AAMT: Lesson 1 cont'd - You and Your Emotions

It is common for individuals to try to escape responsibility for their own emotions by tricking themselves into believing that emotions are cause by external forces, events, or situations. How many times have you said something like this: "that makes me so mad," or "you irritate me," or "it is so depressing." Chances are great that every reader has both said and sincerely believed each one of these statements. Their implication is evident: I didn't do this to myself; "that," "you," "it," etc, are responsible.

The truth is that each of us controls his or her own feelings or emotions by the kind of thinking he or she does. It is true that past experiences influence thinking; nevertheless, it is the current thinking that causes emotions. This is not a new insight, just a fact that we commonly overlook or do not understand. The Greek philosopher Epictetus stated this principle very clearly when he said, "It's not facts and events that upset man, but the view he takes of them." Shakespeare similarly stated, "It is our opinion of things that disturbs us, not things themselves."

In his book, As a Man Thinketh, James Allen describes the relationship between thinking and feeling. In his introduction we read the following:

"Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes.
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: -
He thinks in secret and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass."

As a Man Thinketh is full of wonderfully accurate insights. Here are a couple more:

"Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armoury of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all grades of character, and man is their maker and their master.

"All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. ...A man's weakness and strength, purity, and impurity, are his own, and not another man's; they are brought about by himself, and not by another; and they can only be altered by himself, never by another... His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within. As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains."

If it were true that facts or outside events are responsible for our emotions, everyone would have exactly the same emotion whenever a given event occurred. For example, at the conclusion of a national presidential election everyone would be either happy and excited, or upset and depressed, depending on what the particular election result might be expected to produce. The fact is, however, that individual emotions in such situations will range all the way from wild, joyous excitement, through passive, calm indifference, to resentful anger. It would be strange indeed if Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all had the same emotional reaction to the outcome of an election. Stated another way, there is no direct cause and effect relationship between an election result and the emotions of individual voters.

A cause-and-effect relationship exists when a person, thing, occasion, condition, situation, event, etc., gives rise to a result or an action. For example, if you were to heat a branding iron until it is red-hot and then go around pressing that red-hot iron against the hand of everyone you encountered, it would be reasonable to expect that everyone you touched would be burned. it would also be accurate to say that touching skin with the red-hot iron had caused the burn. You would be very astonished if only every other person or every third person got burned when touched. But, since everyone would be burned we can say that a cause-and-effect relationship exists.

Not long ago I stood in the parking lot near my office. A very heavy snowstorm was in progress. It was most interesting to sample the reactions (emotional responses) of university students as they left a building to go to their cars. It was fairly obvious which ones were skiers because of their excitement and their comments about all the new powder snow that was falling in the mountains. other students complained bitterly about having to drive on the snow-covered roads. Even some who were excited about the new snow in the mountains complained about the snow in the parking lot and on the roads.

It would be impossible to account for the broad range of emotions expressed by the students if one believed that the snow caused them all. If a cause-and-effect relationship exists between falling snow and the emotions people experience in relation to that phenomenon, then it would be reasonable to expect everyone to experience the same emotion when it snows, just like it would be reasonable to expect everyone to be burned when touched by a hot iron. As you can plainly see, there is not a cause-and-effect relationship between emotions and external facts, events, or situations.

It is now a well-established fact that each of us causes our own emotions and emotional changes. We also control the degree or intensity of those emotions. this is all accomplished by the kind of thinking we do. It only seems like emotions are caused or controlled by facts,situations, or events. Some call this attitude. Attitudes, no doubt, are composed of evaluative thinking that has been processed and stored away in the brain.

Emotions are so much a part of our personalities that we use emotional labels to describe each other. Statements such as "he has a short fuse" or "he is hot-headed" mean that he is easily or frequently angered. "She is so bubbly and full of life" means she generally acts happy. "He is timid," "shy" or backward: means that he is a fearful or anxious person. "She seems down and listless" means that she is often or generally depressed, depressive, or both.

We learn to create emotions at a very early age. If we, as children, sincerely, even if unconsciously, believed that the use of a particular emotions was in some way helpful or beneficial, we were likely to repeat that emotion when a similar situation arose. There is a tenet of social learning theory which states that behaviors that are rewarded tend to be repeated. A classic example is the chronic worrier, who acts as though he believes that if he worries long enough and hard enough, he can somehow prevent the dreaded or undesirable event. However, if he does not prevent it, he tells himself. "See, I just knew it was going to happen!" He thinks he predicted it. Either way, he believes himself to be right. Therefore, his worrying behavior is rewarded and will be repeated. his worrying likely does little else except make him, and perhaps others around him, miserable while he waits for the occurrence or non-occurrence of the dreaded event. No matter which way the event turns out, the individual is labeled a "worrier."

Emotional habits, like all other habits, are nothing more than learned ways of responding and behaving. They take on the "automatic" nature characteristic of habits because they are repeated so many times that we don't have to make a conscious deliberate effort to create the emotions.

If one has negative, undesirable emotions, it is because he or she has practiced thinking the thoughts which produce them. The best way to feel better (without drugs) is to learn to think better. It is true that habits are learned. It is equally true that anything which is learned can be unlearned and replaced with new and more rational, more desirable learning. In short, you can learn to create more desirable emotions. You need not have any negative emotion that you do not want or have it to any greater degree or intensity than is truly in your best interest.

As you read more from the book As a Man Thinketh, you will begin to more fully understand and appreciate the relationship between thinking and emotion. You will gain a sense of confidence that you truly can be (and indeed are) in control of your emotions at all times because you will realize you have always been in control.