Most people hear the term emotionally strong and assume that it means the ability to ignore your emotions or not feel them. But that’s dead wrong…

For example:

• Being emotionally strong in the face of anxiety means learning to accept your anxious thoughts and feelings rather than constantly running away from them.
• Being emotionally strong when you’re grieving means being willing to feel your sadness and accept your loss instead of distracting yourself from it.
• Being emotionally strong when you’re angry means validating that anger rather than denying it or criticizing yourself.

Of course, it’s hard work to cultivate a healthier relationship with your emotions — one that allows you to be resilient and strong in the face of painful feelings instead of fragile.

But it is possible.

And the most effective way to do it is to build consistent habits that promote a more tolerant and accepting relationship with all your feelings — even the painful ones. If you want to become emotionally strong, work to cultivate these 4 habits.

1. Control your attention, not your emotions

Like anything painful, our automatic response to difficult emotions is to try and control them — usually in an attempt to escape them or “fix” them.

And this tendency to control makes sense given how good at exerting control we are in most areas of life:

• You’re good at exerting control and generating creative solutions at work.
• You’re good at exerting control and fixing a leaky drain under the sink at home.
• You’re good at exerting control and asking for help at the grocery store when you can’t find something.

In many areas of our life, it’s helpful and productive to exert control over our problems. But here’s the thing…