::The warrioress looked at them as she listened quietly. When they finished, she spoke::
Those are good examples of negative emotions that happen in your day-to-day life, and can affect your ability to perform your duties optimally.
To feel something that makes you unhappy, annoyed or stressed is natural. It is impossible to not feel. But your success lies in not giving into those emotions, not dedicating them any more time than it is healthy to your mind because one way or another, they will cloud your judgement.
Question yourself. What is it worth? Does feeling bad about something change it to better? Does your life or duty return more possitive experiences when you feel something negative and act out of it? Answer to those questions is trivial, yet emotions can not be permanently held back, building up momentum. Sometimes your mind needs to "vent".
For this, we use re-appraisal. It is not about suppressing one emotion and making it disappear. It does not quite work like that. It is about re-evaluating our emotion carefully thinking about all of its components and reducing its impact in our mind, until it does not bother us anymore.
There are several techniques for applying re-appraisal, and at first it can take hours to mitigate negative impact in your behavior caused by one negative emotion, but in time you will be able to shrug off unhappiness or stress in mere seconds, depending on intensity of each emotion.
We will now take as example one emotion for each of you, and show you how to re-appraise it so it will not affect your clear judgement ever again.
::She then looked at Charles, taking the first entry of his list::
Charles, your knighting being pushed back makes you unhappy. This can be seen in your demeanor, and impacts in your relationship with your fellow Order members. Patience is virtue, and when lacking it irritates you and subconsciously prods your feelings, it affects your ability to perform your duties. This in turn, may plant seeds of doubt in your superiors whether you are prepared to take onto Knighthood. Rethink your situation, and tackle this conflict with yourself.
Is waiting worth it to you? If it is, you need to be proactive, and keep showing that you wish to become knight. Reward will come, when it is earned. If it is not worth waiting, then you need to unbind yourself from that which is unending source for your negative feelings. Only you have that answer, and only you have power to stop growing conflict that may make your life unhappy.
Evaluate situation and consider that you can only further your goals by taking on them with determination and clear purpose. Negative feelings will simply burden you, and possibly destroy your ability to achieve your goals.
::The warrioress then glanced at Jake, taking the first entry of his list as well::
Jake, you were frightened because gnoll knocked you down. It is difficult to handle such situation, because it comes in hand with feeling helpless, and unable to act. However, there are things you can do so that fear does not control you to point where you become liability, and possibly burden to your partners.
Re-appraisal here lies in same reason that causes your fear. When you are knocked down and helpless, there is not much you can do to defend yourself. So why would you let fear further hinder your ability to survive? Evaluate this situation, and use this time to plan escape routes once you regain your footing, or look for that healing potion in your belt to drink it just in time. If you are frightened or nervous, chances are that even when you regain your footing you will keep being easy target. At best you will run away like headless chicken, opening yourself to further attacks and endangering your team which will attempt to protect you.
Reroute your feelings of fear towards those of trust. You are knocked down, you can do nothing about it. So trust that your partners will be there for you, act calmly, visualize strategy to follow once you have regained your footing, and act accordingly. Your chances for survival will increase drastically when you are in control of your mind, and not in control of frightened irrational reactions.
::The ashen-haired Defender paused, looking at both::
Do not give up if you try to re-appraise emotions and you can not stop having negative feelings about them, or control them when they happen again to you. You have to change your habits, and that is always slow process. What matters is that you try. Once you are in control of your mind, you will be in control of your body.
Show me this, and we will begin swinging blades. For this tenday, I want you to take next entry of your list, and re-appraise it until you feel nothing negative about them, and know how to react next you feel them so that they do not impact negatively in your behavior. You are to explain to me your re-appraisal reasoning for event and its negative emotion.
Your other task still remains. Weapons in hand at all times, except when doing so would be against law.
