The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

Intensity is not the enemy; intensity with no boundary is. Ambition, anger, desire and love all do necessary work, and each turns destructive at the same point, where nothing else can be heard. This matters because the usual advice is to want less, and that advice costs you the heat you need. The question is containment rather than temperature.

Take the feeling that has caused you most trouble and work out where its useful range ends. Build one limit that holds while you are in the middle of it, since it must exist beforehand. You do not have to feel less, only to keep the fire inside something.