“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Which one of you remember what was the first thing we did when we started to cry in our childhood? We always run towards our parents, and emotional autonomy is precily that, but the child this time is your inner child and the parent your adult self.

The first step was creating trust in who you are, self-love is precisely showing to your inner child that you can be trusted, it's a core pillar on your ability to have emotional autonomy, making an analogy, is like asking for a friend "Can I share my problems and worries with you?" and him aswering with a smile on his face and a resounding "Of course".

But as everything in life, this isn't that simple, self-acceptance is the first step but it isn't the last, you need more than just trust confidence in who you are to be able to truly be free from the burden of loliness and if you want to know the next step. let me give you a tip, it's all about control...

Step 2 - Change your emotional range (ER)

Emotional range, this is the term that I use to define how far we are letting something affect us emotionally, to give you an example, if you have a really wide emotional range, you will be sad when a celebrity you like is sad, or when you see someone crying on the television, this happens because you let your feeling be in their custody, anyone can make you sad, happy, jealous or angry.

Now imagine how difficult it is to control your emotions if we live in an environment where we are blasted with more than hundreds of different news everyday, you see more people succeding and failing in one hour than you did during your entire lifetime 100 years ago, if everyone can change how you feel nowadays it will be impossible to ever feel stable, that's also the reason why anxiety has increased soo much over the last years, how can someone not feel anxious when she wakes up everyday with the unconscious fear of being bombarded with more than 1000 different bad news?

Understanding where your emotional range stands is an essencial step to be able to navigate in this century, being able to know what can or cannot affect you is more necessary than ever, and I will teach you two things, how to know and how to change your emotional range.

How to know your ER

To be able to accurately estimate where it is, you need to know the possible levels it can have and then have a honest self-assesment with the questions I shall provide.

Level 4

On this level, you are affected by anyone opinions, judgements or feelings, be it a stranger on the internet or a random guy on a bar, anyone is able to change how you feel with their actions.

Level 3

Here you will already start to reduce the numbers of people that can influence you, only relatives and people who interact with you on a daily basis like coworkers or classmates can tap on your emotions

Level 2

Now you are already on an extremely good level for you ER, only those who you love can impact your emotional state, people outside your inner cicle have no effect on how you think or on how you behave

Level 1

Lastly, the complete autonomy, on this level only you and no one else can change your emotions, altrough it's an extremely hard place to reach, once you are here, you won't ever feel rage, sadness or disillusion like before, if you have ever meet someone who is always calm and never loses his cool, you can know that he is on this level.

To discover where you are, you only need to ask yourself a few questions

When was the last time I was truly hurt by something? who did it and how close I'm do that person?

With how much frequency does my emotions change? and how intense they are?

If I could change how I feel about things, would I?

After answering those question honestly, look at the levels and see where you are at and if you do wish to change this aspect of yourself don't leave yet, I will show you the way.

How to change your ER

Knowing is the path towards any discovery, and as you are already armed with the necessary self-knowledge it becomes way easier to achieve this task, it will require daily effort, focus and consistency, but eventually you will never need to ask anyone for help to deal with your emotions, and that crippling feeling of lolinees shall never set foot on your heart again.

What you need to do is fairly simple actually, you need to have an honest introspection session in the end of each day, assessing on a scale from 1 to 10 how much your emotions varied thanks to other people's actions, why were you affected by those behavior, and why you shouldn't let them have this power over you, lastly compare you are today with the person you were 1 year ago, and see which the growth you have achieved

Lastly you also need to be mindful on everytime your emotions fluctuates too much thanks to someone else's inputs, when anyone that isn't you alter how you feel in any way, take a deep breathe and reflect the following questions

'Why did this affect me this much?'

'Why they did this and how much control I have ove their behavior?'

'Did I do my best? and if yes, why should I care for what happened them?'

With time, your perspective you start to change, you will only try to control what you can control, which is yourself, and your emotions will also only be affected by you and no one else, emotional autonomy is a hard thing to achieve, but it's 100% possible, and I believe that anyone reading this right now, can and will be able to have it if they want to.

If you find this article helpful please like and share, any feedback is deeply appreciated and I will love to see your opinions on the comment section, thank you one more time for your attention and I wish you a lovely day.

You can also find my writings on: https://read.cash/@HumansAreGods