I like your mantra very much. Hard disagree on emotions being wrong though. I am glad i learned to view emotions as messages from the more archaic parts of my brain.
The ones we label as positive come up if we do something that aids the survival of our species. Examples would be pleasure derived from food or sex.
The ones we label as negative are very important IMHO.
To prevent harm to ourselves we need Fear, it is a good friend. My theory is that anxiety disorders are like an allergy of the mind. In our super safe world our Amygdala has not much to do, very few (if any) predators around. But it stays on the lookout and reactions to small (or imagined) threats are totally out of proportion.
The rise in depression for me is a symptom of feeling lost/uprooted. If we take the theory that we evolved to live in groups of 100-150 individuals, that we all knew and worked with to ensure survival of the group, as basis and compare our modern lifestyle to it, we come out as extremely alienated from our nature. Even animals commit suicide if they see no way out. Put a scorpion in a ring of glowing embers and it will kill itself.
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The root of anger is fear IMHO. Anger is there to ready us to fight in case of a real threat to our life. Nowadays anger rises in situations challenging our worldview, questioning our distorted view of ourselves or our status within the group. My favourite one is getting angry when observing behaviours in others, which we dislike in ourselves. It happens even if we are unconscious it. When i get angry about behaviour of others, i sometimes remember to ask myself if i act the same way.
The fight or flight situation leaves a third and fourth option. Freezing like a deer in the headlights, experienced it once myself. Read somewhere, that some predators only detect motion.
Anger might be expressed as (physical/verbal) violence against others. If it does not, it can turn against yourself and lead to depression.
The most healthy option i think is to accept your emotions and use your anger as motivation to change something for the better.
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Following Proverb helped me to accept my emotions:
"Treat your feelings like a guest.
Open up, attend to their needs and say goodbye when they leave."
Another useful one:
"What you fight gets stronger." - Siddhartha Gautama
It's always tricky when people talk about emotions "being wrong", especially because there are at least three different things that one can mean: (a) they're not feeling that emotion, (b) they shouldn't feel that emotion, or (c) they shouldn't take the instinctual action suggested by that emotion. A doesn't make any sense, B is occasionally true, and C is usually true. That is, sometimes your emotions are misplaced (e.g. strong animosity toward a good friend for an innocuous action - maybe you're tired or hungry?), but it's much more often the case that your emotions do signal that someone is wrong, even though the gut reaction to that emotion is inappropriate.
Like you said, emotions are messages - but they're not very contentful messages. The value of most emotional messages is little more than a "mindfulness check" that should cue you engage your thinking skills to determine what to do. Very rarely is "acting on the emotion" the right thing to do - if you're angry, the correct course of action is almost never to cuss out or punch someone.
In many cases, the emotional signals shouldn't have been sent in the first place (e.g. there's no reason for you to get angry because your best friend likes vanilla ice cream (modulo contrived edge cases, of course)), and the correct course of action is to do nothing, other than figure out why the incorrect signal got sent at all.
> Anger might be expressed as (physical/verbal) violence against others. If it does not, it can turn against yourself and lead to depression.
Agree emotions are critical to understand as they're often signals for deeper unmet needs. RAIN is a great method for understanding emotions.[1]
But sometimes, emotions are also just learned reactions, with little of value underneath. Feelings like 'I want to stay in bed' or 'I don't want to start this report' can be useful to short-circuit through habit and counter-programming with things like this mantra. Practicing these these short-circuiting habits over time can lessen future emotional reactions.
In other words, mastery over emotions and building better habits can happen in multiple ways. The body & mind are a big homeostatic machine and if you update your physical state (e.g. having written a few paragraphs, or gotten up and started a walk), the mind will realize it's somewhere else and change its reaction.
Emotions are sometimes helpful, but in the case of starting things they're usually wrong.