Have you ever wondered what causes you to to feel the way you do?
There are lots of ideas on this, but I’m going to offer you one here based not just on my own experience but what I’ve found empowers people the most.
Last week’s blog was how to separate situations from thoughts. The ability to do this lays an important foundation in understanding our emotions. If you didn’t read last week’s email or don’t remember, do a quick review to get the most from what I’m sharing today.
Most of us believe our emotions are caused by the situations in our lives…
I’m upset because I lost my job.
I’m scared because I haven’t heard from my mom in days.
I’m worried because my son is failing most of his classes.
I’m angry because my husband spends most of his time at work and doesn’t make time for his family.
I’m resentful because my sister doesn’t have to worry about money.
I’m hurt that my friend didn’t have me on the invitation list.
This is what we’ve been taught and mostly it seems irrefutably Someone does or doesn’t do something; something happens or doesn’t happen and then we have a feeling about it. It makes sense that we would believe it’s the “thing” causing our feeling.
But what if we’re wrong?
Consider this: if the situations are actually what actually causes how we feel, then everyone would have the same feeling when facing the same circumstance. Take the first example above about losing your job. Someone might feel relieved if they lost their job; someone else might feel angry or scared or ashamed. How can this be? If the job loss is what causes how you feel, then how can people have completely different feelings in the same circumstance?
What if it’s not the situation itself that causes our feelings, but instead it’s what we make them mean; in other words, our thoughts?
To review, situations are things that happen in the world or even in our own bodies over which we don’t have control. These would also include medical diagnoses, the way other people act, the weather, our pasts, etc.
Continuing with the example above, this is how most of us usually experience things:
Situation: Employer terminated 4 positions in the company and mine was one of them.
Emotion: Angry
But if the situation isn’t the cause of the anger, then there’s a missing piece. It’s easily overlooked because our minds move very fast and like using shortcuts, but this particular shortcut can leave us feeling disempowered and at the mercy of situations we can’t control.
The missing piece is our thought about the situation.
Often, we aren’t aware of the thought causing our feelings; we’re only aware of the feeling. But all our power, choice and responsibility (ability to respond) comes from the thought. Without knowing the thoughts causing our emotions, we can get locked in a helpless spiral and wear ourselves out by putting all our effort into trying to control things we have no power over.
Let’s see how adding the missing piece fills in the picture:
Situation: Employer terminated 4 positions in the company and mine was one of them.
Thought: They shouldn’t have treated me like that after all the years I worked for them.
Emotion: Angry
Last week I gave you an exercise to practice separating situations from your thoughts. In this week’s exercise, start with a Thought Jot just like last week; write down 10-15 things your mind is telling you. For the second step this week, review your list and for each thought, try to identify the emotion it generates for you.
It’s not uncommon to struggle to find the names of your emotions. We often use only a few common feelings words in our normal speaking life. If you have trouble coming up with the right emotion, check out www.wordhippo.com to see if you can find one that fits.
Try this out for the next week by doing the practice every day. I’d be interested in what you notice, so email me with any feedback.
