I fell asleep at around 9pm last night. It was a night with a lot of dreams and tossing around. And this morning I woke up feeling a little groggy. Since I started writing this daily post, I’ve developed this habit of asking myself, “How do I feel today?” The answer was obvious at first: that I was not feeling my best. Then I asked, “How do I want to feel today?” “Gratitude” was what came to me. The blessings in my life began to pop up, one after another. Gradually, I felt myself filled with gratitude and happiness.
This was not the first time that I was able to change my mood by asking those questions. Is it indeed possible that we can “choose” how we feel and thereby alter our mood? From my personal experience, the answer is “yes.”
We all experience various emotional states such as anger, sadness, joy, and peace. Each state comes with a package of feelings, energetic vibrations, bodily sensations, and languages. We summon these emotional states whenever we feel them, either by unconscious reflexes – or by conscious choice.
In a natural sense, emotions come and go as quickly as a rainbow. You can readily observe this when watching children. But as grownups, emotions tend to linger longer and can color entire days, months or years. Those emotions we dwell on the most can become such a part of us that we often have difficulty changing them, even if they no longer serve us well.
However, our emotional habits can be broken and changed for the better. With time, nature and the elements can carve out something as magnificent as “The Grand Canyon,” so we should be able to reshape something as simple our emotional habits. With time, by exercising our conscious choice about how we feel, summoning our desired emotions, one at a time, we can strengthen our mental muscles to master our emotions. Again, with time…
Imagine you have a “Mood Box” in which all your moods reside. Sometimes “Anger” is eager to come out and play. But by a conscious choice, you decide to let “him” stay in and instead call out “Humor and Laugher.” Wouldn’t that be fun?!
Of course, we won’t succeed every time we try this, especially when the emotions are too strong and entrenched. But by playing with our “Mood Box” regularly and frequently, we are surely on our way to emotional mastery and a more harmonious way of life.
So decide what you want to feel today, feel it and heal it.
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