Everything we do in life is motivated by how we think it will make us feel.
Your emotions are the driving force creating whatever results you get in life.
That’s why learning how to create emotions with awareness and intention is EVERYTHING.
It can transform wanting into having.
When you understand that you have the ability to generate any emotion you want, no matter what life circumstances you encounter, all the power to obtain the results you desire rests in your own hands. Where it rightly belongs.
And that’s the best news in the world!
You are the author of your life, although at times it may feel that other people or circumstances are controlling you.
If you think you are helpless against the facts out there in the world, you are not.
Viktor Frankl, an eminent Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and a Holocaust survivor, of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering and Türkheim, shares these powerful thoughts that help us recognize that we have the supreme power to govern our minds and our emotions. No matter what.
- “Everything can be taken 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.”
- “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Emotions are vibrations in your body you feel in response to thoughts you think.
Your thoughts stimulate a cascade of neurotransmitters and hormonal responses that course through your body to create emotions.
Consider this example of how you can create an emotion out of thin air.
Imagine that you believed you just won a five million dollar lottery.
You’re holding the winning ticket in your hand. Your hands start shaking. You feel weak in the knees, wobbly and grab the back of the kitchen table chair to steady yourself.
Imagine the excitement ricocheting through your brain as you made quick calculations of all the things you’d buy with your winnings. A beach house large enough for the entire family. A dream car. A remodeled kitchen. You’d extinguish all debt. Plan for a much more luxurious retirement. Help your children buy a house.
See yourself whooping it up, grinning ear to ear, cheering, wildly dancing your happy money dance, too nervous to even call your husband to tell him to good news. Can you see yourself exploding with joy as you celebrate your extraordinarily good fortune?
As you revel in this mental picture of you as a big league lottery winner, notice a smile coming to your lips in sync with the images you are envisioning.
Now imagine the moment when you you realize that you misread the number on the ticket.
You were off by one measly little number.
You weren’t a multi-million dollar lottery winner after all.
There would be no new house. No new car. No remodeled kitchen. The debt would still be there, of course, racking up more interest. Your current retirement savings would have to do.
How does that image make you feel? Deflated? Disappointed? Mad? Do you feel your eyebrows knitting together in consternation?
Look your thoughts controlled your emotions.
Since all thoughts are optional, you can always choose what thoughts you want to think to create the emotions you want to feel.
Emotional accountability is the secret to creating the life you want.
When you think of accountability, it may bring up some negative memories. As a child perhaps it meant a stern rebuke from parents or teachers for behavior they did not like, that they held you accountable for.
Perhaps it brings up memories of accepting the consequences of your behavior as a punishment or humiliation.
That’s not how I want you think about it at all.
Consider this, if you think about emotional accountability as a negative, as a heavy burden that singles you out, that demands that you must “always be the one” to fix things, to change things, to be the bigger person, to go first, to show the way, that’s counter to what how I’d like you to understand it.
Far from a burden, emotional accountability presents an opportunity.
I use emotional accountability as a tool to set myself free, to choose, to decide, to create. I glimpse my power and intentionally create results I want. Whether or not others join me, accept my version or want what I want.
I think of emotional accountability as my ticket off the roller coaster of other peoples emotions.
When you realize that you are entirely accountable for the emotions you experience, you gain freedom. You get to operate from the place of autonomy and authenticity.
Far from feeling negative associations, I feel relief that I am captain of my own ship.
Are you ready to start living with the empowerment of emotional accountability?
Use it as your tool for living an intentional life.
Take time to examine the relationship between your thoughts and your feelings.
See the connection. Revisit the lottery ticket example to relive how just the thought that you won or lost the lottery can shape your emotional reaction.
Want help? I’m right here for you.
