The Real Reason You’re Upset

Over the weekend, I was feeling really disheartened, sad, and depressed.   It was a normal reaction to something that had happened; one which I am well aware that any normal person would have.  And yet, two days later, despite the fact that nothing in my situation had changed,  I was feeling optimistic and joyful again.  Why is that? 

It’s because I questioned my thoughts about the situation. When I saw that my thoughts were not true, and simply my own story about the situation,  I was able to drop the thoughts.  That means I instantly felt better.  

It’s completely normal to feel difficult feelings. That in itself isn’t a problem. The problem is that so often we stay stuck in bad -  feeling emotions.  It seems we have no choice in the matter.  After all, life is hard, and terrible things do happen.  People treat us poorly.  We get sick. People we love die.  We can’t control the hard things but what we DO have a choice over is how long we are going to stay stuck in our emotions

The truth of the matter is that we don’t feel strong negative emotions (by “negative” I mean that they feel bad; not that having the emotion is bad) unless we are thinking a thought that makes us feel that way.  It SEEMS like the emotion is caused by the event or the person outside of us, but that is never true. The truth is that we are creating our OWN suffering by believing disempowering thoughts. 

There is a specific method I use to question my thoughts, which was developed by Byron Katie and is described in her book Loving What Is. Through using her method, I can see clearly when I am creating my own suffering by believing my own thoughts. 

Describing her method is beyond the scope of one little blog post, but you can start by simply noticing how you feel, and then noticing which thought(s)  is underneath it. 

Example:  I feel angry.  The thought that’s making me angry is “no one listens to me.” When I take the thought  “no one listens to me” through Katie’s process, I can see that my disempowering thought isn’t true.  If it isn’t true, that means I don’t have to feel angry. 

I know what you’re thinking:  yeah, but MY thought is true!  And it seems that way until you really learn how to do this process.  To learn more, check out her website: www.thework.com.

It’s normal to feel hard emotions but we do NOT have to stay stuck in them.