EP 400: How to Reclaim Power Over Your Emotions

In the same way that we perceive the outer world as an expression of our own nervous system - one person feels love and excitement when they see a dog that resembled a childhood best friend, while another recoils in fear from the implicit memory of a dog bite - we process our internal reality - our emotions - in a very similar way. I learned this through experience! While I am not at all proud to say this, the truth is that before I learned to regulate my emotions through the practices of mindfulness and heartfulness, I was a pretty angry and rage-y person. I was a yeller. I would yell at restaurant servers, other drivers, coworkers, employees, my wife, my dog, my kids. I was an equal opportunity A-Hole. But what I can see in my conscious awareness that I couldn’t see back then is that while my yelling was quite consistent, the reactions from others were vastly different from one another. That’s because my yelling is not what created your emotional response. My yelling is the trigger, sure. But how you react - whether you curl up and cry, or yell back at me - is entirely based on your unconscious emotions. This means that you have the power to control your emotional response. I don’t have that power over you. Would you like to harness this power?