One Of The Great Secrets of Life
05/13/2017
What I am about to share with you in this blog post can be earth shattering for many people and is fundamental to a successful and fulfilling life for all of us. I tell my patients it is the most important thing they can learn in all of their therapy that they may have throughout their life. I tell them that it is one of the most important principles they can learn in all of their education. Finally, I tell them that it is one of the most important principles they can learn in all of their life's experiences. It is this: No event has the power to make you feel anything---it is the thoughts that you choose that lead you to feel whatever emotions you experience in any given situation. This is fundamental to Practical Psychology because this means you have great control over your feelings everyday! I know this is true because I witness it over and over again everyday in my own life and in the lives of my patients, family members and friends. Let's look at some experiences in your life and we will be able to illustrate exactly what I am suggesting.
You and I have been called a name hundreds of times in our lives. If the event of being called a name had the ability to make you feel an emotion it should be the same emotion each time. Think for a minute, what emotions have you felt after being called a name? Mad, upset, sad? Maybe all of them? Of all the times you have been called a name have you always felt mad or sad? I'm certain that you have not and that there have been times when you felt indifferent and didn't even give the name-calling a moments concern, right? This shows us that the event of being called a name has no power to create a feeling because there have been lots of different feelings come from this event. Can you tell me why were you mad sometimes and indifferent at other times? It is because you thought about it differently. Before you felt anything your brain processed the event and chose certain thoughts which lead you to experience emotions. For example you may have chosen on one occasion to think the following: "I can't believe he said that! He has no right to call me that name! I need to show him and make sure he never does that again!" These thoughts would surely lead you to feel angry or upset, wouldn't they? Now let's look at an alternative way of thinking. How about like this: "That was immature of him. I don't really care what he says. It's not worth giving it even a second of my time. He can choose to think and say whatever he wants---that's just life" Now, having chosen these thoughts are the emotions that follow any different? You probably are not even concerned with what was said and go on with your day because you realize this is a natural event that occurs in life all the time and you don't need to worry about it.
The reason we mistakenly think that the event causes the feeling is because our mind works so fast. It chooses thoughts in milliseconds and the emotions follow. In some cases we are not choosing a new thought but simply clicking on an old file---thoughts we have chosen for a certain type of event long ago. Many of us need to clean out old files because the thoughts we chose long ago are irrational and only lead to unhealthy and unnecessary emotions. Many of us continue to choose irrational thoughts today because we have not understood this basic life principle and have become stuck in negative, automatic patterns. I want to teach you how to get unstuck. It starts by becoming more aware of the thoughts you are choosing every day.
I plan to have several posts over the next week or two that build on this basic principle because there are several things I want to say about it and it is one of the most important principles in life you can learn and apply!