Emotion as Feedback
Nobody can know what you feel unless you express it in some way. We mistake the expression for the real thing and pursue the expression.
We can't think emotion.
I think emotion is the human system's inbuilt feedback mechanism. Our life is sensory. And senses cannot see one's own emotion, nor anyone else's. It can only see their expression. We use words like a car or a boat or a person or a pen, all of them are tangible. Similarly a smile and a frown is tangible, an angry face is tangible. But a feeling cannot be sensed. It can only be felt.
While we try to project an emotion into the future, we cannot. We can only project expression - which we mistake as the emotion itself. Emotion is only current. Like a fearful doomsday event which will happen tomorrow, is still an imagination one is building right now, in the present. A happy feeling of tomorrow's morning, can't be scheduled, but you can make sure to not wake up late to your exercise regimen and expect zero panic.
Emotion is feedback. You don't try to change feedback, you take it, and realign.