How to Deal with Negative Emotions so that They don’t Ruin your Goals.
There’s one main reason why most people never achieve their goals.
It’s not that the goals are too hard. it’s that you’re afraid to face the negative emotions that arise when you step out of your comfort zone.
And I’m not talking about becoming a millionaire or an influencer here -
I’m talking about getting into the shape you want,
Starting that business you’ve been thinking about,
Or building the relationship you’ve been dreaming of.
These goals aren’t inherently difficult and yet, the challenge lies in dealing with the stress, anxiety, and overwhelm that pursuing them triggers.
And the reality is that until you learn how to handle those negative emotions, they’ll keep holding you back, limiting your potential on a daily basis.
Here are four steps to inverse that tendency.
Emotions are just signals
Most people navigate life with one goal: to feel as good as possible and avoid feeling bad.
They see emotions in a binary way—only two distinct categories exist:
The "good" ones like joy, happiness, pleasure, and delight…
And the "bad" ones: anger, stress, anxiety, jealousy…
They make daily decisions based on this principle and fall into a dangerous assumption:
If it feels good, it must be right. This is exactly why most people never achieve their dreams.
They can’t handle what they call “negative emotions,” because to them, feeling bad means they’re doing something wrong.
But that’s not how your emotional system works. Negative emotions are just as important as positive ones.
If you want to reach your long-term goals, the first thing to understand is that negative emotions aren’t good or bad—they’re necessary.
Emotions are simply pre-encoded signals in your brain, designed to trigger a faster response to your environment.
They’re not punishments for doing something wrong. It’s here to guide you.
Each emotion has its own meaning and purpose. By understanding this, you gain insight into what you should do and where your emotional state is coming from.
For example:
Sadness isn’t bad. It’s a built-in reaction to loss, helping you make peace with what’s gone or what you won’t ever have.
Anxiety prepares you for potential threats and fears. It pushes you to take things seriously and perform at your best.
If you want to succeed in any area, the first step is to shift your mindset. Understand that emotions aren’t a measure of whether something is good or bad.
They are tools, signals from your brain, giving you rapid information about what’s happening and how to respond. And if you learn how to decode them, you can easily navigate through your life.
Negative emotions aren’t bad, they’re just signals you got to pay attention to.
Stop trying to escape from them
“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.” - Brene Brown
Most people spend a significant portion of their day trying to avoid or distract themselves from negative emotions.
They seek pleasure to escape the pain, diving into quick fixes that provide easy relief like scrolling endlessly, playing video games, ordering takeout, or loosing your mind on Netflix until 2 a.m.
These behaviours themselves aren’t the real problem. The problem is why you engage in them.
If you’re playing video games for an hour because you genuinely enjoy it, that’s fine.
But it’s not the same as coming home from work or school and sinking into three hours of TV or gaming just to forget about your day and the one that’s coming.
[We’ve talked about dopamine before, and if you want more insight on that, check this out.]
The second step is to recognize that some of your habits exist primarily to numb the negative emotions you’re feeling.
Start questioning those habits. While coping mechanisms can be healthy, they can also be the reason you feel stuck in life—why you feel like you’re not progressing.
Coping is useful in the short term but you have to have a sustainable strategy when it comes to dealing with negative emotions. And coping isn’t one of them.
You don’t want to escape negative emotions, because doing so also limits your ability to experience positive ones.
As long as you try to avoid, suppress, or escape those negative emotions, they’ll keep piling up in the back of your mind and stay there until you acknowledge them.
They don’t follow the same logic as your rational mind. Ignoring them or trying to find rational solutions won’t make them disappear.
In fact, they’ll silently amplify until they re-emerge, requiring that you deal with them.
Sit through the discomfort
For me, the worst emotion has always been anxiety. I’ve always had difficulty managing it. I remember as a kid trying to find ways to avoid feeling anxious.
Sometimes I’d play video games until my brain was too exhausted to feel anything, or I’d stay outside with people just so I wouldn’t have to sit alone with the uneasy feeling.
Problem is … it did not make it go away, it fed it.
And the reality is, if you want to become the best version of yourself and succeed in any realm of life, you have to tolerate uncomfortable feelings when they arise, feelings such as anxiety.
You have to sit through it for a little while, long enough so that you can understand where they’re coming from.
Thing is that, modern life gifted us with endless distractions so we don’t have to face discomfort if we don’t want to.
But that’s not healthy. Your brain isn’t designed to be running on happy emotions all the time, nor is it meant to numb itself every time a negative emotion appears.
If you never expose yourself to your negative emotions, you won’t know how to handle them, you’ll lack the practice.
The third step , though simple in theory, is to acknowledge those emotions and sit with them.
You need to learn how to sit through the discomfort to understand what the emotion is trying to tell you.
If you feel bored, regretful, and anxious every weekday because you dread going to work, and you’ve been avoiding that feeling by binging TV shows late into the night...
Then, I mean, it’s clear your brain is trying to send you a message. And until you listen, you won’t make progress—in fact, it’s likely to get worse over time.
That’s where people stop—they don’t want to face negative emotions because it means they’ll have to take responsibility for whatever they need to do to stop feeling that way.
The key is to understand that negative emotions aren’t destructive. They’re useful. Without them, you’re lost.
So, you don’t really have much of a choice:
either you acknowledge and use all your emotions to make the right decisions
or you avoid the negative ones and miss out on half the information your brain is giving you.
You always choose how to react
You’re the master of your own body. Your emotions influence your thinking, but at the end of the day, you decide if your hand reaches into the cookie jar.
You decide if you spend 7 hours a day on your phone.
You decide if you call in sick because you just don’t have the motivation to get up this morning.
You decide if you spend you whole evening watching New Amsterdam
You decide if you drain your bank account eating out every week-end
The sooner you understand that emotions don’t have direct control over your behavior, the better. As this means that you have control over your choices.
When it comes to daily life choices, you can always use your brain to temper your reactions. Of course, in some cases, it may be harder but you still have the last word.
And when it comes to reaching your goals, it all comes down to a series of small, daily steps.
If you want to get in shape, it’s about consistently going to the gym, meal planning, cooking … it’s not about completely overhauling your life.
[And if you want to learn everything you need how to get in shape, consider joining the waitlist]
What most of us want isn’t achieved through intense, one-time efforts—it’s built through the consistency of your actions over time.
Which means that you’ll frequently have to step out of the comfort but you don’t have to make that big of a step.
This is what you want, and this implies regular exposure to negative emotions and that’s just necessary.
The good news is, by acknowledging your negative emotions and sitting through the discomfort, you not only get the message behind the emotion but also the power to choose whether you pursue your goals.
And that decision : the choice to keep going despite the discomfort - is crucial. Which is why this is the last step of our process.
Because in those moments, you’re telling your brain that you’re in charge. That no matter what comes your way, you’ll keep working toward your goals.
This is how you build trust with yourself, knowing you’ll stick to your objectives no matter what.
This is the final step and it leads you to take ownership over your own behaviour because you accept the responsibilities associated.
This is a superpower most people never access. If there’s one thing I suggest for high achievers, it’s to understand this fundamental concept :
You must integrate all emotions if you want to be able to navigate effectively through life and get where you want to be.
As always, I hope this helps, trust the process.