Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity and Better Manage Your Feelings by Thibaut Meurisse

È utile per imparare a spiegarsi in inglese, ma non c’è nessuna informazione nuova.

I read this book bank in 2021 when I purchased it and loved the ideas and tools I learned. It’s easy to read, easy to understand and the tools are simple and effective! Fast forward to a month ago I found this book again and decided to reread it. Just to remind myself of any helpful tools and see if I need a refresher on some. As I’m reading the book for the second time I’m realizing that I’ve been using all of these tools and that they’ve worked!! I’ve progressed so much the past few years in my personal development journey and this book taught me most of the tools that helped me most. It was incredible too see first-hand how much this book helped me. I used to feel like my emotions controlled me and my life, it was a hard way to live. Now, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m living outside my emotions, the come and pass but I feel in control now. I’m so grateful for this book!!!

I liked the book overall. It was helpful digging deeper into emotions, why we have them, where they come from and how to combat them. I liked the workbook and the antidotes and practical exercises.

Master your emotions is a good book from my perspective. Thibaust Meurisse does a great job at giving practical advice on the art of mastering your emotions. Thibaust argues in the first chapter that emotions have a big influence on our survival mechanism making it an inevitable part of the human experience. The problem lies with our interpretations of certain stimuli, the ones we create by the formula he uses “i+i+r=se” , a very profound equation. The equation represents Interpretation plus identification plus repetition equals a very strong emotion. He argues we have 2 types of emotions, the first being your spontaneous emotions, for example the emotions that kept us alive such as fear our ancestors felt when they encountered a sabor tooth tiger. The second are the ones we create from the equation (i+i+r=se). 

  I found it extremely helpful to use this formula in my life, not just for emotions, this also works for thoughts. You can’t control the thoughts coming in, having nearly 60,000 per day, scientists say but you can use this formula to not let certain ones hinder your growth, destination, love and compassion. Just like the quote “You can’t control a bird from flying over your head, but you can control it from building a nest”. Or you can’t control your first thought but you can control your second. The equation Thisbaust presents is in alignment of being the master of both emotions and thoughts. Understanding the way emotions are formed you are simply 100% able to analyze the “feeling” of your emotions because like Thibaust Meaurisse says in chapter 2 “The way you interpret emotions, as well as the blame game you engage in, creates suffering, not the emotions themselves”.

  Another chapter that helped me was chapter 21 on why we get defensive. Thibaut argues there are 3 reasons why we get defensive that I totally agree upon, 1 they’re telling the truth, 2 you believe there is part of the truth, or one of your core beliefs have been attacked. Each reason stems from the ego or what he calls your story. When you get defensive, look at the situation that triggered you, ask yourself why? What belief led you to defend yourself? Can you let go of this belief? And is this belief really true? Most cases you do not have to defend yourself. He also points out that problems don’t exist because what you don’t focus on does not exist. So a problem only exists if you give it attention, from your mind’s perspective what you don’t give any thought to does not exist. And to go even further a problem only exist when you interpret a situation as being a problem for example 2 young men growing up in the projects, 1 consider his environment a factor to his growth in life, the 2nd considers his environment as just a obstacle to his growth in life. In chapter 12 he goes in depth about how to change those interpretations because our interpretations is what makes it a problem. 

  Thibaut quotes Eckhart Tolle quite a few times, I can tell he had a big influence on the book, specifically Eckhart Tolle famous “The Power Of Now” making some of the work repetitive if you have read the power of now, and or all ready have a fundamental understanding of emotions. Thibaut does break down emotions on a very standard and basic level of understanding. He doesn’t really pull out a lot of interesting research on the topic, he simply wrote a book about emotions with a few practical tips on how to master while quoting multiple people in the process and giving it his interpretation. I’m sure this is why the majority of those who don’t really feel the book because while reading it feel like the work wasn’t difficult to put together. 

  On a good note to end my book review Thibaut chapter 23 called “ Caring what people think of you” was a short but extremely important chapter, probably my favorite. Understanding that you are the most important person in the world, you will stop caring so much about other people’s perspectives when it comes to you. You have to live with yourself 24/7 since you do. We often incorrectly assume people think about us more often than they do. Thibaut says in fact they dont care about you, in actuality every person is only concerned with themselves because they have to live with themselves 24/7. While it may sound depressing it’s actually liberating, Thibaut says because you don’t have to worry about what people think of you. For example how often do you go on with your day thinking about somebody, often not as much and simply because we have to live with ourselves 24/7, deal with our own issues and pay our own bills.

This book has helped me so much! Will definitely recommend!

I paid £0.99 for this book. At that price, it is great value. The author says in his conclusion, “My sincere hope is that it helped you make sense of your emotions and gave you the tools you need to start taking better control of them.” He succeeded in his task.
The content is clearly set out, with an emphasis on key concepts, and on taking action.
There isn’t a great deal in here I didn’t “know”, at least at some level, but it is useful to read. There is quite a bit of distillation of others’ thoughts and ideas (rather than a huge amount of “original” content), but I think that’s a strength of the book, and contributes to meeting the author’s aims. I refer again to the price.
I’m quite likely to read more of the author’s other books.