9 Awarenesses That Can Make-Or-Break Your Happiness

When you think about good self-care practices, you may imagine one of two things: 1) eating healthy, exercising and taking care of your physical health, or 2) scheduling time for massages, manicures, and activities meant to make us feel good. 

Self-care goes a lot deeper than that, and one of the most important areas of self-care that is often overlooked is taking care of your emotional health. 

In fact, people who are emotionally well-off and have a positive, happy outlook on life tend to live 14% longer than those who struggle with their emotional health. 

Recently, we gave some tips on how to take care of your mental health, and while the two are closely related, your emotional health and psychological health are two different things. However, while they are not the same thing, they do often overlap, and one can have a major impact on the other. 

Your mental health is the ability to process and cope information you take in. Your mental health status can impact your thoughts and actions concerning incoming information. 

On the other hand, your emotional health is your ability to feel and express emotions in response. Having good emotional health means you have awareness over your emotions and know how to express them in an appropriate, constructive manner.

Having good emotional self-care is vital to becoming someone who is happy and grounded. 

Everyone has their triggers, which is an emotional reaction to a situation that is based on previous experience. Triggers can be anything from people, places, smells, or anything that reminds of a previous intense emotional reaction. 

When you are triggered by something, it can put you into an emotional or mental state of frustration, anger, anxiety, or other distressing emotions. How you react to certain triggers can be an indication of your emotional health. 

How was it the last time you were triggered? Did you have an appropriate emotional response, or did it cause you to lash out? 

By learning to identify your triggers, you are better equipped to deal with them when they happen. Begin by acknowledging you are being triggered, and your response is inappropriate. Once you are able to identify your trigger and your reaction, your new self-awareness will help you understand the driving force behind your reaction. This can then help you learn how to cope with a trigger before you react. 

Here are some ways you can manage your triggers: 

• Exercise regularly
• Eat a healthy diet
• Attend therapy/counseling
• Practice mindfulness and meditation
• Surround yourself with positive people
• Reframe negative perceptions with positive ones 

If you want to get a better handle on your emotions, you must first remove yourself from them so you can understand them. This does not mean to ignore your emotions, or to push them down and avoid them. Instead, try journaling. This will allow you to confront your emotions and understand them from a new perspective. 

It isn't easy to understand your emotions when you are in the middle of it, and by journaling, you are able to gain distance from them. Write down your experiences and emotions, whether they are good or bad. This will help you understand that emotions are not permanent, but instead are fleeting. They come and go and change through experience and understanding.  

Journaling is an exercise you can use to strengthen your emotional functions and become in tune with your needs and desires. 

It also creates more mindfulness and self-awareness while helping you better regulate your emotions. It can also create a sense of identity, confidence, and the capacity to handle adversity.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just change the way we feel? You would gain more control over your emotions and have the ability to change your negative emotions into positive ones. 

You may have more control over your emotions than you may think, using something you do all the time – breathing. 

Through breathing exercises, you can shift your emotions and take control over how you feel. 

Research has shown that breathing patterns during voluntary production of emotion were… clearly differentiated among joy, anger, fear, and sadness.

Think about your breathing patterns when you are feeling intense negative reactions – when you are anxious, your breathing is shallow and comes from the top of your lungs. When you are angry, your breathing becomes rapid. When you are upset, you gulp air into our upper chest. 

Each emotion has its own breathing patter, and if you can control your breathing pattern, you may be able to influence your emotions and have better control over them. 

If you are experiencing negative emotions in the moment, you can lessen the negativity and even bring on joy by intaking and exhaling air slowly through your nose. Allow yourself to take a deep breath, into the bellow, and slowly breathe out. By taking "belly" breathes, you are should be able to calm yourself down and redirect your emotions.  

If you remember from our article about taking care of your mental health, you may remember the tip telling you Save to feel your emotions. The same goes for maintaining your emotional health. When you are feeling emotions, allow yourself to feel them. 

It is important not to judge the emotions you feel, or feel guilty about them. Too often, we feel guilty over the emotions we feel, or how we express them. 

You need to resist having feelings about your feelings. This means that when you experience an emotion, such as anger, or even extreme happiness, you need to resist feeling ashamed about it. Too often, we feel that we are being irrational when we experience intense emotions. 

Instead, learn to exercise self-compassion and allow yourself to experience emotions without needing to the need to explain it away or pile additional emotions onto it. When you don't judge the feelings you have, you allow yourself to really feel it. 

Experience your emotion, and don't try to hold back. Holding back your emotions leads to one of three possible outcomes: 

• Numbing positive emotions, such as happiness and joy
• Additional negative emotions
• Less likely to live a full life

Sometimes, our emotions become too much for us to handle, and that is ok. Know when to reach out to someone else for help. If you are feeling overwhelming negative emotions, get help. You don’t have to deal with them alone. 

For some, this may simply mean reaching our to a friend or family member, and for others, it may mean you should seek therapy or a counselor you trust. 

There is no shame in asking for help. By bringing someone else into what you are feeling, you add an additional perspective. Remember back to our tip o journaling – understanding your feelings sometimes means you need to first distance yourself from them. You can do this by sharing what you are going through with someone else. 

By reaching out to someone, not only are you more likely to understand your feeling, but you may be able to gain some inside on how to handle or appropriately express what you are feeling. No matter what you are going through in life, remember, you don’t have to do it alone. 

It may seem silly, but it isn’t. Many of us find it difficult to accept compliments from others because we may not see that same quality within ourselves. 

Our first reaction may be to deny the compliment, rather than accept it. When you deflect a compliment in an effort to be humble, you subconsciously devalue yourself. 

Instead of deflecting the compliment, accept it. When you learn to accept the compliments that others bestow upon you, it can have a major impact on your self-confidence and how you feel about yourself. By doing this, you are more likely to feel more positive and be mindful of others. In the long run, this can help you better manage your emotions by reframing negative emotions and experiencing more positive ones. 

Showing gratitude towards others and what you have in your life creates a more positive perspective, leading to positive emotions. 

Research shows that regularly showing emotion can help a person develop a more positive outlook on life. It enables you to cope with stress, regulate negative emotions, and react more positively to triggers.

When your physical health is good, you are more likely to have an easier time dealing with your emotions and have a more positive outlook. This is because you feel good overall. 

It is no secret that there is a strong link between health and happiness, and one of the most important steps you can take towards emotional health is by taking care of your physical health. 

You can do this by making sure you stay active and eat a healthy diet. Focus on eating a diet full of whole foods and eliminating sugar and processed foods. Start by including Detox Organics Daily Superfoods into your diet, replacing your processed foods with a delicious chocolate supplement made of over 25 raw, organic ingredients that will help give your body a boost of energy and eliminate the build-up of toxins from the processed food. 

Self-care is so important, and part of that is taking care of your emotional health, which is vital to living a long, happy life. Understanding why you have the emotions you have and learning how to appropriately express them can take practice. 

Whether you are struggling with your emotional health, or lead a happy life with a firm grasp on your feelings, you should always continue to practice self-care towards your emotional health. Taking care of your emotional health is just as important as taking care of your physical health – meaning, you shouldn’t wait until there is a problem to get healthy!

Be sure to incorporate a daily dose of Detox Organics Daily Superfoods into your routine for optimal health. Not only will it put a smile on your face, but you’ll feel great, too!