One day you might be super happy and ready to rule the world and the next you find yourself wanting to hide.  Life gives us a variety of feelings and emotions and we have to learn to not let our lives be ruled by these emotions.

Do not allow your circumstances to dictate who you are and how you feel.  If you are in a painful situation, do not feel hopeless or lost.  Figure out a way that you can control your emotions and learn to allow a lesson to be a lesson, rather it is painful or good.

Stop Trying to Change

You cannot change who someone is and having strong emotions will not make it any easier.  You have to learn that people are who they are, including yourself.

Give up on the idea that you can change people and their thoughts and behaviors.  If you don’t like being around someone because of how they act, change what you do by moving away from them or taking them out of your life.  Remove yourself from unhealthy relationships.

Let people live freely and stop trying to make people responsible for how your emotions control you.  Observe the behavior of people around you and figure out what motivates them on how they act.

If they borrow something and don’t give it back, stop loaning them things.  Don’t complain about it or be angry, just stop doing it.  If they are always negative, stop talking to them.

People will always show who they are by their behavior and so you need to pay attention to what they do more than even what they say or talk about.  Adjust who you are and how you behave on their behavior, even if that means leaving, this will help you to be free.

Choose Your Emotions

Even though it is hard to believe, no one can make you feel anything.  You are the one that is responsible for the feelings that you have and these are choices that you make.

If someone puts you down, it doesn’t mean that you have to take it as a personal knocked down and get upset.  Just because bills are due doesn’t mean you have to be upset or fearful.  Also, just because you get sick, it doesn’t mean that you have to be hateful and mean.

It is easy to blame our emotions on the things that happen in our lives and blame other people, but it is up to you alone who chooses how you are going to respond.

You choose what emotions you are going to have.  They are not connected to what issues in life that you are experiencing nor are they connected to the people around you.  Just like choosing where you are going to go and what you are going to eat, you choose how you will use your emotions.

Next time you feel that you are going to be ruled by your emotions, tell your emotions that they don’t rule you and you are going to choose how you feel.  Ask yourself if you are happy that you can make these choices for yourself and then choose what emotion you want to have.

This can take effort but changing your emotions can happen.  All things in life take a little bit of effort.

Notice Emotions Don’t Be Them

When something makes you feel bad or sad, notice the situation and be aware of why you are having these feelings.  Don’t be ruled by your emotions and one way to stop this is to make sure you are aware of your feelings.  If you are feeling anger, say why you are mad, if you are upset, say why you are sad.  Make sure you notice these emotions.

When you first start doing this, you will notice a big difference.  You will become freer and notice that you have feelings and that they are there but you will not let them rule you.  You can figure out what situations are causing you to be feeling different things and then you can practice noticing your emotions instead of being the emotions.  It doesn’t mean that you won’t feel these feelings, it just means when something happens that causes a shift in your emotions that you will be able to handle it better.

If you don’t want your emotions to rule you, you don’t have to let them.  Have more control and allow yourself to have feelings but be in charge of them.