You Always Choose Your Mood

 In each situation you face, you make a decision, either consciously or without paying attention, about what you are going to feel.  Only after you make that decision will you feel the chosen emotion. 

To demonstrate this, here is a story about three people walking down a dirt road together.  Suddenly, a snake slithers across the road in front of them.  One person is deathly afraid of snakes; this person panics and begins screaming and crying.  The second doesn’t care about snakes one way or the other; this person just shrugs and ignores the snake.  The third person happens to be a zoologist who studies snakes; this person recognizes how beautiful that particular snake is and enthusiastically tells the other two how lucky they all are to see such a beautiful specimen.  So, did the snake cause each of those reactions?  The answer is obviously “No.”  If the snake were the cause, then each of the people would have to have the same reaction, since the situation was identical for all three people.  What actually happened was that each individual observed the situation, analyzed it, decided how to react, and then reacted.  This process is the way each of us chooses what to feel in every situation we face.  Often, we choose a habitual or culturally expected response and then we think we have no choice.  Actually, you can and do choose the emotions you feel in every moment.  So get into the habit of choosing emotions and thoughts you like. 

 How Emotions Work

Most of these responses were formulated when the person was a very young child.  They may have been the best solutions the child could find to deal with a situation he or she had to face repeatedly.  A three-year-old boy who desires to hit his father may fight the urge by clenching his fist or tensing up his arm.  This may well be a better response in this situation, since hitting his dad may result in a beating.  Over time, the tension in the arm may become chronic.  The boy may never relax the muscles used to fight his anger as a way of avoiding the emotion that was deemed too dangerous to feel when he was young.  The emotion effectively becomes locked in his muscles, which form a partnership with his ever-watchful subconscious to “protect” him. Unfortunately, the penalty for this chronic tension is a loss of the extremely pleasant feeling of relaxation.  When we reach this point, we may actually lose the joy of life.  Different individuals have different interwoven networks of these automatic responses.  Some have more, some fewer.  Some responses may be overpowering, some very subtle.

 How the Mind Works

 ...Our brains run somewhat like desktop computers.  Both can run many programs at a time, but the more programs they run, the slower they go and the more mistakes they make.  Since your mind continually receives sensory inputs, however, the more programs it runs, the more of those sensory inputs must be filtered out.  The inputs that are allowed to get through to your conscious mind are prioritized in terms of the perceived danger your subconscious mind assigns them.  So when subconscious fears take up too much of your mind, beautiful and joyful things are filtered out in favor of things you fear.  When we’re thinking about the past or the future a lot, that also takes up “computing space” in our minds, and the same result happens.  So we enjoy life less, fear our environment more, think more slowly, and behave less rationally.

Excerpt from PART III – How to Relax

           ...In the early going, you'll find that the muscles you've relaxed don't stay relaxed for more than a minute or two --- sometimes only a few seconds.  This is because they are tied in with the network of your psychological defenses against the world --- which is the source all of your fears.

             As you become more conscious of them, you'll be able to relax them faster and keep them relaxed longer.  Ultimately, you can overcome the tendency to tense up.  Even after you've achieved this stage, you must remain aware of your body.  After all, you had those habits since your early childhood.  They were ingrained in your approach to dealing with the world.  They may still come back if you let them, especially if your subconscious sees what it deems a scary situation or if you are at an emotionally intense turning point in your life.

  Free!  Sign up for 'Secrets to Happiness' sent to you bi-weekly.  Free!