When it comes to emotional management, we are really weak at it. We try to advise others, but we ourselves don’t know how to manage our own emotions.

Living life’s always about healing. It’s about how we improve in expressing ourselves. A growing kid in India gets to meet the outer world, not because of his family, not because of his relatives—but the truth is, because of his company. His company decides how he will be; his company gives him lessons; his company MAKES him. And we are absolutely known to it; yet, we simply ignore it. This way, the child meets the real world—with more of a real self; and he learns to fake it out. He learns to fake his emotions; he learns to fake circumstances, he learns to fake himself. He learns to betray every single being out there. So far, this is the actual reality one needs to face—being an Indian.

As the holy book, ‘BHAGAVAD GEETA’ states: “Revealing the feeling, is the beginning of healing.” Whatever we feel, we shall express. The inner world is like a volcano. If we don’t start to express, if we don’t start to make a character out of our emotions, we are going to be buried under them. If we don’t let ourselves get out of something, we are going to upturn our performance. We are going to stop the healing process—and often, this leads us on the path of social ignorance.

The best way to heal our emotions is Emotional Algebra. We have emotions for everything. Each thought the mind or the brain makes, creates a new and different emotion. Surprisingly, emotions are there everywhere! They have an interesting connection with habit formation too! Habits are dependent on our actions. Whatever action we do, is based on three things—attitude, emotion and situation.

Though each component of action is necessary, but here the emotion plays the major role; because it stimulates you to do that action. Emotional algebra, is the way, which explains us why we did an action, and what we must have done, to make things and scenario go well, instead of what we did.

Since, no action can be caused without an emotion; it is termed as Emotional Algebra.

Emotional algebra is a way, via which we have control on our emotions. So far, algebra is a branch of mathematics; and controlling emotions, is a branch of life. When we combine them all, we make emotional algebra. It is a simple and practical exercise; you can do to avoid making mistakes, and making the ten unhealthy emotions—Anger, Anxiety, Disappointment, Frustration, Guilt, Jealousy, Rejection, Resentment, Sadness, Stress. In order to control these 10 most common and unhealthy emotions among people, we need to understand the equation of emotional algebra.

Thought + Trigger = Emotion

Rearranging it, we get:

Emotion - Trigger = Thought

When we talk about the trigger here, we are actually talking about something that forces us. It is similar to the trigger of gun, where the bullet is the thought it triggers or in other words, stimulates the thoughts. It makes our mind to think, more on something. It has the ability to make our mind think, and when one is affected by these triggers, he/she starts to think a lot.  

When one thinks a lot, it causes emotion. Therefore, thought + trigger = Emotion. By analysing the thoughts, we need to understand that where are we making mistakes? And all this can be done with the help of emotional algebra—by the rearranged equation.

Suppose one went into his child’s room, and accidentally kicked off his one of the most important toys. He saw him using his mobile while studying and out broken by that; he didn’t see his toy lying on the floor. He hit it hard, and it broke. Angry on him, his child speaks something horrible in front of him in a high pitched voice.

He scolded him, and took his mobile away. He then, unlocked the mobile to see, what was the child doing while studying? And he saw he was searching a meaning of a word on Google; and now he genuinely feel so embarrassed and awkward!

He held his feelings, and he realised he was wrong. He went back in his room, and said, ‘I am sorry dear,’ to which the child responds immediately, ‘Okay.’

In this situation, the trigger was the child’s action of looking at his mobile; the thought was that he would be watching or streaming something; which combined together to form an unhealthy emotion—Anger. In case, if he would have subtracted the trigger from his emotion, that is, if he was to confirm whether what he was exactly doing; he would have saved himself, and the child from being the victim of unhealthy emotions. This is how, today, we need to subtract the triggers from our emotions and move on with the thoughts. We need to examine and look at our thoughts, in order to see where we are making mistakes? We need to, then, change the way of thinking by emotional algebra; by understanding how unhealthy emotions are we creating each day, each hour?