Emotional fitness is an important component of your overall health. Below are some negative circumstances and suggestions on how to counteract them.
Emotional Area | Emotional Fitness ZONING Activity |
Certain daily situations or people elicit from me the same negative emotional response. |
Try to identify and understand why this emotional response may be happening. When did you develop that pattern of behavior? How can you break out |
I often feel stressed out. |
Try to pace yourself, and don’t set your goals too high or too unrealistically. Practice saying “no” to additional demands on your me. Spend me each day in the Safe Blue Zone to regenerate. Promise yourself to meditate, knit, listen to music, or use prayer at least twenty minutes each day. |
Aggravations ignite my anger more often than I’d like. |
Take a class or a home study course that teaches you new ways to cope with stress. The moment you notice a negative “mood shift,” award yourself a time-out and converse with your heart muscle to calm yourself. Then consciously shift down from the Toxic Red Zone to the Safe Blue Zone. |
I suffer from too much anxiety and too many self-defeating beliefs. |
Practice compassion with yourself and others. Understanding and forgiveness heal most emotional wounds. Define yourself as a good person and congratulate yourself on all your accomplishments. |
Worry, fear, anger, and depression bother me a lot. |
These emotions are designed to draw our attention to things that need addressing in our lives. Try to identify the underlying reasons for these emotions and take a practical approach to focusing on the things that you want in your life, rather than what you want to get rid of. Practice “target fixation” by keeping your attention and energy directed on the target, goal, or task and not the distractors. |
I want to develop better emotional awareness. |
Focus on becoming more emotionally aware by slowing down your activities and spending more energy on noticing. Each time you connect with someone, look into their eyes and ask them how they are feeling. Try to be “present” with every person you interact with. |
I want to change some of my emotional patterns. |
Relearn new patterns by reinforcing different behaviors. For example, after your workday, rather than watching television, join a club and take a fitness class. Try learning a new musical instrument. Engage in a new art activity. |
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When you have chosen some new emotional fitness ZONING activities, possibly from the list above, put them into daily practice. Practice may not make you perfect, but it will help you replace unwanted habits with those that will make you more emotionally fit and, most importantly, happier.
More to come ..
Keep your eyes peeled as we continue to release excerpts throughout upcoming weeks. If you want to learn more about zoning, make sure to swing by our online store and grab a copy of ZONING, Fitness in a Blink.