Years and years ago, my good friend T said to me ‘YOU are responsible for how you feel. You CAN choose how you feel. Nobody MAKES you feel mad. You CHOOSE to feel mad, so YOU can CHANGE it.’

‘What?’ I blurted out, ‘HE ignores me; HE walks away when I talk to him; HE “blah, blah, blah…” and I am responsible for how I feel?’ There was more …  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I did not actually say this last bit. Some things you keep in your head, you think it but you don’t say it, right?

‘Yes,’ T said, ‘you can choose to feel angry, or you can choose to feel calm, or be patient or happy or anything you want to feel’.

This was news to me. Nobody had ever told me I was responsible for how I feel. Or if they did, it had made no impact.

Hmmm… So I did what I usually do when I come across a puzzling idea – put it up for contemplation – which in my case means I am now looking for evidence to prove or disprove the concept . Slowly, slowly I began to notice that yes, I CAN choose how I feel. I CAN choose NOT to get mad when my buttons are pressed. I can choose to stay calm and breathe when I hear explosive or devastating news. And from that place I can make better decisions, support those involved better and help resolve the situation instead of pouring oil on fire, making it worse.

It took a good ten years for the notion that I can choose how I want to feel to travel the short distance from my head, where it’s an intellectual concept, to my heart, where I know it unequivocally. And with it, another penny dropped from the head to the heart.   Ahhh… so THAT’s what the quote ‘It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters’ actually means.

The world is changing fast. Old structures of economy, schooling, working, government and ways of being no longer serve us, our community, the country, the universe. We don’t have ten years to learn this anymore. We have to get this NOW.

Tony Robbins says ‘Change your focus, change your language, change your physiology.’

Change your focus:  Think of something different. For instance, instead of thinking how bad your situation is, think of a time you had the most fun.

Change your language: If something ‘is making you mad’, choose to use words that are less inflammatory, for example, choose ‘peeved’ instead of ‘furious’ if you are angry. And if something pleases you, choose ‘magnificent’ instead of ‘amazing’.

Change your physiology: Change your posture. Smile, pull your shoulders back, walk tall. Tony says you are not depressed, you ‘do’ depression. Your voice is low, your shoulders droop, the corners of your mouth are turned down.

Change!  Stand up straight, pull your shoulders back, think of the last time you had a belly laugh and a smile will automatically creep onto your face.

Choose differently. Look for ways to see things differently. Ask to be shown to see things differently. Be open to the possibility that there is a different way to see the ‘thing that’s making you mad’.

Test it out. You don’t have to believe a word of it – see if it works, then decide if it’s for you.

Let me know how it works for you.