Can you control your emotions?

In life your senses detect a series of events. These events create impulses that are conducted through your senses to your mind. Your conscious mind interprets the events with a series of thoughts that continually flow through your mind. This flow of thoughts is called your internal dialogue. All experiences must be processed through your conscious mind and given a conscious meaning before you experience any emotional response. Your internal dialogue is made out of beliefs that you gathered through life.

Let’s take few examples in order to show you how your thoughts and beliefs shape your emotions.

You are sitting in a park. A couple is sitting facing you. They are cuddling each other. You look at them and feel happy. If you check your mind, you will see that you have interpreted the event in a way that made you feel happy: they are in love; they are very happy; you remembered the same beautiful experience with your wife. You just had many different thoughts that made you feel happy.

While you were sitting there, there was another man sitting across you. He was telling himself: how impertinent this couple is to show their love in public; they must not touch each other in public; she is so beautiful, how she can be with this ugly man? You bet, our man feels offended and unhappy.

Did you see? We had the same situation with two different opposed emotions. It only depended on how you thought about it and what are your beliefs.

Every event is analyzed by your conscious mind and must be given a certain meaning before you experience any kind of feelings. Your feelings are created by your thoughts and not by the actual events. Your thoughts actually create the emotion. Emotions are always preceded by thoughts.

Here is another example: You just went back home very tired from a hard working day. You don’t want to talk with your parents and just want to go to your bed. Your phone rings. It’s your close friend who is calling you to join him for a nice party and he wants to introduce you to a girl you always wanted to meet. You become so excited that you are not tired anymore. You are full of energy and ready to go out. Just a thought changed your mood and changed you emotionally and physically.

Did you see? Thoughts determine your emotions, your emotional state and physiological state!! Emotions are the physical materialization of your thoughts in your body. Your emotions result entirely from the way you look at things. You do emotions, they do not make you. You are the source of all your emotions. You are the one who creates them. You can feel anyway you choose at any moment in time.

When you are aware of the reality that your emotions are not generated automatically but you create them, you will know that you have a great tool to control your emotions: If you Control your thoughts you control your emotions. Your emotions are the automatic response of your thoughts. This reality shows that you are the real master of your life. Your thoughts shape your world (Buddha).

Another application of this reality: If you want to know what kind of thoughts you have look at the emotions they are generating. Positive thoughts generate positive emotions, negative thoughts generate disempowering emotions. You have a great universal and divine tool to check how sublime your thoughts are: positive emotional and physical state means you are living and having positive thoughts. Negative emotional and physical state means you are living and having negative thoughts.

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