Daniel Fortune

“Emotions are incomplete awareness.”

-Joe Demartini

Not every feeling we feel should be nourished. When we nourish certain emotions for long enough they become a mood, and moods, given enough time, become an attitude. When we adopt a certain attitude for long enough, that attitude can become our dominant disposition.

At every step of the way we have a choice!

Is this how I want to feel? What can I do to improve my mood? Should I let this person’s poor attitude influence mine? That’s not who I am… why am I acting like this?

At every major touchpoint in the process, we can make a conscious choice to intervene and influence the way we WANT to think, feel, respond, and behave.

Emotions are an important marker in the process, but they’re not the most important one. To a large degree, emotions are open to interpretation, flimsy, and maleable.

The key in influencing our emotions is understanding the mental chain of custody that takes place in how they’re created and reinforced.

The Gateway: An environmental stimuli triggers one of our 5 senses to gain our awareness. When awareness transitions to focus, our environmental stimuli gains access to our mental faculty in the form of a thought.

With enough curiosity or inquiry, a thought turns into a thought pattern and new neural networks begin wiring and firing together in our brain. As new neural pathways form, a certain chemical response is generated and released in our brain and distributed through our body.

These chemical reactions in the brain induce certain emotions within us. Now, our emotional response begins influencing the way we think, and the way we think (ruminate) keeps the cycle going.

While it becomes more challenging to break the cycle of thoughts and feelings the more they fire together and wire together, it is possible to interrupt our system, hijack our awareness, and make better thought/feeling selections.

The key is being self-aware. Notice when a negative thought is becoming a thought pattern, and choose more empowering thoughts. Using the emotional signatures your thoughts induce as a guidance system.

Take notice when a certain thought/emotion combination zaps your energy and tugs at your gut. Analyze why it happened and perform triage at the source.

This is how we take control and begin creating positive feedback loops between our head and heart.

As challenging as this may seem, it’s much easier than trying to control things that are ultimately outside the realm of our control. In trying to control external things, we welcome stress, dissapointment and discouragement.

Personal freedom is enjoyed to the degree that we can influence and control ourselves. Focusing on influencing things outside our personal sphere of influence is a form of slavery.

Make a conscious choice to take your power back.

Steer your thoughts along more curious paths. Guide your emotions and feelings into warmer company. Take residence as CEO of your heart and mind. Occupy, mold, bend, and tune yourself into that which you long to be. It’s yours for the taken.

Share with me in the comments below what resources have helped you control your thoughts and feelings the most. If you’d like to receive more great content like this direct to your inbox, subscribe/follow below.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have questions or would just like to say hi, feel free to reach out to me at info@danielfortune.blog. When time permits, I personally respond to each and every email.