Want To Feel The Opposite Emotion? Check Out This List.

Can we change the way we feel?

Sometimes we try to force ourselves to feel certain emotions because we think that a new emotion will help get us out of our current state. And then, after trying, we are surprised to find our efforts have failed.

And we don’t know why.

For example, when you graduated from school, were you happy to finish or sad to move on?

You probably felt some of both. And trying to force yourself to be more happy about the situation did nothing to reduce the natural sadness. Well I have news for you — this is because happy and sad are NOT opposite emotions.

Opposite emotions — emotions that cannot be experienced simultaneously.

With opposite emotions, one emotion literally blocks the other from existing, i.e. the emotions are mutually exclusive.

If you want to change how you feel, and stop feeling one emotion, ease yourself into the emotion’s opposite.

Ok, so what’s your current emotion? And how can you feel that emotion’s opposite? That’s the name of the game.

Hopefully this list can help you out!

Happy — Hopeless

Want to feel happy? Find hope.

The two hallmarks of hopelessness are cynicism and a lack of control over your circumstances.

Happy people choose to be happy every day. They control what they can and accept the rest.

They find hope in the small things.

If you want to be happier, focus on specific things in this world that give you hope. Better yet — go be hope in the world. That way, you at least know there is one thing that gives you hope (yourself). And, who knows? Maybe you provide hope for someone else too.

Nervous —Bored

Want to be less bored? Do more things that make you nervous.

Challenging yourself with new activities or experiences is a great way to be more nervous and less bored.

After you master something, you become bored. In order to stay challenged, you increase the difficulty level, which, in turn, makes it more likely you will fail the next time. The potential failure makes you nervous, but it also prevents you from being bored.

Find a healthy balance between nervous and bored, as you don’t want to be too far on the end of either spectrum.

Accountable — Self-Pitying

Want to stop feeling sorry for yourself? Take accountability.

Everyone has challenges. You are not alone in yours, even though it can feel that way sometimes.

The best way to stop feeling sorry for yourself is to take ownership of your circumstances and your feelings. Take account of where you are, and what you can actually control, and create a plan for change.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, so small, consistent changes over time will win here. Start small and build from there. Develop good habits.

I hear you. Life isn’t fair. That’s not an excuse not to make the most of what you have at any given moment. On any given day. You can’t choose some cards life deals to you, but you always choose how you respond.

Present — Angry

Want to be less angry? Stay present in your environment without judgement.

Often times when angry, you are frustrated and in your head. You had an outburst, or at least feel like you might have one on the inside. Something has triggered you — a person, a thought, a memory — and you are now agitated. You know this feeling is short-term and will pass but you are still not happy to be this bothered. So how can you beat this feeling?

Let it go!

There are several tricks to reduce anger in the moment.

Meditation is a great way to combat anger because, in meditation, you are instructed to let go of all your thoughts and just be! If you don’t have time to meditate, taking a 10 second timeout with deep breathing will help.

Another great solution is to shift your attention to finding awe in your environment. Make calm observations. Focus on that nice breeze. Focus on the beautiful stars. Just notice your environment, preferably appreciate something about it, and then don’t do anything with that thought.

Stay present in your environment without any judgements.

If you want to be less angry, stop missing the NOW!

Forgiving — Resentful

Want to be less resentful and bitter? Forgive yourself and others.

Everyone makes mistakes.

The world can be unfair sometimes. Don’t hold onto your resentment — it’s not good for your health. Resentment means you stay in the past. You are not in the present.

Forgive others who have apologized. And forgive others who haven’t apologized.

Someone may not deserve your forgiveness, but forgive them anyway.

You don’t have to forget what they did. But in order to 100% move on, you must forgive them to feel at peace.

Most importantly, forgive yourself for your mistakes. You are human.

Grateful — Jealous

Want to be less jealous? Be more grateful.

It is a natural human impulse to want more or to compare yourself to others.

The difference in happy people is they focus more on gratitude — what they have, instead of what they don’t.

You always have things in life to appreciate, at any moment. And your real competition is yourself from yesterday.

Set healthy goals, and aim to reach them. But don’t be so desiring that you forget to be grateful!

Passionate — Indifferent

Want to be less indifferent? Find things you love.

A lot of people think the opposite of love is hate. I “hate” to break it to you — love and hate are not opposites.

Hate and anger are very powerful emotions that keep you engaged.

This fact is never more evident than when you try to break up / move on from someone but continue engaging powerful negative emotions. If you want to move on from someone, take a step back, wish them well, and then stop thinking about them.

On the flip side, if you want to show love to someone or work on a hobby you love, proactively choose to NOT be indifferent! Love is life’s most powerful emotion!

Find the things you love in life and do more of them!

Flow — Sad

Want to be less sad? Stay engaged with activities and positive relationships. Find flow.

Remember when I said happy is not the opposite of sad?

That’s because it’s not. Staying busy is.

Time is usually the only thing that helps with sadness. But all time is not equal because time spent in your head feeling sad does not count.

To reduce sadness, participate in activities and spend time with people that engage you, or induce flow. Bonus points if you can find activities that are focused on helping others.

The only way to beat sadness is to get out of your head and distract yourself. You won’t beat sadness just by sitting around and reflecting. I know, I know. That’s all you want to do when you are sad, but, to beat it, you need to get out and live your life. Find your interests. Do your interests.

Emotions ebb and flow, so there is going to be a portion of life that you are just sad. And that’s normal. The question is how do you want to respond during these moments.

If you are sad, ruminate less and take action!

You may be thinking…hey wait. That’s cheating. Distracting myself doesn’t actually solve my sadness. And that’s where you are wrong, because if you are distracted with something that is positively engaging you, then you are no longer sad!

Acknowledging — Bothered

Is something bothering you? Acknowledge it.

Ironically, when you acknowledge something is bothering you, it will bother you less.

If you can change something, do it. If you can’t, accept it.

But either way, acknowledge that you are bothered!

Reflective — Emotional Pain

Are you in emotional pain? Reflect on it.

This is the first pairing that may be harder to detect because of how long it takes to shift from one to the other.

Similar to if you broke your leg or sustained a serious physical injury that required rehab, depending on the intensity of the emotional pain, you may need to provide a significant amount of reflection.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are just sad “because you are sad”, I don’t want to hear about it and you shouldn’t spend too much time “thinking” about it. Go back up and read “sad” on this list again to see how to get out of general, unspecified sadness.

However, if you are in actual emotional pain, you may need to address it, and like I said, depending on the nature of the pain, it might take a while.

Your first goal with reflection is to identify the root cause of your pain. The next goal is to address the root cause.

There are several methods to help you “uncover” root cause for pain, but some of the more popular ones include therapy and journaling. I have personally never tried therapy, so I can’t speak to that one, but journaling, in particular, has helped me organize and reflect on some of my thoughts and emotions really well.

After you feel you have locked in on the root cause, your next goal will be to address the root cause. Either remove it, if the root cause is external, or learn to accept it, if the root cause is internal. An example of externally caused emotional pain is an ongoing person in your life that is negatively impacting you. There may be value in taking a step back from that person. An example of an internally caused emotional pain is a past decision that you can no longer change. In this case, you should learn to accept the past, learn any lessons, and change your relationship with any ongoing pain.

You may need to employ some combination of “reduce it” and “accept it” based on the specific root cause(s) of your emotional pain. But what you’ll notice eventually is that the emotional pain may hurt “just a little bit” less than when you first started reflecting on it.

Calm — Anxious

Are you feeling anxious? Do things to calm you down.

This may be the first pairing on the list that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

If you are feeling anxious, take some time to disconnect.

Get into nature. Take breaks. Light candles. Relax. Intentionally manufacture that calm feeling and stay present in it.

Opportunistic — Regretful

Are you feeling regret? Focus on the opportunity.

Don’t look at the doors being shut behind you. See what’s right in front of you.

Your path has led you to where you are now. Learn from your mistakes and become a better person.

Failure is not permanent. Mistakes are really just opportunities not yet realized, ie. growth opportunities.

It comes down to how you frame the past in your mind. Focus on the opportunities you now have because of what you now know.

Genuinely Laughing — Fearful

Are you afraid of something? Try to find the humor in it.

Fear is serious. It’s impossible to laugh or smile when you’re afraid.

To become less scared, find the humor in the situation. Laugh it off!

Next time you are about to do something that scares you, take a moment to genuinely smile to yourself about your experience and then proceed.

Everyone feels fear. Some people have just found ways to embrace it and continue anyway with a lighthearted, growth-mindset mentality.

Humble — Hateful

Want to have less hate in your heart…stay humble!

Now we reach hate, which is my favorite to analyze because of its intensity. I define hate as a longer version of anger, of greater intensity, and likely targeting at one person or group. Often times when you are hateful you want to retaliate or inflict physical or emotional pain.

They key information to know here is that every time you retaliate you make yourself more unhappy. This is scientifically proven. There is short-term gratification during the actual retaliation, but then a long term negative effect on you. And that doesn’t even take into account the possibility of your target retaliating your retaliation and perpetuating the cycle.

At the core of hate are fear and ego. Fear that you aren’t being treated fairly and ego that YOUR feelings, YOUR thoughts, YOUR values are the right ones and others should accommodate to them. You demand justice!

It’s important to stand up for yourself, your values, your team, etc. But it’s important to do it the right way, and that essentially never involves hateful actions.

The best revenge is to live a happy life.

So how do you convert your hate into something positive? Channel it. Use the high energy it brings to motivate yourself and others to become better people. Direct it inwards towards self-growth rather than blaming others. Be a model citizen. Use your emotions to connect and inspire positive actions.

And what do you do with your enemies? Show them genuine love. Not fake love — genuine love. If you do this enough, eventually haters go quiet because they don’t know how to respond. They expect hate in response to their hate, so your love surprises them. Hate spreads faster than love, but love is more powerful. True love can only be conveyed through consistent actions, and that takes time. But if you can show both your friends and enemies love, you become love. And that is quite a life statement.

Once you are able to go beyond yourself using this list, you can start to help others too. When you see a hateful person, your goal will be to humble them. However, you cannot induce humility directly. The best way to inspire humility in others is to be loving, fearless, and patient. By being loving, fearless, and patient, you have 1) the right tone 2) the guts to positively confront others when needed and 3) the resolve to never give up in doing so. Some people will not change in this lifetime, but that’s ok, because you will be patient enough to meet up with them again in the next one. Your love should span lifetimes, simulations, dreams, or whatever the hell this is.

In conclusion, sometimes we can feel so ingrained in one emotion, depending on the intensity of that emotion, that it initially feels weird to pursue the emotion’s opposite. It may just feel more natural to double down and immerse yourself in your current emotion.

In these times, know there is nothing wrong with the way you feel and you should definitely pause and process any emotions you are currently feeling, but if, after assessing your emotions, you would like to take baby steps to reduce an emotion’s intensity, use this list to do activities associated with the emotion’s opposite.

And like anything in life, this takes practice. So go easy on yourself!

Good luck flipping your emotions!

Thanks for reading :P