Being In Control: Being in control of your emotional intelligence

By Hanan A. Hayyeh

This inspirational self-help book shows how to take control of your emotional intelligence, happiness, well-being, and ultimately your life. Using insights from her own life experiences, the author shares ideas on how to deal with uncertain situations and still be in control. She hopes her knowledge, realizations, and experiences will help you s

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Jun 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885905343

Hanan A. Hayyeh

Hanan A. Hayyeh has been through a lot in her life but has learned a lot and grown as a person so she writes to share her insight on situations and how to achieve self growth. She has always had a vision and a passion for helping others. A little background information about her: she is from Missouri, a college student who enjoys writing, swimming, weight lifting, dancing, and learning languages. She hopes her book will inspire others to work on themselves.

Book preview

Introduction

Earlier today I was in a stream of a mess. I was irritated in a bunch of different ways. I left the house sort of excited and happy. Then the thought of What if I saw my best friend at the store today? crossed my mind. Now that would be amazing. I went into this stream of thinking, the result of three months of not getting to see my best friend, which was pretty traumatizing for me. I used to leave the house and hope, no matter the crazy places I’d go, that I’d see her. Even if it was impossible and I knew that, I would still sincerely imagine she’d be there. So as I thought this, I became really irritated about the fact that I never got to see her. Then from there it was a cycle of negativity.

Irritability

You see, irritation derives from one negative thought that we then add onto. Furthermore, it becomes a cycle, therefore leading to further irritation. After I left the store, I thought, Wow, oh—hey, me, I love you. What's wrong? Why are you so irritated? Are you okay? I sat down. Then I asked myself, Why in the world does the store irritate me so much? Why was I so negative, and why was I arguing with my mom? Well, arguing with my mom is a constant, but usually it doesn’t bother me because I’ve learned not to care what she thinks. After all, I don’t care about her thoughts. So I knew that shouldn’t have irritated me. You see, once we engage in one negative action or thought, we keep going from there. It begins to build, build, and build. My thing is to not lean into it, to not let negative thoughts grow or manifest. But it got the better of me because I’m only human and I had let my mind roam.

So how do we deal with negative thoughts? When you have a negative thought, stop, pause, then think, Why am I being negative? What is truly bothering me? Ha ha ha, before anyone tells me, I don’t know, I know you don’t. That's why you have to ask yourself more questions, think deeply about it. Think about everything that has happened to you that day and what things could possibly be bothering you. With time you’ll learn to recognize what's wrong faster and easier.

Now there is something that I want you to try. Whatever is happening, whatever you are doing, I want you to talk to yourself about what you are thinking, have a conversation with yourself—like you would with anyone else who would be around. Don’t just listen to your thoughts; listen to yourself, and have an inner conversation with yourself.

I want you to also try this trick anytime you feel irritated: imagine the last great feeling you had, smile, turn on your favorite song, and act a little crazy. Whenever I’m irritated, I also like going on TikTok because the music gives me serotonin, and it is calming to me.

Irritation also sometimes goes unnoticed; sometimes we don’t exactly feel irritated but rather a little less happy. You feel different; you are acting a little different, doing your favorite things less often. Sometimes it takes a while to realize what is bothering you, but I urge you, even if you don’t think there is something wrong, please just sit and think, What could be irritating me right now?

Sometimes the little things irritate us and we wonder why such a little thing would bother us. I know you might think it's ridiculous, but no matter how small that thought is, you still need to deal with it. Trust me, when you actually confront the tiny things that irritate you, you’ll feel a type of peace that is indescribable. It’ll prevent you from building up to bigger irritations. If you deal with the thoughts, you’ll avoid avoidance. Avoidance creates an even bigger problem and compromises your state of happiness.Once you start avoiding the little irritations, it builds into avoidance and disturbance. You start feeling different—not the same as before, not as happy as before. Okay, so a little confession. In August I was avoiding so many things because I thought the thoughts were irrelevant and insignificant and that they shouldn’t have been bothering me because they were so small. So I denied that they bothered me. I started to feel different. Something felt off—I was happy but not to my full potential. I would come home and cry and not know why for two weeks. I talked to no one because back then I thought, How do you explain you’ve been suffering for a month because of things you’ve been avoiding, without even knowing what those things are? Eventually, after breaking down for so long I got to the root of why I was so down, I realized what thoughts I had been avoiding, and I told my best friend that I hadn’t had the best month, that it had been filled with mental breakdowns. Dealing with your emotions/thoughts is a part of self-love.

Another thing that I wanted to point out is that whenever you go through something traumatic, you are more likely to fall into the avoidance scheme again. That's what happened to me.

One of the best ways to eliminate negativity and irritation is self-love and self-care. So how do we go about implementing those? I’d like you to imagine this: How would you treat someone you love? You need to show the same love and care to yourself. It's of the utmost importance. I always tell people, if you don’t believe you and the things around you can change and don’t try to change them, they never will. Time for oneself is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Take time to yourself—and I don’t mean by working. I mean by spending free time with yourself, enjoying it with yourself. Listen to yourself, really be with you, do things you enjoy, and witness your personality. Learn to immerse yourself in you; learn to love yourself within your free time.

When it comes to irritability from people or a certain person, the main thing you have to do is consider their opinions/thoughts as irrelevant because indeed they are irrelevant. You have to think of it this way: you hate their thoughts and opinions anyway, so don’t give them the leisure of a response or care. Formulate an I don’t care why you are bothering me stance, and think, No matter what you say, I will not give it any particular thought because you are irrelevant to me and, honestly, I don’t care about you.

The other day I was talking to my friend, and out of nowhere someone decided to attack me for what I was saying to my friend. In that instant of the person yelling at me, I was taken aback. It was rude and out of place. I was going to let that irritate me and upset me for the rest of the day, but I quickly shut those emotions off and said no. If someone attacks me, it's because there's something going on in their head, whether it is that they are insecure or that something is bothering them so they decide to take it out on me. I also went with the thought of Why should I care about their opinion? It's irrelevant. I don’t care about them or their opinion. So that gave me peace of mind.

Irritability is a big thing, and there are multiple aspects to it. Most of the time, it involves a thought or opinion, whether it's formulated by ourselves or other people have formulated. In order to be in control of the irritability, step one is to recognize it, and whenever that thought or idea appears, stop, take a minute, pause. Stop thinking that thought, and ask yourself, Why did I even begin to indulge in it?

I want people to recognize that the biggest aspect of being in control is self-love. The reason I can go back to myself and feel happy is that I know that after every tragedy I will always smile at myself with love.

Now on to the topic of how you begin to practice self-love from scratch. Well, you ought to want to learn. Then the first step: anytime you have negative thoughts / insults about yourself, immediately extinguish them and correct yourself. The other big part is spending as much time with yourself as possible; during that time you get to know yourself. Now not that any of this will be easy at first, but you will have to learn and develop a routine out of it. When you spend time alone, you truly have time to think and reflect and to really get to know yourself and fall in love with yourself. I want you to try this trick when alone: completely narrate what's happening, and say your thoughts out loud like you’re talking to your best friend. Talk to yourself, always.

Retraining Your Brain

Today waking up was a little hard. I was burning up; I felt super weak and could barely function. Now for reference, this all comes from a disorder I have. But I still got up when that alarm rang, and I said, Good morning, baby; you look beautiful. Come on—you got this. Let's have a good day. You see, your day is all about how you treat it, how you treat yourself, and what you say. If you tell yourself, I’m going to have a bad day, I promise you, you absolutely will, and if you say you will have a good day, then you will have a good day.

Now after that I decided to pick a fit. I still felt too weak to stand, so I kindly, out of love, sat myself on the ground and got dressed. Then I put a smile on through the pain and made myself laugh. It's all about how well you treat yourself, and that's what determines your mood. Taking care of yourself is so utterly important; be kind to yourself in your words and actions.

While on the way to the bus stop, I filmed myself; I was creating a mini vlog, just because I enjoy it. I find it super fun, and I get to talk my thoughts out. A part of self-care is doing things you love, whether it's telling yourself jokes, singing, or whatever.

Other Thoughts

Your Thoughts

When it comes to your thoughts, you need to make them your best friend; stop the annoying voice of doubt and negativity, and replace it with a voice of support and positivity. A big part of all of this message is self-love, which then leads to self-care and so on.

Self-Awareness

This refers to the ability to identify your emotions and how they work, to know things about yourself and what bothers you. This should be combined with self-regulation, a further step that involves not just knowing your emotions but also knowing how to deal with them. An example would be knowing how to calm yourself when you’re angry. This can also involve emotions that you will face, specifically not engaging if you know a certain situation or thought is going to bother you then not to engage.

Activity When Faced with a Problem

Something I like to do when faced with a problem or an area I want to improve in is make a list of to-dos of things I want to work on, which makes my thinking continuous with what I need to do, which then programs my brain to take steps to do them. If you don’t take conscious steps to realize what areas you need to improve, then you won’t improve because you for one aren’t recognizing them and are therefore not taking action.

Silence Is Deafening

Now what do I mean by this? If you go all day without talking to anyone, your energy decreases and you don’t have any social time. I know this from my experience of not having my friends around all day and therefore having no one to talk to. The few words that do come out of my mouth give me a whole sense of wave of energy/emotions and happiness. Then I say, Whoa, I really haven’t talked to a single soul for hours on end, and that's insane, especially when surrounded by other people. It's quite a bit different than spending the day alone and enjoying it with yourself. Silence is deafening when you are surrounded by people and you speak to no one as they all talk to each other.

Now we may not all share the same experience—it's different for everyone—but what I’m saying is speak out loud, share your opinion, even if you’re not talking to a specific person; engage in small talk with people; you don’t need to have the intention of friendship. What comes is just what comes after speaking. While I mentioned speaking to yourself is everything, it is really hard to do following hours of silence.

Being Spontaneous

Right now I want you to get up and do something spontaneous, do something different to spike your energy and happiness. I want you to get up and sing your heart out with your ugliest voice and laugh about it or get up and dance like crazy. Doing something spontaneous and entertaining releases endorphins and enhances your mood. Do something different, a little change in routine, no matter how crazy it sounds. (I’m absolutely not condemning getting in trouble; I mean for you always have fun.) Do something you’ve always wanted to do. This involves doing something for yourself, which is a part of self-love. Congratulations, you have just carried out an act of self-love and an act of kindness toward yourself. Now I want you to speak out loud to yourself and tell yourself your thoughts. Do this on a constant, and also sing—let your voice out, not to sound great but to let yourself out, to let your personality out.

Self-Love

Now on to why I’m always telling you to speak to yourself aloud and in your head: it's all a part of developing self-love and happiness. Getting to know yourself is the biggest part of it. All those negative thoughts and perceptions of yourself are all derived from others’ thoughts and judgments.

The Key to Feeling Better When You Are in Darkness

The key to feeling better when you are in darkness is loving yourself and making yourself laugh. Now these might be the hardest things imaginable right now. The key