Take Control Of Your Emotions
Emotions play a huge role in the decisions we make and what we choose to focus and act on. They can be great tools for understanding our desires and guiding us down our authentic path. Emotions help us understand who we are, who we love, what we are afraid of and what excites us and brings passion into our lives.
Emotions can also come with some baggage from the past. As we move through life, everyone adopts certain emotional attachments to people, places or situations based on their past experiences. Sometimes our emotions provide helpful information that allow us to make supportive choices and sometimes they influence us with leftover ‘wiring' from long past situations and can sabotage our choices and actions in the present.
Basing your choices on emotions alone could be a mistake. A better plan is to respect your emotions and the information they bring you but use them in combination with your intellect, wise counsel of trusted friends, facts of the circumstances and any spiritual direction you may receive.
In my own case, because of childhood experiences, I sometimes feel selfish and guilty when I choose to care of myself instead of attending to my children's needs. I am learning to acknowledge these emotions, check them against my goals and then make a choice based on a larger picture. For instance, if I have feelings of guilt, I stop, honour and acknowledge my emotions then look for more information. What specifically am I feeling guilty about? They key here is specificity. The most specific I am about the feelings of guilt, the easier it is to manage them.
Here's an important point. Guilt is a past perception of a loss without a gain. But in this universe, it is impossible to have a loss without a gain. I'll explain why. Everything in this universe is in balance. For every good there is a bad, for every right there is a wrong, for every nice there is a nasty. Each happening simultaneously to the same degree. We can feel hot or cold, happy or sad, good or bad. But we can't experience both at the same time. That's not to say that both don't exist, it's just we can't experience them simultaneously. Through our senses, we are able to categorize events and place meanings on them – sight, taste, touch, smell, sound. If we like the look of something, we make it good. If we don't we make it bad. If we like the way something tastes, we make it nice, if we don't we make it awful. All emotions are illusions because they are only half the story.
How does this help when I'm managing my perceptions of guilt?
If we know that there is no good without bad, no right without wrong, no guilt without pleasure, we can then look for where the blessings or benefits were in that past moment.
Here's how you do it:
- Take yourself to the moment you are feeling guilty about
- Then go on a hunt for the blessings. How does that moment serve, support and benefit you?
- Make a list of all the blessings in that moment that served you until you no longer feel the feelings of guilt. Now, this may take some time, but it's worth it.
The point is we should not discount our emotions but neither should allow them to be the sole driver of our choices. Using all the tools at your disposal will support you to make good choices.