"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your own estimate of it; and thus you have the power to revoke it at any moment."
Marcus Aurelius
Your attitude, at each and every moment, reveals your faith in God to the world around you. You are displaying your faith in every reaction to every circumstance, good or bad. You thus want to be joyful in every circumstance, as that shows that your beliefs are based on trust in God's goodness. One of the main barriers to living in joy all the time is not taking charge of your emotional life. This blog details steps to take to help take charge of your emotions so you can experience joy all the time, in all circumstances.
Emotional Strength
Emotional strength refers to emotional resiliency, control, and toughness. It fuels your capacity to experience the fullness of life without the disruption of prolonged bouts of negativity. It is based on the concept of affirming God through faith rather than affirming your woes. To change your emotional life, you must change your focus.
Perception is NOT Reality
Emotions are subjective indicators of objective experience. They allow you to feel what you are thinking at that moment. What you perceive is your reality. How you react to your perceptions is under your control. You choose how you react based on what you are thinking at that time. Since you can control your thought life, you can thus control your emotional response. When you interpret things positively, you react with positive emotions. When your interpretation is negative, you react with negative emotions. You can thus change your emotional response by changing your interpretation of events, the way you think. Also realize that emotions are not necessarily based on truth. Don't be like the world who makes decisions on how they feel. Examine your feeling and the reasons for them before acting. Your task is to become proficient at interpreting the events of your life in such a way that you remain empowered to improve them.
Your Emotional Goals
What are your emotional goals? You need to define your emotional goals so you can maintain a focus on those goals and pursue improvement. Do you want to decrease fear, resentment, boredom, loneliness, fatigue, insecurity, guilt, depression, rage, overload, confusion, exhaustion? Do you want to increase joy, excitement, contentment, confidence, peace, passion, drive, satisfaction, enthusiasm, gratitude, awe, energy? Choose emotional goals to pursue and stay mindful of your intentions to change your positive and negative emotions.
Don't seek to change immediately and completely all at once. Instead, seek a 30% improvement in managing your emotional life.
The Laws of Emotional Strength
These are interconnected laws that are continuously influencing your character, personality, and your potential for joy. You can use these laws to your advantage if you decide to do so.
Law of Attention
This law states that whatever you dwell on becomes increasingly prominent in your mind. Thus, dwelling of negativity can rob you of joy and result in negative emotional responses that are essentially overreactions and not founded in your faith in God. By shifting your attention to your blessings, strengths, and successes, you can change your negativity. If you put your spotlight on your self-ideal, your future hopes and dreams founded in God, you broadcast your blessings instead of your negatives. Don't make your blemishes the essence of your life.
Law of Exchange
This law states that you can only think about one thing at a time. Thus, you can only think about something negative or positive, but not both. You can hold only one thought at a time in your consciousness, and that thought is either in alignment with your potential for joy or it is not. You can therefore do away with a negative thought only when you replace it with a positive thought. The opposite, however, is also true. Thus the importance of always being consciously aware of your thought life. You can't eliminate a thought by fighting it or trying hard to block it out. Doing so only prolongs your thinking on the negative, driving it deeper into your mind. You must shift your attention to something else completely. Productive thinking disrupts unproductive thinking.
The largest help to keep your thoughts positive and replace negative thoughts to thus increase your joy is to preoccupy your mind with God's word. Some excellent examples of scripture to help shift your thoughts from negative to positive, from self to God, follow.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. (Ps 46:1)
You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. (Ps 73:24)
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Prov 3:5-6)
You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. (Isa 26:3)
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matt 11:28)
nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32)
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27)
I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Phil 4:13)
For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (2 Tim 1:7)
Law of Reversibility
This law is your God-installed capability to produce feeling as a result of deliberate behavior. As an example, if you are in a negative mood, you can change yourself emotionally by acting and behaving as if you are joyful. Doing so produces joyful feelings. You can thus behave and think in ways consistent with your emotional goals and by doing so come closer to reaching your emotional goals. This is, essentially, acting better than you feel. It is forcing yourself to act in a manner consistent with your values, not your feelings. This is a good way to upgrade your emotional life. If you rule out using this option (because you think you're acting "false" or "fake"), you will forever be doomed to enjoy only those positive emotions that arise spontaneously. When you behave in a way that is pleasing to God, you will be rewarded with the emotional fruits you desire.
What can you do?
Take charge of your emotional life. Seek to be joyful in all circumstances as it is an expression of your faith in God.
Don't be reactive in your emotions. Interpret your thought life with kingdom eyes before responding emotionally. Develop emotional strength.
Become proficient at interpreting the events of life in such a way that you remain empowered to improve them.
Define your emotional goals.
Seek a 30% improvement in managing your emotional life.
Don't focus on the blemishes of life. Instead shift your spotlight of attention to your blessings, strengths, and successes in God. Focus on your self-ideal.
Purge negative thoughts by replacing them with positive thoughts. The best way to do this is by MEMORIZING SCRIPTURE.
Act how you want to feel. Behave and think in ways that are consistent with your emotional goals.
Act, don't react.
My Application
I have found the hints and helps in this chapter to be extordinarily useful and successful. As I have become incessantly pessimistic through my years, even the littlest thing in life that is not "perfect" tends to dominate my thoughts and my secondary emotional response. For some reason, I guess, I think that I am owed perfection, and if it doesn't occur, boy it ruins my day (or at least I let it)! It is true that this type of response and attitude is not a good witness to the love of God and my faith in Him! By changing my attitude and living with joy in every circumstance, positive or negative, by continuing to trust in God, I not only strengthen my own faith but I show faith to others and serve as a witness for God. This is the essence of true faith in God. I need to be consciously aware of my thought life at all times and take captive every thought and submit it to God.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor 10:5).
I am to respond to negativity in life as Paul did, focusing not on my weakness, but on my strength in Christ.
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me...For when I am weak, then am I strong (2 Cor 9, 10).
Finally, I need to rely on the Word of God to help change my attitude. God's word is the absolute truth on how to live with God, it is life's ideal. It is the standard for living a joy-filled life.
How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you (Psalms 119:9-11).
Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful (Joshua 1:8)
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16-17).
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