“It’s not what happens to you but how you respond to it”, that’s how the saying goes.
Easier said than done!
As humans, it is instinct to react with emotion, this is how we are designed to work but we do have control over how long that emotion lasts and how we then choose to respond using our human and logical elements of the brain.
If we have always reacted a certain way, then we need to learn new ways to react and new behaviours. This can take some time and it will take considerable effort.
It is important to not disconnect from our emotions, but we should be aware of them. Being aware of what the emotion is means that we can then look to change that emotion to an emotion we want.
We choose and control our emotion, we choose how we react and how long we react for.
We don’t have to allow something that happened in the morning to impact our entire day, we can choose to ‘switch’ our emotion to something positive. One incident in the morning does not have to result in a ‘bad day’
I am a firm believer in finding the positive. Every situation has a positive, even if the positive is that you have learned a lesson. When something happens, I will reason this through to find the positive and to put things into perspective. This is the tactic I use to help transfer from a negative to a positive.
Other methods may be to change the environment or distract myself, music is great for this! Put on a song with feel good lyrics and channel the inner ‘Whitney’ is a great way to change a mood.
People will have different ways of expressing their feelings, either as an internal conversation between their own ears or with the empathetic ear of a friend. This is important to ensure that we understand what the feeling is and the reason behind it and then allow us to move forwards.
There are several ways you can do this, you will probably have a couple that work for you. If what you are doing isn’t working, then try something different.
You own your emotions, how you think, how you feel, how you react. Situations, experiences and people do not dictate how you think, feel or react - You do.