The Power to Choose how you feel...

It’s very easy. Everything starts with a thought. So I tell you _ you can begin to think of yourself as truly intelligent on the basis of how you choose to feel in the face of trying circumstances.

Life struggles are pretty much the same for each of us. We all feel pain, we get disappointed, we hurt and have so many problems that we now and then struggle to see our tomorrow. When you are experiencing your own hardship, you feel as if no one else has ever been through worse. You feel and are convinced that not one person can understand, no one knows. Here is the shocking simplicity - if you simply raise your eye just a little, just for a second see outside of what you are feeling, you would actually realise that your neighbour is going through even worse.

You know the saying “I used to complain I had no shoes till I saw a man who had no feet”.

Everyone who is involved with other human beings in any social context has similar difficulties. Disagreements, conflicts and compromises are a part of what it is to be human. Similarly money, growing old, sickness, death, natural disasters and accidents are all events which present problems to virtually all human beings. Yet some people are able to make it, avoid immobilizing dejection in spite of all their problems, while others simply break down and collapse. Those who recognise problems simply as part of a human condition and therefore don’t measure happiness by the absence of problems are the most intelligent kind of human we know “and yet they are quite rare”.

Mastering self will require a new kind of intelligence, a new kind of thinking, one which I recognise may prove very difficult to master as our society doesn’t encourage individualistic behaviour or breaking free from the norm. This kind of mastery will require a strong character and repetitive reactions to each situation that will ultimately build who you are. You must trust in your ability to feel emotionally whatever you choose to feel in any circumstances.

Yes, feeling is a choice as well.

Those who have studied emotional intelligence “EQ”, teach us that every reaction to an occurrence, starts with a thought, and since our thoughts are controllable, every feeling is therefore a choice. This I realise is a radical notion for most of us. You probably grew up believing that you cannot control your own emotion; that anger, hurt and fear, as well as love, ecstasy and joy are things that just happen to you, that an individual doesn’t control these things but instead just accept them as occurrences. You have been made to believe that when sorrowful events occur you just naturally feel sorrow and hope that some joyous event will happen soon so that you can feel good again. Truth is with practise, each of us have the power to choose how we will feel in each circumstance. With personal mastery, we can choose to be the happiest, intelligent and most successful of individuals.