The Impact of five basic emotions on self-confidence

It is said that a human being has five basic emotions, viz. joy, fear, sadness, anger and disgust. Though the new research says that there are only four emotions, I will go with the conventional scientific understanding of the five emotions. However, for good measure, I am adding surprise also to the list. What I am going to do here is not to state the obvious or give the statistics of any survey based on emotions. Instead, I would like to add some life experiences of mine which are more original and authentic than any other data which I can provide.

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I would call myself an extrovert now and it has happened through an evolutionary process. One might think that becoming an extrovert is no big deal and it is part of the nature of the person. Though my growth from an introvert to extrovert had happened naturally, it cannot be denied that I had put a certain amount of effort to bring in that change. It was more deliberate than obvious. But I do believe that I have those genes of being social in me which I got naturally from my father. Now what is the big story and why is it important to write about it? I am neither a big or an important person nor have I done something extraordinary to the society. Am I actually different or am I one among the commonest people is the question. Of course, I have not done anything mention worth to the world but I have done things mention worth to my life. Well, that indeed sounds bizarre and stupid. Who else is going to make a change in your life other than you? Everyone lives for themselves and whatever changes they bring to their lives will be for them only. Yet, why should I write about myself and my transformation over the years? It is the one little fact that my friends who have seen me in my childhood during my schooling are not able to believe that it is the same person they are seeing when they see me now. This transformation might have happened in the lives of numerous people around the world and will be still happening. But, the reason I  write this is not for people who dare to bring in that change in their life but it is for those who still lack that confidence in making a decision and who succumb to the ways of the majority against their own wishes.

I was a silent child throughout my school days but, I have always had that flair to become a flamboyant person.I still don’t know why I was known as a silent child in my school in spite of having those animated genes in me. Maybe my then best friend was a silent one and I wanted to be like her. Whatever she did was right to me and that thought came to me due to the sheer fact that she always scored more than me in exams. And in childhood as the marks you get for exams are considered as the scale of measuring your IQ, I always believed that she is more intelligent than me. But gradually the basic nature started to precipitate and by the time I reached my secondary level I had deliberately started to put efforts to come out of that image of “silent girl”.

When I reached college I had come out of that shell of inhibitions but the debris of my previous experience had remained inside my mind which was not that easy to remove. I struggled. Now how did the basic emotions impact my growth?

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Out of the five emotions joy, fear, sadness, anger and disgust, the prominent emotion in me was and is joy. I would describe myself as a happy person. More than the word happy the word optimistic would suit my character better. I was always optimistic that something better is going to happen. My life had always been that of an overprotected child and hence nothing exciting happened in my life. Still, I was hopeful that things will get better. And that has helped me. Maybe what Rhonda Byrne says in the book Secret is, in fact, true. The Law of Attraction might indeed work. And all I can say about my life at this point is that I am happy and contented and has no regrets about whatsoever. Now, that doesn’t mean that my life has been a bed of roses. I too have had my own share of challenges, tragedies, and disappointments. The only thing is that I did not let those define my life.

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To become a non-conformist, to break the chains of the convention that had chained me inside the walls guarded by one statement “what will people think”, I needed courage. The second emotion fear too had its own share of role in my life. And I don’t claim that I am completely a fearless person. Had I been so then I would have become one like those famous gurus. But, at least I can say that I have overcome a lot of my apprehensions over the years and that I am proud of it. My achievement with regard to overcoming this emotion comes with the mere fact that I tackled this emotion all by myself and that I have had very less motivation from outside in the earlier stages that helped me to overcome this. I had to strive, I had to struggle, fight and I had to get that clarity all by myself.

Out of the other three emotions, I seldom feel angry and disgusted. While people out there speak a lot about how to control anger, I often wonder “How to get angry?” However, I feel that it is one of my major strengths. I don't feel that confidence comes with anger. In fact I would view anger as an indication of lack of confidence somewhere. It could even be the manifestation of your anxiety which you are unable to handle.

Now, about sadness, um, well, for me, it is situation dependent. Only very specific people and specific situations can make me sad. And I clearly know what they are. Hence, I am more or less unconcerned about everything else. I don’t let it engulf me most of the times. However, there could be other things that are beyond your control which can make one sad. The best way to overcome that is to let the greater force decide and do its work and to accept that we are "not-so-powerful" always as we think we are. Times come in our life where we have to shed that ego and accept that we are actually helpless with regard to the greater plan of the universe.At least that is what I do. Other factors that can make one sad are those regrets in life, about some decision, some act or some choice that they made. In my case, I can say with confidence that I have no regrets about anything in my life. That doesn't mean that I have not made mistakes or that I have not failed. My strength lies in the fact that I take everything of that sort as an experience and I believe that 'to err is human'.  And I strongly agree with the lines" If you have not made any mistakes in your life, then you have not lived".

I have nothing much to say about disgust. I respect people for what they are and never try to coerce anyone for my values. I believe in freedom of choice and freedom to live one's own life. Hence, disgust is that one emotion that I have seldom experienced in my life.

Finally, the best one is kept for the last. And that one is added to this list for good measure. It is called surprise. Wikipedia says that the emotion surprise is a brief mental and physiological state, a startle response experienced by animals and humans as the result of an unexpected event and that it can have any valence, that is, it can be neutral/moderate, pleasant, unpleasant, positive or negative. Here again, I focus on the pleasant and positive. I love surprises and I consider each day I get to live as a new surprise. That helps me keep going through even the toughest of times.

In a nutshell, out of the six emotions, the focus on the right ones has helped me improve my confidence. Becoming confident is a choice. If you fear that no one is going to accept you for who you are or if the thought of "What will others think" make you afraid to take a new step, then you fail. If you focus on the sad part of your story and spend the rest of your life pondering and regretting about it, then it is guaranteed that you are not going to feel confident about yourself again. Anger might make you appear like a 'terror' in front of others but that is a very deceptive emotion. It can never help you gain true relations which will add value to your life and which will help you become more confident.Avoid disgust as much as possible from your life because you can not change anyone unless they are willing to and each one is right in their own way. Focus on joy because that is what everyone wants for themselves at the end of the day.

Train Journey- The Microcosm of the Journey of Life

Can train journey be considered as a microcosm of life itself? Well, my answer is yes. You begin your journey at some point and ends up in a totally different place. Doesn't life too follow the same path? We see a hell lot of things in our life time, everything moving fast before us, just like we watch the things outside the window of the train as if in a movie. You might wish to pause there and enjoy the beauty of the moment, but alas! A train cannot be stopped and you move on. Similarly, in life you will encounter moments of happiness that you wish to stop and preserve forever. But time is an unstoppable runner and it moves on taking our happy moments along with it.

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The people we meet in train are no different from the people in our life. The one who sat near you in the next seat need not be the same whom you see while you get off from it. When they reach their station they will get off from the train without waiting for you to accompany. Hasn't life too got the same way of working? You begin your life with your parents and sometimes grandparents around you and by the time you reach old age you will have a different set of people around you. The place too need not be the same. Sometimes you will travel around and will return to the place from where you started your journey. It is just like coming back to the home where you were born when you reach old age. Just like Ulysses who came back to Ithaca after his long voyage.

An Idle Mind is a Creative Workshop