Emotional Momentum: Positive or Negative

I drive 100 miles roundtrip four days a week to and from work.

With this much driving every day, there’s always something going on.

The other day on my way home, I had this vehicle in front of me that was going much slower than the speed limit.

Now, before I go into the rest of this story, I do very well when it comes to staying calm on my drives.

However, I’m human and I have my days as well.

Anyway, this car was going much slower than the speed limit and every time I would change a lane to get over, this car would change lanes as well.

After the first time, it was not big deal.

After the second time, I started getting a little more frustrated.

After the third time, I felt as if this person was trying to sabotage the rest of my day.

I was a little irritated at this point and it seemed like everything that everyone could do to irritate me on the road was taking place over the next 10 minutes or so.

This is when I caught myself, took a deep breath, and reminded myself that I have a choice on how I handle these situations.

What I was experiencing is what I like to call negative emotional momentum.

It started out small, someone changing lanes in front of me that’s going much slower than the speed limit and next thing you know, I’m pissed off, yelling at every person on the road, and totally out of control (it didn’t get to that point, but this is how it could have gone).

This happens every day to people all over the world and they’re not even aware that it’s happening.

Momentum is real.

Momentum is powerful.

Momentum can be good, or it can be bad.

We can also take the opposite scenario.

We can create positive emotional momentum in our lives.

This is the good kind of emotional momentum that we want to manufacture.

Positive emotional momentum can come from doing things like practicing gratitude, helping someone, working towards a goal, visualizing our ideal future, etc.

These are all things that bring us positive emotions.

Here’s what I’ve noticed in my life experience so far; we often find ourselves cultivating negative emotional momentum and don’t even realize it.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the little things that don’t matter that cause us to get irritated, angry, frustrated, etc.

Take my example from above; even if I had stayed behind that slow driver (sometimes I’ll do this on purpose to practice patience and work on regulating my emotions) I’m not really losing much time at all.

One or two minutes may have been added to my arrival time, and it would have changed regardless because I ended up hitting more traffic.

It seems like negative emotional momentum is so easy to create without even knowing it.

On the other hand, we must be intentional with creating positive emotional momentum.

I find this even more true when we’re coming from a place of trauma.

When coming from a place of trauma, it’s easy to always see the bad in everything, to expect the worst, or continue to play the victim.

This is one of the hardest things to change when we start our healing journey, changing our mindset and creating that positive emotional momentum instead of being stuck continuously in negative emotional momentum.

Increasing Self-Awareness

The first thing we must do is increase our self-awareness.

We must be able to identify when we’re starting to create negative emotional momentum.

I did this when I started my healing journey by setting a timer to go off at different times throughout the day, when the timer went off, I would ask myself two questions:

1) What am I thinking or what have I been thinking?

2) How do I feel or how has what I’ve been thinking about made me feel?

This did two things for me:

1) It made me aware of how my thoughts have been throughout the day, and

2) It made me aware of how my thoughts were affecting the way I was feeling.

After a while, I started to recognize my thoughts and emotions more and more throughout the day without having to wait for the alarm to go off.

This allowed me to start recognizing when I would slip into a negative emotional state, prevent negative emotional momentum from taking over, and do something about it.

How to Cultivate Positive Emotional Momentum

It’s not only important to become more aware of your thoughts and how they’re making you feel, but we must also be proactive with creating positive emotional momentum.

There are a few ways I do this and here they are:

1) Reframing negative thoughts.

I know my son has to go to work today and when he has to go to work (like most of us used to be or currently are) he’s thinking, “I don’t want to go to work today. This sucks and I would rather stay home.”

Instead of continuing to focus on these thoughts, you can reframe them instead to look like this, “I’m thankful I get to go to work today because many people don’t have a job,” or “I may not like where I’m at now, but I know this is a steppingstone to get to where I want to go and I’m going to do my best.”

Reframing negative thoughts is a habit you can start building now and it’s a great way to proactively create positive emotional momentum.

2) Who you surround yourself with matters.

They say that you become like the five people you surround yourself with the most.

I think this is 100% true.

If you hang around negative people that like to party all the time, then you’re going to eventually take on those same traits.

If you hang around positive people that challenge you to become a better version of yourself, provide encouragement, and have a healthy lifestyle, you’re going to take on those traits.

Take a look at who you spend your time with the most and make the necessary changes.

3) Practice gratitude.

I try to practice gratitude every morning when I wake up.

I want to start the day on a positive note and get my mindset right for the day and I feel there’s nothing more powerful than starting out the day thinking about things that I’m grateful for.

A few weeks ago, we had our cold spell here in South Texas (it actually gets down into the upper 20’s and low 30’s, I do miss cold weather, anyway, I digress) and when I woke up that morning I thought about how thankful I am to have a nice home to live in and a nice bed to sleep in where I was warm.

I see homeless people every day on my way to and from work and I don’t take my home for granted.

You can start a daily gratitude practice.

All it takes is sitting down at the beginning, middle, or end of the day and thinking about five things you’re grateful for.

I challenge you to not only list five things you’re grateful for, but why you’re grateful for them and how they make your life better.

The more detail you can put into it the better.

This will help you create positive emotional momentum.

4) Reminding yourself that you have a choice in how you respond to a situation.

This doesn’t sound like much, but it has worked very well for me.

For example, if I’m driving home, have had a long day, and hit heavy traffic, it’s easy to get pissed off and start throwing a fit.

What I started doing over the last year is reminding myself that I have a choice on how I decide to react in this situation.

I’ll say to myself, “Mark, you have a choice in how you handle this situation.”

When I remind myself of this, it reminds me that I have control in this situation.

Conclusion

Emotional momentum is real.

It’s easy to fall into negative emotional momentum without even realizing it where we have to be proactive about creating positive emotional momentum.

We must be able to recognize when we’re starting that negative emotional momentum by increasing our self-awareness.

Once we are aware of our thoughts, we can stop the negative emotional momentum and start cultivating positive emotional momentum.

We cultivate positive emotional momentum by:

1) Reframing negative thoughts

2) Surrounding ourselves with the right people

3) By practicing gratitude

4) Reminding myself that I have a choice in how I respond to a situation.

Start proactively cultivating positive emotional momentum today to improve your personal growth journey.

Stay positive and take action!

Thank you for your support!

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