Happiness, fulfilment, a sense of achievement, self-confidence, kindness, compassion – these are all inner states of being.
If we want to experience more positive emotional states, we must shift our focus. We need to shift from our “to-do “ list, and all the tasks, targets, goals, metrics, and outcomes we’ve become preoccupied with, including money, social media feeds, emails and spreadsheets. And we need to pay more attention to what’s happening inside of us.
Most people believe what’s happening inside of them, specifically how they feel, is determined by what’s happening outside of them.
This is why people say things like “You annoyed me” or “You upset me”. The belief is that you are doing this to me.
If we believe that our emotions are triggered by other people or things outside of us, it becomes very difficult to change how we feel. This is partly because we expect that if someone else has upset us, then it’s their responsibility to make us feel better.
But the truth is we are the architects of our own emotions.
Even when someone else behaves badly, the anger or anxiety which we feel as a result is created by us, in response to the other person’s poor behaviour.
The other person has not injected us with anger or given us drugs that make our heart rate quicken, our palms sweaty or our guts churn.
No, we’ve done this to ourselves. We’ve created the chemistry of anxiety.
If we can accept this simple truth that we create all our emotions, good and bad, then we have a much better chance of changing how we feel.
Taking radical ownership of how we feel and cultivating emotional sovereignty is, perhaps, one of the most important lessons we can ever learn. Properly applied this lesson can change our lives forever.
If you subscribe to our App (Complete App—Apple: Click Here Android: Click Here) and follow the ‘missions’ we’ve built for you, you can learn how to do this for yourself and start to experience happiness and fulfilment more often.