We all want to be successful. For some, success means having lot of money,  for some it may be having lot of property, for some it may be having a good secured job,  for some it may be having an own business, for some it may be having good health,  for some it may be having good family and friends and so on and so forth. Success is purely subjective. But I came across a very meaningful definition of success in one of the articles and it said that "Success is a progressive realization of your dreams". I was really impressed with this definition, particularly the word" progressive" , which means that success must not be treated as a destination  and it is always progressive, as in, it is an ongoing process. I believe that it is always a journey and only when you enjoy the journey, you will be happy and fulfilled in life. Otherwise every day you will be bored, frustrated and waiting for the journey to end, without knowing that, there is in fact, no destination as such in life.

So if life is a journey it is highly essential to make it fun, enjoyable and fulfilling. 

I think that to lead a life of fulfilment is the key.  Success without fulfilment will be not be a complete life. There will always be a sense of vacuum, if you do not attain fulfilment.

Now I would like to ask you some questions:

Why do we want money?

Why do we want wealth?

Why do we want to own property?

Why do we want have good family life?

Why do we want to have our own business?

The answer to all the above questions can be summed up in just two words and any guesses what it is?.........

The answer is " feel good" or “feel happy”. If you look at it, it eventually boils down to our emotions and more so positive emotions. Unless our emotions are not fulfilled we will always feel a sense of vacuum. Something seems to be missing. So now, let us understand what are emotions and how we can utilize it for our well-being, rather than allowing it, to overwhelm us.

I consider that every emotion as an indicator or a signal which is trying to tell us something. Now let us consider an emotion which we label as negative. For instance let us take anger .Now firstly what is the emotion of anger. I consider it to be a state of a response to a particular situation in our mind, which is exhibited through our body. In fact each and every emotion is a response to a situation, which is first created in the mind and instantly exhibited through the body. Now coming back to the emotion of anger, let us first analyse what exactly happens when a person is angry. Whenever a person is angry, the response is usually shouting or speaking very loudly, speaking very fast , eyes usually become red, may sometimes hit a person or throw things, breathing pattern becomes faster than normal and also the body may shiver depending on the intensity of anger etc. In the worst scenario, may even kill another person. These are all the symptoms of anger.

Now let us analyse, why this kind of response takes place in the first place. Usually when we do not get what we want or to put it in simple words, when the expectations are not met, it usually results in anger. Now is there any way to pre-empt this emotion all together? I think it can be achieved ,but with lot of practice .

Now let us consider a trigger for the emotion of anger. Let us say that you had expected your colleagues to appreciate you for the contribution you had made towards the organization you worked for. But when nobody appreciated or recognized your efforts, you began to get angry. So here the trigger is expecting others to appreciate you or seeking validation from others. The solution is once the trigger is known, immediately educate your mind with a fact or principle that “ we can never demand respect or appreciation from others”. Once this becomes your response for the trigger, you need to keep responding in the similar manner over and over again, until it becomes automated response. It is not just saying this response to yourself mechanically, it must sink in our mind and believe that this a real fact. So, the concept here is to interrupt the pattern which you were running prior to this and instead of responding in the negative way, start to replace it with the new found response. When this response is repeated over and over and over again, then after a few times, it will go into auto pilot mode. So whenever you think people are not appreciating you, instantly the response is “ we can never demand respect or appreciation from others”.  The key here is the repetition must be done until the new response is implanted into your subconscious mind.

If we carefully analyse the above emotion of anger, it is a signal or an indicator which is indicating us that something is wrong. Any emotion for that matter always signals us . It is like a traffic signal. Red  colour signal indicates us to stop and green colour  signal indicates to go forward and amber colour signal indicates to get ready either to stop or to move forward. Very similarly, each and every emotion in us, is indicating or signalling us. It is asking us to take an action. It is as simple as that. Period! Unfortunately, we have considered emotions as our enemies, particularly when it is not favoring us.

Conclusion

We usually get so involved with the emotions, that we forget to take any action and rather we do not take any action and just keep whining about it. The fact is  every emotion is telling us to take action quickly .The action may be mental or physical. What I mean to say is, every emotion is asking us to either change our thought process or change the way we do our actions physically. In the above case when we are confronted with anger, the emotion is trying to convey us, to take action mentally. That is it is signalling us to quickly change our way of looking at things particularly when we are dealing with people.