Total Pageviews

Saturday, December 5, 2015

How Would You Like To Feel If You Had A Choice?

Hi All!  I have a separate blog for the younger folks.  But for the rest of us Generation X'ers, here's another reality check.

It's a very human thing to experience feelings and emotions, and it's also very human to react in response to something that happens to you.  The only problem is, we forget that we actually have the ability to control these reactions, regardless of what our feelings and emotions are.  And even more than that, we actually have the power to control those feelings and emotions too!

REACTIONS:

Life is not a steady stream of being provided with what we want, exactly when we want, and precisely how we want it.  Trains and traffic delay us.  Other people rub us the wrong way.  People ignore us, or don't give us their full attention.

People tell us we're wrong, and spend painfully long periods of time telling us why.  Better yet, people get silent when we're right and speak into a megaphone when we're wrong!  People annoy us.

People make mistakes.  We make mistakes.  People tell us we make mistakes, every single time we make a mistake, and then tell you you're mistaken in pointing out their mistakes.  The mistakes lead to even more mistakes and mistakes on top of mistakes!

As aggravating as they are, we don't actually have to get angry when these things happen.  We can choose to keep our cool.  If it's something that someone else did, we can relax with the knowledge that it's out of our control.  And if it's something that we did, we can remedy the situation first and react when it's all done.  That way we're never in the heat of the moment.

FEELINGS:

Nothing seems more natural then psychological self-flagellation over the mistakes we make.  Nothing seems more normal than worrying about what may or may not happen.  How sad that really is.

Like I said above, when a mistake is made, we act first and react later.  That way, the act of correcting the mistake is not emotionally compromised, and the reaction will not be an overreaction because everything that could have been done already has been.

Worrying is the most destructive thing you can do.  Instead, the same way that a criminal defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty, presume that there is no reason to worry unless proven otherwise!

That doesn't mean be irresponsible, of course.  Preparation and intelligence are not the same as worrying.  Rather, they eliminate the need to worry to begin with!

The point of this post is that our feelings and reactions are not automatically generated by what happens to us, even if it is unpleasant.  We have the unchallenged power to hold our reactions in check, and to render our moments or regret and worry nonexistent.

Well that's my thing for tonight -- let's put it all into practice!

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

I AM BOLD.  I AM BULLETPROOF.  I AM BETA.

No comments:

Post a Comment