those goals.

This fear is a good thing as it can give us valuable information, but it can also be a bad thing in the context of this person actually going after their dreams and goals. These emotions are best to be embraced, but recognized for the value that they have in your life.

Emotions come from thoughts. They provide you with information. When you know the information, you can release the emotion.

Love yourself and your emotions for they are serving you each and every day. Sometimes we don’t exactly know how they are serving us. Whether they are protecting us or preventing us from taking action, you can learn what they are doing for you and if they don’t serve you in the best way then you can release them.

Letting go of emotions can be done in many ways and we will go over them in a future post, but it is important to know that they only come from thought and can be used even more to your benefit.

Embrace your emotions. They are a wonderful thing and by knowing what they are doing for you it is possible to become an even better you. Getting into your emotions and allowing them to better align for your benefit will only help you grow as a person and to accomplish your biggest goals and dreams.