Often, when your are put in a situation for which you’re not prepared, you tend to let yourself get overwhelmed by your emotions. You become panicked and are not able to control your reactions.

But what do you understand through emotion? The word “emotion” comes from the Latin “emotionis”, which means “impulse that produces a reaction.” According to the dictionary, “emotion” means “an intense emotional state of relatively short duration, caused by external factors and characterized by sudden physical and mental disturbance.” Psychologists define this term as “a method of perceiving the elements and relationship between reality and imagination, expressed physically through physiological functions such as facial expression  or heart rate, and up to behaviors such as enthusiasm, happiness, gratitude, surprise, confusion, irritation, etc.

In 1980, Robert Plutchik created a circle of emotions. He proposed eight opposing emotions. Along with his circular model, he created connections between the circle of emotions and the color wheel. The intensity of the emotion is expressed according to the intensity of the corresponding color.

Emotions can overpower you when you don’t know yourself sufficiently well, when you’ve never had to deal with this type of emotion before. For example, the biggest fear of mankind is public speaking. According to “The Biggest Fears of Mankind”, 40% of people who completed the questionnaire are nervous when they have to speak before a group.

This fear can become an asset if you succeed in using your emotions in a positive way. How can you accomplish this? Try to smile, to interact with the public—it’s there to listen and to learn things. Even if you mess up or the discourse, situation, or event doesn’t go as you want, it doesn’t mean that you should be discouraged. Everything apparently unfortunate can turn out well if you, pure and simple, believe in your ideas and try to put them into practice with intelligence, patience, and correct actions. If you trust in yourself you will succeed in mastering your emotions. It’s possible that this will not always happen and perhaps you say that you trusted in yourself and it still seemed like the universe was against you. Wrong—take the good even from situations that are less favorable to your plans.

Georgiana TUDOSE/Human Resources Consultant