—
No matter how optimistic or positive a person you claim to be, there will always be days where some external circumstance comes along and steamrolls over you and flattens you out, making you feel like you’ve just had your teeth kicked in only further adding insult to injury after you already feel life’s knocked you down.
It’s these challenging days in particular where it suddenly becomes far to easy to lash out, blame and hopelessly dismiss other people or things as the sole reason for why circumstances turned out the way they did and why you now feel the way you do because of them, and if you can you relate I highly suggest doing yourself this one favor of sprinkling the perspective I’m about to share here in this article on every-THING.
First, a Public Disclaimer…
Nobody and no-thing outside of you ever has the power to make you feel anything.
Here, read those words over again, but this time really allow the words to sink in:
Nobody and nothing else, but yourself, ever has the power to make you feel anything.
I know, you may be thinking, what about the extreme atrocities of mankind? IE. Starving kids in Africa, a lifetime wrongfully spent in prison, or your entire family being murdered, etc.
How could events like those listed above have zero possible impact and influence over how I’d feel?
I get it, trust me, and I’m not here attempting to convince you to become some emotionless robot, but I am here to explain in simple terms that no matter what type of external event has occurred, atrocity included, it is what has happened regardless of how or what you feel about it.
There’s not a shoulda-coulda-woulda in the world that’s coming to save the day, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it to change what’s happened. That is, unless you’re yielding some sort of time-altering technology still to be unveiled, and other than that fantastical option, what’s happened has happened and that’s that…
However, what you CAN change is how you choose to react to the event that has happened, because whatever you’re feeling is stemming from a particular story you’re telling yourself about why you believe this event shouldn’t have unfolded in the way it actually has.
This story you’ve told yourself is the source cause of your suffering.
Through storytelling, you’ve attached a particular meaning to the event, circumstance, person, place or thing, but attaching meaning to whatever transpired was not required. Attaching meaning to what’s occurred is optional, and it’s the same with how you decide to react to whatever has occurred.
Do you decide to accept what’s happened and then RELAX into it, or do you decide to expend your precious energy and WORRY about everything you cannot change?
While it is true that you have zero control over how events may unfold, you definitely have control over something, and that is your attitude towards whatever unfolds, and even though you have no control over your arising emotions, you can consciously decide to control HOW YOU WILL FEEL these emotions.
If you woke up feeling good this morning (or even if you woke up feeling shitty), you can still decide to go to sleep feeling good regardless of what’s happened and transpired throughout your day.
Remember…
Life is not in control of how you feel, you are.
Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
—
Photo Credit: Getty Images
How do you relax into the death of a parent or child; or relax into losing a limb or an eye, or relax into a diagnosis of cancer that will leave you in agonising pain, doubly incontinent and locked into an unresponsive body?
Jared, spot on. A little more about how the choice system works and how we use this power please. Answer these qq: how does choice of such magnitude become so individually based? How does one use awareness to assure good choice?