How to choose your feelings – and be free!

“You are annoying me” said my teenaged daughter to me the other night.  I hear this often nowadays and I understand it’s quite common in parent/teen relationships.

“I am not annoying you.  You choose to be annoyed by me” I quipped.

“Well, you are annoying” she retorted as she headed to the sanctuary of her room, a place where no annoying mothers existed.

Does this exchange sound familiar to you?  Replace “annoying” with other words – “intimidating”, “upsetting”, “embarrassing”,  “angering”, etc. and it might be very, very familiar.

People can say anything they desire to us, and there is nothing we can do about it.  Got that?  THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.  What is totally within our control is how we respond.  What I have been trying to teach my children is that when they are in a space of someone doing something to them, they are victims and have given up their power.   All their lives, I have pointed out to them that they are CHOOSING how they feel.  The corollary to this is that they can CHOOSE to feel otherwise.  Now they are in a place of having power over their lives.

Just think of it:  “You are annoying me”.   What I am saying is that you are doing or saying something that I am annoyed about.  When you do something to me, I have infinite choices about how I can feel – I can feel hate, I can feel love, I can feel annoyed, I can feel blessed, I can feel happy, or sad, or …..  All of these feelings are MINE, and are therefore mine to choose.  I can also decide how to respond.  But this will depend on how I choose to feel.  So, if I choose to feel angry, then I might rant and rave, cuss out the person or even resort to violence.  If I choose to feel happy, then I will just ignore the person and go about my business.   Which do you think better serves me?

I have a friend who has been using the word “upset” very often of late.  Every conversation with him, he declares how upset he is  – “What really upset me is ….”; and “What I am upset about is …..”; and “I feel so upset …..”.  My dear friend, we do not have to be upset about anything.  Yes, difficult situations will arise and difficult people will come into our lives.  How we receive them is up to us.

We need to become aware of our feelings.  We can notice our bodies – are we feeling tense, tight, constricted?  Is our breathing short and shallow?  Do we feel anxious?  Are we having problems resting and sleeping?  These are all indications that we are choosing feelings that do not serve us.   We can make conscious choices about our bodies – we can exercise, breathe deeply, meditate, get a massage, commune with nature.  All of these choices will change our physical state and thus our emotional state.

We also need to listen to how we speak.  What words are we using most often?  What are those words telling us about how we are choosing to feel?  Who are we saying them to?  Once we become aware, then we can consciously choose.  Here are some shifts we can make in our speaking:

• Instead of “You are annoying me” – say “I am choosing to be annoyed by you”
• Instead of “I feel so upset about” – say “I choose to feel upset about”
• Instead of “I feel really angry” – say “I choose to feel really angry”

And so on.

When you consciously choose, you will see how powerful you really are, and how much dominion you have over your feelings, your thoughts, actions and indeed your life.  When you recognize that you can always choose, that there is never only one option in anything – then you are free!  And nothing and no-one can annoy, upset, anger, intimidate or embarrass you.