What determines how you feel?
Most likely your answer is: “What’s going on in my life right now.”
And that is how most people live….in a constant state of reacting to whatever is going on in their life, in the world, what someone says, what someone does or doesn’t do, even whether or not its raining! And it feels like you have no control. If things are going well, you feel good. If they’re not, you feel bad.
And so you try to control what’s going on around you, what other people do or say. Sometimes you even succeed. But probably not for long. The truth is that you actually have very little control over the world, what happens, and especially what other people do or say. You can’t control whether or not the sun shines. You can’t control whether or not the Government decides to impose another lockdown, and you can try, but you can’t control what those you live with say or do!
As human beings, we tend to think that we have far more control over the world around us than we actually do, and far less control over our emotions that we actually have.
We are going about it the wrong way! Instead of trying to control the world, what we need to do is learn to control ourselves, our thoughts, actions and emotions. It’s that simple…..but of course doing it is very far from simple, and changing the habits of a lifetime is not easy.
- The first step is being aware of what you are thinking, doing and feeling. You will be surprised how much you think, do and feel without being consciously aware of it.
- The second step is learning how to change it, the tools and techniques.
- The third step is taking consistent, persistent, action to make those changes into new habits.
Take that first step now…commit this week to noticing what you are thinking and feeling. You are probably more aware of what you are doing, so focus on the thoughts and feelings. It is those that drive what you do. Really notice. Write them down. What thoughts do you keep having? Can you notice patterns? Can you notice how certain types of thoughts lead to certain types of feeling? Really work at this. It’s so important. If you don’t know what you’re thinking, how can you change it?