One way to manage your emotions is to control and direct the focus of your mind.

What you experience and the way you feel is dependent on what you focus your attention on at any given moment.

At any moment you are deleting most of what is going on around you. For example… To feel depressed, you have to delete (AKA not focus on) everything that’s great in your life. Likewise, you have to delete the things you could feel bad about in order to feel good. The process of deleting aspects of your experience is crucial for your mind to maintain emotional balance, but it can also wreak havoc on your daily life if not properly directed. 

To manage your emotional states, you must control your focus. You immediately change how you feel when you change either…

1. What you’re picturing and/or hearing in your mind, or

2. How you’re picturing and/or hearing it.

To make changes in these two areas, ask yourself questions. For example…

• What is great in my life?

• Who loves me?

• What can I do right now that will make a difference, no matter how small, in someone’s life?

You can also alter how you remember experiences…

• “I keep thinking about the argument I had with my brother last week and it makes me angry.”

  • Make every human involved in your memory a different cartoon character with cartoon voices. It sounds silly, but it takes the power out of the memory.

• “I should have said something different at the meeting.”

  • Imagine everyone congratulating you for what you did say at the meeting.

• “I can’t believe that guy cut me off on the highway!”

  • Take that image in your mind and make it black and white, push it far, far away into the distance, and turn down the sounds.

It’s your mind, so learn how to use it to your advantage!

Learning the tools to run your own mind will empower you and give you a sense of control.