Emotions

Hi, I’m Sandra. Welcome to The Happyist.

Last week we touched on suffering, and how we subject ourselves to it needlessly. I hope you were able to recognize when you might be doing that, and how to get out of it.

Part of being able to do that, is by understanding our emotions better.

Let me ask you a question: Who’s in charge, you or your emotions? That can be a tough one, right? Because we’d like to think we’re in charge but, really, if we’re paying attention, our moods are usually steering the ship.

Say you wake up in a bad mood or your day starts out rough and whatever good mood you were in is now gone. How do you handle that? For most of us, we just accept the fact that we’re in a bad mood, and we’re going to stay there until that bad mood is gone.

And, typically, our bad mood will start to fade and then — wham! — something else will come along to irritate us and our mood turns sour again. And again, and again. And it’s not our fault, right? We can point out all the reasons why this bad mood is valid.

Still, wouldn’t it be nice not to be in such a mood?