Learn How to Use Your Emotions to Become a Creative Mastermind
Why empowered empathy will make you a superhero
They say the eye is the window to the soul — and your soul is where you feel absolutely everything you experience in life, whether you want to — or not.
What if that led to your very own superpower?
The key to creative success might be unlocking the ability to understand your experiences as emotions, and how you can learn to see that in others as well.
Have you ever had a miscommunication?
Have you felt like you were explaining yourself very clearly, only to have others misunderstand what you were trying to say?
It’s never a good feeling — it leads to confusion.
If you use all of your pent-up emotions to create a masterpiece only have it misunderstood — it leads to frustration.
The latter is going to happen at some point no matter what — even if you are completely articulate, you will never be able to predict with 100% accuracy how others will respond.
In fact, it even happens to creators like Stephen King — all the time.
However, everyone can stand to do a check-in to see if they’re using the correct skill set to increase chances of clear communication, and in some ways — success.
What is Effective Communication?
If your success in writing depends on others feeling the emotions you’d like them to feel, you need to be good at putting those emotions out there, or your readers won’t get the desired impact.
If your success in relationships depends on others understanding where you’re coming from and whether the words coming out of your mouth match that, you need to be able to practice or your connections will suffer.
Step One: Identify What You’re Feeling
That feels simple, right?
You know if you’re happy, sad, upset, bored, frustrated — right?
Sometimes, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Generally, when I write, there’s some kind of emotion attached. For example, the article you’re reading came to my mind because I thought about how happy I was to be writing an article about Disneyland and the positive feelings it caused.
That feeling was so strong that I had to pause that article to really flesh out how emotions can dictate your writing, and how to use them effectively.
Another example is the article I wrote about loss during quarantine. My friend had passed away the day before, and other people’s reactions caused me to write it so they knew they weren’t alone.
Did I think about what I was going to say before I wrote that one?
Nope. Absolutely not.
That just came out however it came out, and I did edit it slightly later (after it was published) only to add a few more things after talking with friends.
I didn’t really edit the grammar (except for one typo that came out because I did write it with blurry, tear-filled eyes) and I consider it to be one of my “best” articles because I just let it all out.
Sometimes it’s easy to know if you’re happy, sad, off, inquisitive — because you feel it to an extreme.
Other times, it’s just not that simple because you may not have connected the emotional dots yet.
Step Two: Identify the Emotion You Want the Article to Portray
Sometimes you might have an undercurrent of emotion that you’re not aware of that creeps into your article.
For example, in one of mine, I kept getting responses of people saying things like “hang in there!” or “stick with it!” — and I couldn’t figure out why. I was grateful for the support, but confused about the responses overall.
I wasn’t upset when I wrote the article, right? I definitely wasn’t trying to put that in there — it was a nice, neutral report.
Right?
I went back to read it and realized that strangely, it did carry a bit of melancholy that others were clearly picking upon.
I changed a few of the words to give it the desired impact, but I was fascinated that at the time I wrote that article, I was feeling upset about something, but it had absolutely nothing to do with what I was writing.
As writers, we’re able to make others feel everything and nothing at the same time.
It is absolutely a superpower, but one that you may not yet know how to use.
After all, even the best superheroes had to learn how to use what gifts they were given.
As creatives, our frustration with our superpower comes out when we’re feeling an emotion unrelated to what we’re writing.
It’s often difficult or impossible to hide it because that feeling will come through, even if the two subjects are completely separate.
Fix it, or let it ruin you — again, and again, and again.
Often, if you don’t pay attention to what’s really going on, it will continue to come back up in different forms until you do some work to find out why it’s plaguing you in the first place.
This can also come up in personal relationships and communication as well, so it’s a good universal awareness to have.
I have to check myself endlessly as a teacher because I am the one creating the weather in my classroom.
Yes, there are 30 other personalities in there with me helping to add to the forecast, but I am the one in charge — I am the captain guiding the ship to port.
The same goes for writing and communicating in general — we can generally know where we want to go, but without practiced awareness, the crew might accidentally dock the ship in a similar, yet very wrong place due to miscommunication.
What can you do to increase the chances of full, authentic communication?
Ask yourself… do the emotions I feel and the emotions I want to portray match?
It might seem that way, but it might not be the case. A great way to check is to change direction for a moment.
Test it:
Get out of the current environment or emotional storm so that you can decide if that’s truly you, or the situation that’s causing you to feel that way.
If you have any underlying stowaway feelings about another topic weighing you down, you might want to work those out before you can fully communicate what you’re trying to say.
If you just try and push through, you might end up muddying the waters and others will miss the point.
Sometimes that’s okay, and you’ll grow and realize it later, but it’s a great exercise in personal growth to be able to identify and separate those emotions instead of letting them mix.
Do an honest check-in:
What do you need to do to get in the right headspace?
You might:
- Journal for a few minutes
- Write a letter
- Write a draft of an article you’ve been thinking about — you’d be surprised how much will come out!
- Take a walk
- Hang out with a pet — they’re great listeners because they don’t anticipate what you’re trying to say like humans can
- Listen to music that will help evoke the emotion you’re going for (or conversely, if you just need to feel it to get through it, listen to music that will strengthen what you’re currently feeling)
- Write down 3 things that made you feel the emotion you’re looking for and focus on those for a few minutes, trying to remember the exact moments that bring out the right feelings
Sometimes, you just have to feel it while it’s there.
Creatives are often labeled as “too sensitive” and are told that they “need to get over it”.
In learning about myself, I’ve found that sometimes that advise is completely wrong.
In order to get over an issue, I sometimes have to completely surrender to the feeling in order to work through it.
Is it uncomfortable?
At first, yes.
Does it last forever?
No.
Do I dwell on it?
No — at least, I try not to.
Then, after you start to work through it, you realize you’re grateful that you’re figuring it out now instead of letting it wait below the surface to get you later, like some sort of empathic kraken.
There are too many people out there who lock their emotions up because it’s not who they are “supposed to be”.
Let me tell you — there is absolutely nothing more authentic than someone who can check in on how they’re feeling, allow it to be even if it’s looked down upon by others, and work through it.
It’s a breath of fresh air in human form:
Society might tell you to be one way, but I guarantee that you’ll have the upper hand if you know who you are and what’s going on inside of you.
Once you have yourself down, you’ll begin to recognize it in others as well, which is how creatives evoke emotions in others — by understanding how perception and reality work together to create an environment, and therefore helping others feel what they’re saying.
If you have no idea how your own emotions work, you won’t be able to create as effectively if others don’t feel what you felt when you created it.
Similarly, if you are having a conversation and your words don’t match how you feel, you won’t be able to communicate as well either.
It’s a win all around to just learn who you are, what you’re feeling, and how to use it to your benefit.
Feel it, work through it, let it go, and learn how to use it:
Once you learn how to use your emotions to communicate what you’d like others to pick up on, it becomes an invaluable tool — and must be used carefully.
Do not manipulate others for your own gain, but to help them work through things inside of them that your work will bring up.
We write for catharsis, but we read to discover as well, even if it’s not as apparent.
When talking to others, you’ll begin to check to see if how you’re feeling matches what’s coming out.
That’s incredibly healthy to think about, especially in current times when all of us are feeling a bit — off.
It’s never too late to change:
So you wrote a piece where your emotional barometer didn’t read correctly and you need to fix it — that’s OK!
It’s exactly the same as saying to someone “you know what, that didn’t come outright. Let me try again,” in person.
The more authentic and honest you are about it, the better writer and communicator you will become.
Growth is extremely important, and I guarantee you’ll find out things you didn’t know about yourself by noticing this, as simple as it seems.
It might be good, and it might not be great — but the common theme is that growth is power.
Use that available fuel:
If you’re upset, write something!
If you’re happy, write something!
If you’re feeling numb or just “blah”, write something!
It doesn’t matter what it is, just start getting it down. Don’t judge whatever comes out.
Keep it in a journal, a document, or on a scrap of paper. You might later find yourself in need of a certain emotion that this writing will bring up, or you might even be able to work it into an article or a certain scene you’re writing for a book.
Not to mention the obvious — that by writing it out, you are working through it.
If there’s a song that goes with it — even better.
I have found myself in random places when a song comes on and I feel a certain emotion — only to scramble for my phone so I can jot it down in notes before it disappears forever.
It’s great to have a library of emotions you can refer back to:
That way, you’ll also start to build the habit of ensuring that you’ve worked through what you need to work through, so that you’re strong not only in the present, but for your future superhero-self.
It’s incredibly personal, but incredibly powerful.
Your creative pursuits — and your relationships — will thank you for putting in the work.
I hope this helps you to jumpstart the curation of your own emotional library — and creative success.
You might also like —
