Can I Eliminate Negative Emotion?

Anxiety, worry, anger, overwhelm, and fear are just some examples of negative emotions. Negative emotions typically don’t feel good. Because they don’t feel good, we try to avoid them, expunge them from our reality. Never to be felt again.

The thing is, this just simply isn’t possible.

You can’t completely get rid of anxiety. You can’t completely get rid of fear.

And truthfully, you don’t want to.

Negative emotions can feel dark but they are as much a part of human life as the positive emotions (such as love, appreciation, care, calm, and hope) that feel lighter.

I am a beginner photographer. I don’t take photos professionally but some of the photos I capture I think are pretty good.

Photography is all about light and shadow. A good photograph has a balance of both light and shadow. A great photograph uses the shadow to highlight and accentuate the light, adding character, depth, texture, and life to the subject.

Imagine your life is a photograph, and your emotions are the lighting in the photograph. If in your life, you only experience negative emotions, your life photograph would be simply black, dark, no detail, no depth, and you couldn’t make meaning out of what is in the photograph.

If you only experience positive emotions, your life photograph would be simply white, bright, no detail, no depth, and you couldn’t make meaning out of what is in the photograph.

On the other hand, if you experience both positive and negative emotions, your life photograph would be a combination of dark and light, black and white. It would have detail, depth, character. The shadow would contrast the light, adding substance and meaning.

Shadow is just as much a part of the photograph as light.

Shadow is not something you want to eliminate completely from a photograph, but rather use intelligently, creatively, to make the photograph complete, meaningful, and beautiful.

Negative emotion is not something you want to eliminate completely from life but rather use intelligently, creatively, to make your life complete, meaningful, and beautiful.

You can’t have light without shadow. You can’t have shadow without light. Anxiety, worry, anger, overwhelm, and fear are shadow. Trying to completely eliminate shadow is futile and energy draining.

With no shadow there would be no personal growth or character development, and therefore would deny the creation of something of great beauty.

It’s not always easy, but you must accept that light and shadow co-exist.

And when you do, you unleash your full human potential. You then have the power to use light and shadow, your positive and negative emotions, to guide you in creating the most beautiful creation- the best version of you.

Here’s to conquering stress.

With heart,

The Stress Experts