Our feelings and emotions can completely run our lives. They can decide what kind of life that we have if we live by them. They can cause us to do things that we will greatly regret. They can steal our joy and our peace from us. They can cause us to cause harm to ourselves or others. We can let them keep us stuck in the past.  They can cause us to make poor choices and decisions. Like I said, they can completely run our lives.

When we are unaware of how our feelings and emotions contribute to our lives and that we can control them, they dictate everything about us and our lives. They tell us when we do things and when we don’t do things (that we need to do). They tell us when we can have a good day or that we are going to have a bad day. They make us say hurtful things that we can not take back. They can make us do something that we will deeply regret and carry guilt over.  Our feelings and emotions are unreliable, ever changing, here one minute and gone the next, yet leave a lasting imprint on us and our lives. But they do not have to.

We can learn to control our feelings and emotions instead of them controlling us. We can learn to be happy when we feel sad. We can learn to do what we need to do while we don’t feel like doing it. We can learn to stay calm instead of being upset. We can choose to do and be different than what we feel. Our feelings will come but we can learn to not give into to them.

I might really feel like staying in bed but I choose to get up. I might feel like cussing someone out but I choose to be kind. I may feel really down and out but I choose to be thankful for something and I do something kind for someone to lift my spirits up. I might feel like giving up on something that I have been trying to do but I choose to keep pressing forward with it. I may feel like reacting to a situation out of anger but I choose to wait until the anger subsides before I react so that I do not make wrong actions.

I use to let my feeling control me and determine how my day was and it was quite miserable. If I felt sad and depressed then that is how I was all day long. If I did not feel like going to excerise I would not go and then I would feel bad for not going. If I got mad about something I would be mean to anyone that got in my path and then I would have guilt and regret for treating them bad. If I knew that something would make me feel good about myself but I did not feel like doing it I wouldn’t do it, even though I knew I would feel better if I did. It was a mess but I did not know that I could control what I did instead of my feelings controlling me. I would often say that I couldn’t help how I felt and that it was not my fault that I did whatever I would do because of how I felt. But the truth is that I may not be able to help how I feel but I can help how I choose to act no matter how I may feel.

Our feelings will come and go but our actions have a lasting impression. We can decide that we are not going to live by our feelings any longer and that we are going to no longer allow them to control us. Even though we may feel a certain way does not mean that we have to act in the manner that we feel. Tell your feelings that they do not run you and you are no longer going to let them have their way. Choose to do what you know is best to do instead of what your feelings want you to do. Your life belongs to you, not your feelings.