Let your emotions be your guide, NOT!

It's hard to go through a day without witnessing someone who is being guided totally by their emotions, but is that a bad thing? Maybe but maybe not, most of us at some point in our life have experienced an unbridled outburst of uncontrolled emotion after which we feel physically drained and on occasion totally embarrassed. We've all heard that we should control our emotions and we shouldn't make decisions based on them. On the other hand we wouldn't want to live our life guided solely by our emotions. But don't think of your emotions as a curse, instead think of them as a tool or better yet an indicator. I don't like the idea of controlling our emotions because our emotions help define who we are.

Anyway I think it's almost impossible to control our emotions. When we try to control our emotions we end up resorting to psychological counseling, psychiatry or even drugs both prescription and illegal. I'm not saying that these things are necessarily bad, except for the illegal drugs of course, but it seems like there is an epidemic of people with emotional and psychological disorders. So instead of trying to control our emotions lets use them to our advantage instead.

Let's think of our emotions as an indicator on an instrument panel of an airplane. These indicators or instruments are all tools to help the pilot fly the airplane better, easier and safer. One of the most important instruments on an airplane is ironically named the attitude indicator, how's that for an analogy. The attitude indicator shows the pilot whether the plane is banking, climbing, diving, or flying straight and level. As a pilot I was taught to always trust my instruments, but is that always the best approach? Some would argue yes, but just like always trusting your emotions I would argue no.

When I am flying with very low visibility and cannot see the horizon I will always, yes always! trust my instruments, but if I'm flying straight and level on a clear day with a blue sky and 20 miles of visibility and my attitude indicator shows that I am diving rapidly what do I believe now, the horizon or the instrument, definitely the horizon. And that is how we should use our emotions.

I will give you an example of how to do this. Let's say you're walking alone down a dark street at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood and from the shadows you hear and sense that someone is watching you. You can't see anyone or anything but you still get nervous and a bit frightened, now you are confronted with a decision, should I face my fears and continue walking to my car or do I go with my emotions, my gut feeling, my fear and run like hell? Well if you are like me, before initiating any plan of action you would ask yourself this one question. What would Spock do?