You are in control of your happiness
“What upsets people is not things themselves, but their judgements about these things”
Epictetus
This knowledgeable line from the ever quotable ancient philosopher encapsulates with perfect simplicity how we cause our own unhappiness.
Somebody cuts you up in traffic.
Your favourite team loses.
Your friend forgets to wish you a happy birthday.
How do you respond?
You don’t know how you will react. You cannot dictate your emotions. You are after all, only human.
How you feel and how you respond are two very different things.
One is, to a certain degree, out of your hands.
The other is very much a choice.
I am not for one second suggesting that you bottle up your emotions, stuff them down, or ignore them all together. That is an extremely unhealthy way to live, I know from experience.
I am suggesting that you can train yourself to acknowledge emotions, accept them and not act on impulse.
Noticing them as negative habits is the first and probably most difficult step. You have to be truly honest with yourself and look at yourself in an objective light.
“When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them”
Confucius
Have you ever looked upon a couple in an argument about something so insignificant and wondered, why?
Only to then argue with your significant other later that day about something equally as minute?
When we are an unflustered innocent bystander to an argument, we are able to act with a sense of clarity. If we are the one being questioned or challenged in some way, we lose our cool. Our ego is bruised.
We are letting our emotions take the wheel.
We let them revert us to nothing more than adrenaline fueled animals.
We lose rationality, intelligence. Traits we display throughout the rest of the day when everything is going ‘according to plan’.
What if we could pause time, leave our bodies and choose carefully how we respond in these moments? Nine times out of ten we would choose a different outcome to our default setting.
By bringing more attention to our emotional tendencies, we can become aware of how we respond in these difficult moments and begin to put an end to behaviours that we wish we didn’t portray in the first place.
“Not to revenge unreasonable conduct, the good man makes it his study”
Confucius
How you act, how you respond, what you say, what you do. These are all in your control.
We will do or say things from time to time that we come to regret. Nobody is perfect. But that is no reason to not try to improve ourselves.
Life is not black and white. There are no absolutes. But if we all improved our ability to not act on impulse by just 1%, the world would be a more harmonious place.
“I’ve always been amazed that people can derive so much satisfaction out of beating others when they have never taken the ultimate test of battling themselves”
Gary Player
It won’t be easy, as Gary said, it will be a battle. The rewards of which will not only improve your own life but the lives of those around you.
I like to leave you with a question, so…
Can you let go of what is not in your control?
