Your brain exists of two distinct parts. You have emotions and you have ratio.
The strongest of the two should be your ratio. It is your calm, trustworthy and logical friend. Emotions are the unpredictable and automatic natural processes. This is the monkey brain. Your ratio can act on long term plans, emotions are reactionary mechanisms for short term situations.
When you can separate the two and look at them from a high level perspective, you unlock a superpower.
When emotions emerge and you can recognize them, you can rationally analyze them and decide on how to act. A lot of people live their life in reaction to their emotions. This is hard because you are never in control, your emotional monkey brain is. By recognizing your emotions and then overruling your reaction to them, you bypass your brain’s natural process and act rationally. When you feel yourself getting angry, sad, jealous, happy,… ask why you are feeling that particular emotion and make a mental note. Then apply ratio and decide how to act on it.
In meditation this method is described with the metaphor of a cloudy sky. The clouds (emotions) occasionally drift through the sky (the mind). Behind the clouds there is always a blue sky, the clouds are there only temporarily.
This is the core of the saying: Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. When you can apply ratio (which takes effort) to control your reaction to emotions that randomly emerge you will have an easier life then living from impulse to impulse.