"We can't always choose how we feel. We can, however, choose what we do about it, which ironically can change how we feel!"

– Bill Crawford

What I like about this quote is that it has the potential to both explain why we might find ourselves feeling emotions about ourselves and/or the world that are unhelpful and unwanted, while at the same time giving us information on how to deal with these feelings more purposefully. The emotions to which I refer are the problematic ones that spring into our consciousness seemingly without an invitation. They could be feelings of guilt, resentment, fear, worry, anger, or any other emotion that you would otherwise choose not to have. Notice that I am not saying that one should never feel such emotions, but that when we do feel them, we should have an idea of how to deal with them more purposefully.

You see, I have a belief that the reason emotions such as these become so problematic is not due to the fact that they exist (or that we find ourselves experiencing them), but what we do next. For example, if we match their energy and become frightened by our fears, resentful of resentment, worried about worry, or depressed by our thoughts of depression, then we will have begun a journey down a path that will end only when the pain of the process becomes so great that we are forced to turn around. This, of course, will happen eventually (because living as a frightened, worried, angry, and/or depressed person is indeed a very painful way to live), but wouldn't it be nice if we could make choices that allowed us to take a different path to begin with? I believe that this is possible, and I further believe that this week's quote can help.

For example, the quote begins with "We can't always choose how we feel, we can however decide what we do about it." This means that if we are willing to accept that there will be times when we are feeling emotions that are unwanted and unhelpful, then we can move from the reactive position of trying to change the emotion to a more proactive position of "Okay, I feel______. What do I want to do about it?" When we ask ourselves this question, we are in a much more powerful position to move in a much more purposeful direction.

We might recognize that these emotions are "good information" because they are letting us know that we have made some decisions that are no longer working for us, and thus we can begin to make different choices. Or we might determine that these emotions are just old habitual reactions to life that we learned somewhere between childhood and adulthood, and have no value or validity with respect to who we are today and who we want to be tomorrow. Either way, rather than spending our time and energy trying to change the emotion (which again, is really becoming worried about worrying) we can instead begin to make choices about what we do that are more congruent with how we want to feel, and the statement we want to make about who we are and who we are becoming.

The wonder of this second option (making a purposeful choice about what we do next) is that it can actually change how we feel! This could be as simple as feeling fatigued or overwhelmed, and allowing ourselves to rest or switch activities for a while (versus beating ourselves up for feeling tired, or blaming those around us for "making us" feel this way). Another example might be responding to feelings of depression by deciding to take our pet, friend, or self for a walk. Chances are that In both instances, our experience of life would be effected by the choices we made which would . . . that's right, change how we feel!

Bottom line? If you would like to have more influence over your experience of life, I'm going to suggest that you focus less on the unwanted emotions that seem to come from nowhere and more on the question "what do I want to do about it?" If indeed, what we focus on expands, and our emotions are actually just chemical reactions in our brain and body, then where we place our focus and what we do next can have a tremendous impact on our experience of life. Or put another way, how we feel is eventually a function of the decisions we make about who we are and what we do. If we don't like how we are feeling, we can simply choose again.

Take care and God bless, Dr. Bill