What if you could just DECIDE to FEEL BETTER?
Psst: You can. You are the one who determines how you feel, not outside events and circumstances.
You CHOOSE how you FEEL
Did you know that you can control your feelings by:
Simply deciding to give yourself permission to feel better?
Changing the story you tell yourself about any situation?
You may think that your feelings are dependent on outside circumstances. When something happens, you feel obliged to feel a certain way. It’s automatic. You can’t help yourself.
You suffer endlessly, drink yourself stupid, swallow pills by the bucketload, and now I have the audacity to claim you had a choice in the matter?
How dare you!?
I dare, because I care. I dare, because I want you to be free from the tyranny of your mind and your emotions. I dare because you deserve to feel good.
I dare, because I’ve been there
I did it when I was unemployed and broke.
I did it when I was single and lonely.
I did it when I was suffering from a supposedly incurable disease.
I did it when I lost everything I worked so hard to achieve.
I did it when I said goodbye to my loved ones.
I do it every day by deliberately focusing on the good.
So, why are you choosing to feel bad?
Do you like feeling like shit?
- Why? Wouldn’t you rather feel good if you had a choice?What do you get from feeling bad?
- Is that some secret fetish of yours, a part of your identity, unwritten societal rules, or are you just horrible at controlling your mind?Do you believe you must feel and think negatively about some situations?
- Why? Who makes these rules? Whose job is it to make you feel horrible?
Care for a free superpower?
Once you learn that you can reframe situations in your mind, which leads to an entirely different emotional experience, you become something of a Superman or Superwoman. Outside events, situations, and people can no longer force you to feel bad.
Why in seven hells would you persist in remaining emotionally at the mercy of other people and random occurrences in your life?
How reliable have they been in making you happy?
Listen, life happens, shit happens, people disappoint us, we make mistakes... Life is full of ups and downs, which are unavoidable, but our reaction to what happens is up to us.
The world is a terrible, scary place - why aren’t you afraid?!
You don’t have a job - why don’t you feel poor and desperate?
You are single - why aren’t you mad with loneliness?
Why isn’t your illness making you feel depressed?”
(an approximation of countless past conversations)
Extrapolate the example below to everything
Situation A is causing you to worry about the future. It could be war, political changes, health scares, news, work, relationship, or money - it doesn’t matter.
Why do you feel these emotions: fear, worry, anxiety, stress, dread?
Is it the situation itself? You think it’s, but it isn’t. It’s just the trigger for your mind to go on a future-predicting bender.
The situation is what it is.
Our reaction and interpretation of the situation - a story you’re telling yourself by predicting the future, giving things meaning, assuming you see inside people’s minds, cursing or regretting some past event, etc, are what enflames our emotions.
It’s not the situation - it’s our thoughts about the situation that cause emotional upheaval.
You are making up stories and giving things meaning
“I’m going to lose my job. I won’t be able to pay my bills and will get evicted.
The war is going to spill over the borders, and we’re all going to die.
The new president is going to destroy democracy.
The doctor said I will never heal, it’s over for me.
The person I love hates me, and I will never find love again.
He/she rejected me because I’m unworthy of love.”
These are all stories, and most of them are predicting a dark future. While that future is possible, it is not certain. Your belief in its probability is an illusion - an opinion.
What you are emotionally reacting to is the fear of some version of that future coming true. You are mentally living in a possible future where things are horrible. But it isn’t true. It has not yet come to pass and probably never will.
It’s just you abusing your imagination and writing a script for a horror movie instead of a comedy with a happy ending.
It’s your mind—not objective reality —that is causing your emotional disturbance.
Choice nr 1: Tell a different story
You’re the screenwriter. You’re the one giving things meaning. Change the story, and you will automatically, I promise you, feel entirely differently.
“We so screwed because of this situation,” can become “yeah, it looks bad, but we’ll be fine in the end.”
“They screwed me up on purpose and now it’s over for me,” may be rewritten as “Maybe this is for the best. I don’t know why they did it, but this could be the best thing for me in the end. They probably did me a favor.”
Make a distinction:
What is the objective situation, and
What is the story you’re making up about the situation?
What will happen, will happen anyway, whether you scare yourself out of your mind, or give precisely zero fucks!
Do what you can about the situation, but don’t needlesly torture yourself.
Ask yourself:
What good is it to worry, fear, and feel like crap about something that hasn’t happened yet?
Is that helping make things better? (no)
Does it make anything less likely to come to pass? (no)
The ultimate fear - the fear of death
Sometimes a narrative change is all it takes to feel better, even about the most horrifying things, such as death.
If you see death as the end, or worse yet, some hellish afterlife, you will fear it.
If, however, you choose to decide that there is a good possibility that some part of you may live on past death, perhaps embarking on a new adventure, waking up from the simulation, seeing your loved ones again, or simply enjoying a peaceful non-existence, no different than sleep, you will make peace with death.
Death will come for us all, but fearing it makes zero difference to when, where, and how. Since nobody really knows what will happen, why not choose to believe a more pleasant version of the story?
Yes, you can just do that! Nobody knows anything, anyway. It’s all just a made-up story you either believe or don’t. Choose one that serves you.
The past is also at the mercy of your storytelling
You cannot change the past, but you don’t have to live there!
“He was evil for doing this” can be turned to “he was a damaged human being, full of internal torment, who didn’t know any better, and it has nothing to do with me.” I know it feels like you’re letting someone off the hook, but you’re not. This is about you, not them. Forgive and let go.
Stuck in a traffic jam on the highway, you may be fuming with how incompetent drivers are, but what if something terrible happened, and people are now fighting for their lives? That changes how you feel about the situation, right? Same event - different perspective or story.
It’s just emotions, silly
By reframing a situation to release the emotional attachment to it, you’re freeing yourself from the emotional charge of the situation, and nothing more.
You’ve permitted yourself to stop emotionally suffering over and over again because something happened in the past, or might happen in the future.
You’re not denying the situation or absolving anyone of wrongdoing by choosing to feel better.
You’re choosing to feel emotionally detached from the situation, which allows you to better deal with it.
Ask yourself:
How am I benefiting by feeling this intense resentment, sadness, emotional pain, hate...? (you are tormenting yourself and for what?)
Will it change the past and turn back time? (no)
Does it cause actual harm to anyone but me? (no)
Know this: stress, fear, anxiety, guilt, and resentment are killers!
Feeling them on a permanent basis is a foolproof recipe for disaster, cancers, autoimmune diseases, and any other health issues you may experience. Disturbance within (your mind) will result in disturbance without (your body and life).
Thoughts and emotions aren’t innocent! Choose them carefully, for your very life depends on it.
Choice nr 2: Give yourself permission to feel a certain way
Let me ask you this - what would you choose if you had a choice to either:
A - feel like a desperate, helpless victim, and relive the past trauma over and over again, suffering into eternity, or
B - feel calm, relaxed, happy, content, safe, good, loved, accepted, despite something horrible happening to you in the past.
No one sane would choose to torture themselves, and yet that is what you and I both do all the time! All those perpetrators and events that haunt us are long gone. We’re the ones keeping the flame of their torment alive—we, and we alone.
We are choosing to mentally and emotionally suffer
No one is forcing us. There is no benefit to it. We are not obligated to. It’s a choice we make over and over again, without realizing it.
Consider this
Would you demand that your loved ones (child, sibling, partner) feel terrible and relive the horrors of their past, just because something happened to them, or would you want them to get over it as fast as possible, move on, and find happiness again?
Why won’t you give the same allowances to yourself?
Decide that you have suffered enough. Here, I will do it for you.
I give you full permission to feel as you want to feel (good, relaxed, loved, safe, strong, enough, at peace, fearless...) just as you are, right here, right now, despite what happened, what you did or didn’t do, what may or may not happen in the future.
It’s just a feeling, an emotion you are choosing to feel or not to feel
Remember - you are allowed to feel however you want to feel, no matter the outside situations and opinions of others. You have that privilege and power, and no one can take it away from you. Use it!
You’re not denying reality, a real threat, past trauma, or health issues
Removing emotional charge from a situation changes nothing about what and how you do something. But, you are never under any obligation to feel emotions you don’t want to feel.
The threat may be real, but feeling fear is pointless.
Pain is sometimes obligatory in life, but suffering is optional.
Learning from the past is paramount, but reliving trauma and beating yourself up is senseless torture.
You are not running from emotions
I’m in no way advocating for running away from your emotions. Instead, I would encourage you to give yourself permission to feel all the feelings, even the most difficult ones, for a limited amount of time.
Feel them fully. Don’t judge them. Allow them to play out, express what they need to express, and then decide to let them go. The only way out is often through.
Choose to give yourself permission to feel a certain way - now
Say the following to yourself, over and over again, and mean it:
I choose to give myself permission to feel _________ (relaxed, calm, at peace, loved, good enough, strong, fearless, happy...), right here, right now, just as I am. They’re just feelings. Emotions. Nothing more.
I choose to allow myself to let go of feeling ___________ (sadness, jealousy, resentment, anger, sadness, fear, anxiety, happy…), right here, right now, just as I am. They’re just feelings. Emotions. Nothing more.
If you encounter internal resistance, dissolve it by asking yourself:
How is my feeling __________ (bad) helping the situation?
How has what I’ve been doing thus far worked for me?
Who says I should suffer internally if I don’t have to?
Why shouldn’t I feel ______ (relaxed, calm, at peace, loved, good enough, strong, fearless, happy...)?
What do I have to lose if I choose to feel better?
Indeed, what?