Taking Control of How You Feel

This is a gentle reminder of something I thought about this morning while cooking breakfast. Nothing can make us upset unless we allow it to. It does absolutely no good to get upset or angry when things happen to us. I believe its okay to feel the feeling but let it go and realize why you felt the way you did and what can you do to change your circumstances or thoughts to make yourself feel better. Its all up to us on how we want to feel about issues and circumstances. Something to remember is that we don't always have the story on what is going on on the other side of the situation.

There is a good example of this in Steven Covey's book 7 Habits for Highly Effective People. I'll paraphrase: There was a man with two children who got on the subway. The folks on the subway were quietly reading their papers, reading their books, and relaxing while waiting for their stop. The man's children were very rambunctious, loud and basically disrupting everyone on the subway. Many of the riders were getting very irritated that this man is doing nothing to manage his children, until finally someone said "Excuse me, but your children are disrupting all of us. Can you please do something about this". The man looks up with slowly and apologizes by saying, "I am very sorry, you see we just left the hospital where my wife and their mother just died, I guess we don't know how to handle it yet".

If you have that book, its a good re-read and if you don't, you might want to pick it up.

There is always another side. I find, if I concentrate on my own life and not on what others are doing wrong (in my opinion) I have the power to move myself to where I want to go. This is your life and you ultimately have the control over how you want to feel. Once again, just a gentle reminder.....