Ken Linder is a motivational speaker who developed a method called Life-Choice Psychology. He’s helped a lot of people master what he believes is the key to success in life: Controlling our emotions. His new book, Your Killer Emotions, teaches how to harness your feelings to your benefit, and we found his concept to be universally helpful.
Maybe your emotions are affecting your relationships or your career. For Linder himself, it was emotional eating that he struggled with. The process of learning to control those emotions and reach a healthy weight helped him develop his method of psychology. If negative emotions can motivate us, so can positive emotions, and Linder says we can use both to effect change within our lives.
While the thought of getting motivation from negative emotions initially gave us pause, it makes sense when Linder explains it; Just as being happy and self-confident (positive emotions) might result in us making better decisions in our relationships, being angry and vengeful (negative emotions) might motivate us to, say, go extra hard and win a tennis match. Linder gives these exact examples in his book in great detail, so pick up a copy for the full 101.
To give you a taste of how the whole emotional mastery system works, we asked Linder to share some information from his book to help illustrate the concept. Here are the 7 basic steps he recommends to achieve control of your emotions:
The 7 Steps of Emotion Mastery
-Your 4 Pre-Crunch Time! Steps:
Step 1. Identify Your Most Potent Personal Emotional Triggers (Your PETS)
Step 2. Be Anticipatory: Effectively Anticipate That You Will Have to Make Certain Future, Conscious Life Choices
Step 3. Construct Your Future Frisual(s)™—The Vehicle(s) That Will Enable You to Consistently Make Life-Enhancing Choices
Step 4. Adjust the Voltage of the Energy Charges That You Will Channel into Your Frisual(s)
-Your 2 Crunch Time! Steps:
Step 5. When Possible, Review Your Crunch Time! Reminder List
Step 6. Make a Golden/Truthful Life Choice
-Your Post-Crunch Time! Step:
Step 7. Review Your Life-Choice Process
Give the steps a try and see if you can effect some positive change in your life. Whether it’s losing weight or being happier in our relationships, neither end goal is the “best part” of the process — it’s the confidence that comes from seeing that you have the power to cause change and control your own life. That, Linder says, is what truly creates happiness.
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