3 Ways to Change Your Mood

Emotions are a fundamental part of what make us human. They can be overwhelming, complicated or quiet — but we experience at least one emotion 90 percent of the time, according to a 2015 study that examined the emotional lives of more than 11,000 people.

This finding doesn’t shock Ethan Kross, the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan, who has been studying the science of emotion for over two decades.

What did surprise him, however, were results from another study, which found that about 40 percent of participants believed that you can’t control your emotions.

“I was really floored,” Dr. Kross said. “If you don’t even think it is possible to manage your emotions, why would you ever try to do it?”

He contends that emotions, even negative ones, are information, and that we can often find ways to make them work for us. It’s not possible to control every part of our emotional lives, said Dr. Kross (who admits that he sometimes still feels fear before he has to speak publicly). But people who are good at managing their feelings, he said, are less lonely, live longer, maintain more fulfilling romantic relationships and are more satisfied with their lives.

His new book, “Shift: Managing Your Emotions — So They Don’t Manage You,” provides a blueprint for navigating the emotional curveballs that life throws at us every day.

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