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This is the first step of nine, on the path to happiness.

Step # 1) Owning Our Emotions

If you ever hope to find happiness, you need to know who controls your happiness.

Many of us believe that one person can make another person feel bad or upset. “He pisses me off!” “She really upset her.” “He certainly got under her skin.”

So here’s the challenge:

Is it possible to make another person feel anything? I say you can’t ever, make another person feel anything.

Ok let’s look at this. I’m sure we can all think of a time when we “Believe” someone upset us or made us angry. Example: “If that person had not said that or done that, I wouldn’t have gotten angry.”

Here’s where we start to look at our beliefs and how we as human beings have a tendency to apply them in general to most situations. First let’s look at cause and effect and how we apply it to the physical world. If I pull an object and it moves. If I drop a vase on a hard surface, it breaks. But cause and effect doesn’t translate the same when pertaining to our emotions.

When a person says something to us, do the words in of themselves trigger a specific response? When a person gives us a look, does their look in of itself trigger a specific response? When a person expresses emotion in there voice, does their tone in of itself trigger a specific response?

No, of course not!

So what is it that changes these sound waves or looks or tones into a feeling of pleasure or pain?

Simply put – it’s our interpretation of the words or looks or tone and then our application of a feeling, that we chose to add to our interpretation of what we believe to be applicable for this situation or response.

So here lies the challenge most people face when accepting responsibility for their emotions and subsequent responses. The majority of people make no distinction between being influenced and being in control.

Being Influenced & Being in Control

So what are the differences between being influenced & being in control: First, Influence has the potential to impact, meaning it has an indirect impact on the situation. Control on the other hand has a direct effect on the result of the situation.

Here is an example, providing a better understanding of influence and control. Please keep in mind we are applying wisdom to this example. Wisdom is the ability to look at any given situation from a multitude of various possibilities and perspectives.

Brian is Pat’s partner. They are facing some financial difficulties and so together they agreed not to make any large purchases until they are out of debt. That said, while shopping, Brian spotted a new leather jacket and purchased it for $199.00. When Pat saw the credit card bill, he exploded in anger. “What’s this? We agreed!” he screams at Brian, “you knew we can’t afford this, we are over our head in debt!”

So what was it that caused Pat’s anger? Was it the purchase? Was it their debt? Was it the jacket? Or was it Pat’s interpretation of the situation and subsequent response.

As human being’s the first thing any human being thinks about is themselves and how any given situation relates to them personally. Therefore in this case, chances are that Pat saw himself as a poor provider, poor with money, not a good partner, and disappointed in himself that he couldn’t afford to buy Brian the jacket. Overwhelmed by the prior internal thoughts and sensations, he looked for the cause of his pain and rather than own this pain chose to project it onto Brian. Why, because he believes Brian’s actions made him feel this way.

Brian and Pat’s financial situation and subsequent stress and frustration are all influences on Pat’s belief about what it means to be a good partner. Can people and circumstances influence our beliefs? Yes! But remember beliefs are learned from others and carry the experiences of others. A belief is not a guaranteed truth. A belief is not set in stone and a belief can be changed. Therefore we as human beings have control over what we believe and can adjust those beliefs at any given time, if we so choose.

Outside stimuli like people, places and things can influence our beliefs, but only we can give meaning to those influences. Therefore no one can make us feel anything. Sure, others can have an influence on our beliefs, but only we can control our responses and actions pertaining to those beliefs.

Are you still unsure? Let’s change Pat’s beliefs about what it means to be a good partner.

Pat no longer believes he has to provide financial support for Brian to think positively of himself. (From Pat’s perspective being a good partner involves a list of other things, but assisting Brian financially isn’t one of them.)

OK, so now let’s look at the same situation, where they are still struggling financially, and Brian has purchased the jacket. Pat looks at the bill, he doesn’t become angry because he doesn’t question his value as a partner, but he still wants to know what happened since he and Brian had agreed to hold off on any major purchases until they were out of debt.

He calmly asks Brian about the bill, because he hasn’t attached any internal negative emotions. Brian explains he needed a new jacket and really felt he had been doing a great job being thrifty over the past six months and decided if he was going to buy a jacket he may as well buy a quality jacket so it would last. In addition, Brian didn’t dispute Pat’s concern that he had broken the agreement, he apologized for not discussing this with Pat and from there they discussed the need to remain thrifty until their debt was cleared.

By changing Pat’s belief, the emotional response also changed. If the purchase was truly the cause of Pat’s anger – Pat would have become angry regardless of his belief.

TRUTH – No One Can Make You Feel Unhappy
TRUTH – You Can Not Make Anyone Else Feel Unhappy.

That’s good news, right? Well it gets better because – you can make yourself feel happy by simply adjusting your beliefs away from those beliefs that are creating your unhappiness.

That said some people are addicted to the victim role and feel more comfortable living in an unhappy situation. When we observe these people there really isn’t much we can do to help them unless they themselves become willing to change their perspective of their beliefs and become completely honest with themselves.

But the underlying key to all of this is to claim your actions, beliefs and feelings as your own. Once you take ownership and responsibility you gain control. Keep it positive – ownership doesn’t mean to blame yourself, cast guilt upon yourself or pass judgement upon yourself – ownership gives you the opportunity to look for the appropriate answers you seek and the self growth you deem required. Again this varies in all of us.

Victor Frankl summed it up nicely with the following quote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

A woman in a supermarket is following a grandfather and his poorly behaved young grandson.  It’s obvious to her that he has his hands full with the child screaming for whatever takes his interest as they walk through the aisles.

Meanwhile, the grandfather is working his way around the store, saying in a controlled voice, “easy, William, we won’t be long, take it easy boy.”

Another outburst and she hears the man calmly say, “Its okay, William, just a couple more minutes and we’ll be out of here.  Hang in there, boy.”

At the checkout, the little boy is throwing items out of the cart, and the grandfather again states in a controlled voice, “William, William, relax buddy, no need to get upset. We’ll be home in five minutes; stay cool, William.”

As the woman goes outside she sees the grandfather loading his groceries and the boy into a car.  She approaches and says to the elderly gentleman, “it’s none of my business, but you were amazing in there. I don’t know how you did it. That whole time, you kept your composure and no matter how loud and disruptive your grandson got, you stated calm and kept saying things would be okay. William is very lucky to have you as his grandpa.”

“Thanks, lady,” said the grandfather, “but I’m William – his name is Steve.

Possibly the greatest gift we can give to our self is the understanding that we control our emotions and choose our emotional responses.

For nearly half a century I believed that it was the actions of others that upset me, that it was the behavior of others that was creating the majority of the problems in my life. For the most part I had given up control – I lived in a world filled with BLAME and I was victim to the will and needs of others.

Today for the most part (yes the most part but not always – sucks to be human) I choose to control my life and how I respond to the circumstances as they unfold around me, keeping in mind that when I blame others in any given situation I am giving up control and the opportunity to improve the situation and hopefully not make things worse.

“Some favorite expressions of small children:

It’s not my fault. . . They made me do it. . . I forgot.

Some favorite expressions of adults:

It’s not my job. . . No one told me. . . It couldn’t be helped.

True freedom begins and ends with personal accountability.”

Dan Zadra

The world has become an increasingly difficult place to live.  If we haven’t the skills to maintain control over our emotions our lives will spiral out of control, and we will be stuck in the rut of casting blame either inward or outward.

The evidence has been piling up throughout history, and now neuroscientists have proved it’s true: the brain’s wiring emphatically relies on emotion over intellect in decision-making.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-08-06-brain-study_x.htm

Most people believe that emotions are caused by events.  They are in fact caused by our interpretations of events, sometimes so fleeting and fast as to be beneath the level of consciousness.  Our pre-conscious, split-second thoughts give rise to automatic emotional reactions.  We then have a choice as to how we behave, what we say, and how we handle a situation.  The appropriateness of our actions and the effectiveness of our communications make up our emotional intelligence.  People who are highly developed emotionally become sensitive to pre-conscious thoughts, question their validity and appropriateness, and are able to directly influence their feelings, personal beliefs and behaviors.

The more aware we become of our emotions and associated reactions the better equipped we become at stemming and preventing situations that we may regret at some point later on in the future.

The good news is that we can learn to control our emotions. Like learning to play a guitar we must discipline our self to practice these skills, it does not come natural. We must program our mind to accept this new way of thinking, again it does not come natural and last we must overcome the barrage of information out there that says we have the right to release our emotions because it is healthy and it will make us feel better.  NOT ALWAYS!

“In navigating our lives, it is our fears and envies, our rages and depressions, our worries and anxieties that steer us day to day. Even the most academically brilliant among us are vulnerable to being undone by unruly emotions. The price we pay for emotional literacy is in failed marriages and troubled families, in stunted social and work lives, in deteriorating physical health and mental anguish.”
Daniel Goleman

Take a minute to think about it – have you ever felt good after losing control of your emotions. Have you ever been cut off in traffic and became angry? Did it make you feel good after releasing your instantaneous emotion of fear or anger? No matter how right you feel, the pain of losing control of self throws the whole body out of kilter. No one ever feels good after losing control of their emotions – it’s a fallacy.