Setting Yourself Free From Negative Emotions
By Bella Hamilton
The way we feel is mostly determined by outside circumstances. In other words, we are victim to external factors.
If another driver cuts us off on the road, our mood immediately changes and we become frustrated and start swearing.
What was meant to be an enjoyable drive suddenly becomes a miserable one! What was expected to be a good day immediately turns into a horrible day!
But life does not have to be that way. We can gain control of how we feel and consider the things around us. Our feelings don’t have to control or overwhelm us, in fact, it is the other way round. We can control how we think. We can choose either to feel good or to feel bad regardless of what other people do to us.
It did not come clear to me until I read Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The author writes that between stimuli (in others words impact or reason) and response there is freedom to choose. It means that whatever circumstance or situation we may find ourselves in we have the choice to decide how to respond.
It is not obvious, that if someone does something terrible to us, we should automatically be angry. Yes, we have the choice to decide whether to be offended or to laugh it off. However, as a society, we have become conditioned to feel bad when something wrong happens, and happy when something good happens. Instead of being proactive, we react. In other words, we have given up our freedom to choose how to respond.
A lot of us, sink into depression when something unfavorable happens. We blame circumstance and situations for our emotions. However, waking up to the power of choice would set us free from being controlled by our situations. Instead of being depressed, we can decide to be happy. Such knowledge is stronger than any anti-depressant we may take. To realize that we can choose how to feel. We can choose not to be depressed.
There is an advantageous method which helps in getting control of our emotions, called the Sedona Method. This technique has three ways you can choose. The first one allows you to dissipate unwanted feelings, the second one makes these emotions just to be, and the last one method suggest to dive into the core of the feeling. All these are performed with the help of the subconscious mind power.
So we should use this great power of our freedom to choose because you will become hostage to your emotions no more. When someone cuts you off while driving, you smile or laugh it off, when someone slams the door in your face, you carry on jolly happy. This is not to say you become a door-mat or a walk-over, but it is to give you the power to determine how you feel at each given moment. You pick and choose the emotions you want.
If you are a kind of person who always gets offended when someone cuts you off when driving, and if like most people you drive every day, can you see how each day of your life you are likely to be frustrated? Getting angry will not undo what the other driver has done, neither will it bring you any comfort.
We must wake up to the power of choice, decide how we want to feel, and feel that way regardless. If you have heard of the Law of Attraction, you will know the importance of controlling our feelings.
Thus, the Law of Attraction says that we attract more of that thing which we focus on. So if you are constantly feeling bad, then you are attracting more of the bad to your life and vice versa. Not only that but how we think shapes our lives. It has immense bearing on our health. Health experts widely agree that prolonged feelings of anger 'can lead to high blood pressure, headaches, stomach problems, and a lowered immune system.'
Actually, you will not consider wrong things or lousy circumstance as the reasons to be angry when you ’re on the positive way of thinking. Your conscious and subconscious mind should cooperate for your favor.
Take the example of the nature that is balanced in everything and try to balance your life and thoughts. Consider the possibility that something can go wrong or that unpleasant things can happen to you, but don’t allow them to distract or make you upset. Learn to pass negative thoughts and feelings through your mind.
We don’t have to be a victim of our feelings or emotions. We have the choice, we only have to drop the habit of reaction and use the choice available to us.
