DECISIONS are controlled by emotions & EMOTIONS are controlled by decisions
People too often assign blame as a way of making excuses. We blame others and we blame ourselves. We talk about how we can not do something because we are not lucky enough, talented enough or because life just simply is not fair. Society is broken, there is too much injustice, we are incompetent or the world is incompetent. The truth is, you can not do anything before first deciding so, even think. When you think that you can not, you are doing it because you have decided to think like that.
CC0 licence, Pixabay, author: geralt , adapted by me
There are two beautiful sayings that I have often used when talking to people about anxiety, changing their life or when they had problems with motivation, procrastination or plain decision making. They are very simple and hide great wisdom behind just a few words. Read them and see how they resonate with you. After you finish with this entire text, you will read them again and see if your attitude and opinion of them has changed. Here there are:
- She turned her can'ts into cans and her dreams into plans.
- He believed he could so he did.
Have you noticed how there are people who will be negative or find something negative in every situation? No matter how good things are, they will not appreciate it and feel almost no joy not ever. They will always find something to fuss about. On the other hand, there are those who will find something positive in everything and no matter what happens, they will push forward with a smile on their face. This is why I always encourage you to keep your smile on at the end of my every post. I want you to lean more to those positive ones than the people who are stuck in their negativity and have a habit of complaining.
WHEN YOU CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS,
THE THINGS YOU LOOK AT CHANGE.
CC0 licence, Pixabay, author: geralt
A good way to get a glimpse of how people are experiencing life is the "glass question" from the image above. Some will say that it is half full and some that it is half empty. Let me tell you a little secret. THE GLASS IS FULL. Air is not empty. When we take a scientific approach, everything is made of electrons. What we call air is a gas state and it is filled with all sorts of molecules. If it were not, we would not be able to breathe. Just because you can not see something does not mean it is not there. What can be presented as the absence of the liquid molecules in the glass is also the existence of molecules of different elements.
THE GLASS IS ALWAYS FULL.
Emotion is the force of life. It is an internal push that gets us going. Everything we do we do because of it. Our goal is to be happy and when it comes to decision making, we always do those things that we expect would make us happy or bring us closer to that feeling. On our way to achieving our goals, we sometimes get lost because we fail to realize that emotion is not about the destination. It is about the journey itself. If we live in a constant expectancy of happiness, it will never come. We will never be happy WHEN something changes if we are not capable of being happy now. Our emotions determine our decisions.
"Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions."
Elizabeth Gilbert
We feel emotion when we think. Our thoughts determine how we feel and we can have control over our feelings. By changing the way you think, you can change the way you feel.
Decisions make invisible visible. You take a thought, a simple idea, and materialize it. Every bench you ever sat down on was once somebody's idea. Planes, tools and the computer you are reading this on were once somebody's thoughts. The world we live in would be a completely different place if people discarded the idea of electricity. What we now take for granted whenever we turn the light on, cook, clean, charge our phones and drive our cars was once just a thought in someone's mind. It was an idea that got materialized because someone decided so.
Sometimes, the smallest decision we make,
changes our life completly.
CC0 licence, Pixabay, author: geralt
Every decision we have ever made is important and each and every one had its consequences. Think about your life for a moment. How different would it be if you made a different decision at some moment in the past? Maybe you took a job position that allowed you to meet the love of your life there. Perhaps you moved and found better people in a new place or you just took a left turn instead of the right one and found your best friend that day. Imagine how your life would have looked like if you went to a different school or picked a different hobby. Imagine how your yesterday would have looked like if you woke up and decided that it would be amazing.
You can make a decision to be grateful,
and be grateful.
You can not be grateful and depressed at the same time, it is simply impossible. Gratefulness is the highest frequency your being can vibrate on and by being grateful you attract into your life more things to be grateful for. When you decide to think about things you are grateful for, guess what? You feel grateful for them. Your thoughts determine how you feel. Your decision to focus on something positive changes the hormone levels in your body and makes other decisions easier. When you start your day with gratitude for everything positive you have (and you do have things to be grateful for, you always do) then you can decide and stick to your decision to have a great day.
"It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do."
Elbert Hubbard
You can decide to have a great day today. You can decide that you will be open-minded, happy and curious about people, things, and life in general. You can decide to focus all your intention on positive things and look for them in your surroundings. Count them. Make it your today's mission to count every nice and positive thing that you encounter, from people to things, from images, animals, and plants to weather, news, and architecture. Count the things that make you smile. When you lie in your bed this evening, feel grateful for that number.
Do you remember the two sayings
from the beginning of this post?
How do you feel about them?
- She turned her can'ts into cans and her dreams into plans.
- He believed he could so he did.
Until next time,
KEEP YOUR SMILE ON!
Image sources AND LICENCES in order of appearance:
- all images used in this post are free for commercial use, they are royalty free with the links to original images provided under them
- line divider that I use is from FREE CLIPART LIBRARY, and is here
- title pictures are made by me using the CC0 images from pixabay that can be found here
- my bitmoji avatar was created on https://www.bitmoji.com/, visit the site to create yourown
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I encourage people to be neither optimists nor pessimists ... but rather realists. We have a broad spectrum of emotions for a reason, and they're all critical to proper mental functioning.
When the ability to respond accurately (that is, with the proper emotion given the circumstances) becomes impaired, that's when the problems occur.
Contrary to New Age claims to the contrary, obsessive optimism is every bit as problematic as pathological pessimism. Read fewer self-help books ... and employ more common sense.
Quill
Every emotion is important, I often say that in my posts. Faking emotion and not experiencing your sadness when you are sad will only bring more problems. I do not believe that obsessive optimism is possible. Our brains are just not capable of it no matter what some people say and contrast is important.
There is no debate on this. Medicine has a strong point that accurately means different things to different people so we have to be careful there and not expect a person to be sad when we think she should be or happy when we want her to be happy because we see the situation as appropriate. Instead, an individual approach is important to understand and monitor a person's reactions.
Thank you for your view on this and for adding value to the platform with your words 💚
A great post, all to often people use negativity and fear to make excuses why they cant do somehting, I have always felt it is better to try and fail than to never try
Positive thinking is very important I believe
And PS no my thoughts didnt change for those two lines after reading this, if anything this just made my thoughts stronger
Absolutely! People on their death beds do not regret the things that they did but all those that they did not do. Thank you for your lovely comment darling 💚
That is so true :)
What a great article. It is just so spot on. I get to choose to be happy. For the most part I do.
I try not to 'judge' events in my life in real time because those judgments are so often wrong. Some of the seemingly worst events have turned out to be net positive and some of the seemingly best have turned out to be not so memorable :) It's just things that happen.
I love that the glass is always full. I told a tire salesman when he tried to sell me nitrogen for my car tires "No, thank you. I use a custom mixture of 76% nitrogen". That satisfied him. I think he was impressed that I custom mixed my air.
I am glad you enjoyed the post and am proud of you for choosing to be happy honey 💚
This is so true! We can decide to look on the positive side of anything. Sometimes it can be hard though especially if you do suffer with anxiety or depression. I find positive affirmations really help in the morning and sometimes I even watch a comedy tv programme to make me laugh! It always gets me in the right mindset :) Then I take the pooches out for a walk in the woods. The best start ever to a perfect day, no matter what other things are not going right :)
When I had clinical depression, I used to only watch comedies and for hours. It helped a lot. Laughing helps. I still use affirmations even though I am better, they can be really amazing. Thank you for your lovely comment. 💚
How do you read my mind like that? Seriously?
This morning was another triple meltdown: first the twins, then me. This weekend there was A LOT of whining, tantruming, and screaming. This stuff makes me hate being a mom, and the downward spiral of anxiety/depression takes hold. So, after the triple meltdown today, I sat them down and we had a conversation. I made a decision that things needed to change. I need to change, and they also need to change their behaviour.
Yes, I should be able to be happy regardless of the tantrums, but they wear on me, and eventually I snap. My point is, I made a decision to change. Reading this reinforces the need to return to gratitude again and again, which is always my saving grace.
Well written, my friend. Resteemed.
I've been both the half full and half empty person. I bounce up and down like a yoyo. I prefer to be the half full person and when I become the half empty person it's normally something I slip into without knowing. There are a few factors that trigger that and I'm always trying to work on it. Great post
We are all sometimes one person and sometimes the other, recognizing it is the key. Good luck with everyone 💚
I always try to be that kind of people that try to see the half full glass still I must fight a great deal of fears and my current project is called "Fear no More" I do not deny them, but embrace them as a fair warning but working on them not to overwhelm or shadow my decisions ahead.
That project sounds amazing and I wish you all success with it. Stay strong and fear no more honey, much love 💚
Well, I always pick on an action before experiencing anything emotionally, I have to try before I can feel. If it feels low, I try to change an approach or the way I am doing it in the first place. I needed like 20-ish attempts to make a perfect chicken soup, I see no reason why other things should work differently.
This is something that everyone should aim for. Thank you for your lovely words 💚
Thank you 💚💚💚
You have such a wonderfully simple way of explaining things that makes perfect sense.
I still feel very sorry for an ex who never could get out of that negative rut.. it had worn such a deep groove in his brain.
Some people are stuck in their negativity and refuse to get out. It is not that they can not, they just refuse. Thank you for your lovely words 💚