How We Create Our Emotions

We generally think of our emotions as being directly caused by events. ‘You made me feel…’, ‘It was the … that made me feel…’. This is the thinking that traps us as powerless victims.

There is no such thing as a stressful situation. Only stressful thoughts.

Any pressure, stress, frustration, disappointment or anger we feel is caused only by the mental frameworks we use to see and evaluate life through.

We only feel these emotions when we have a timeframe or deadline that has to be met. Or when there is an image of the way something must match up to. Take away the mental constructions – and they are only constructed through your beliefs – and all you have is life… happening in its own perfect way.

No one else can ever make you feel anything. Events happen, life just is. We feel emotions in response to our thoughts about things. The actual events are neutral. If you get a promotion… if you win the lottery… if your football team wins… these are neutral events. But because you have attached value to these events as being good – you think of them as being good. To the people you pass in the street they mean nothing.

“Nothing is good or bad. Only thinking makes it so” William Shakespeare

 The nature of the way we perceive the world and our nature of thinking economically causes us to forget this. For this reason we often have difficulty in understanding others and how they feel.

Life is like a torch. It flows through us and shines onto our beliefs. The projection is what we think of as the outside world. It is actually what we choose to see of the outside world. If you change your beliefs it will be like changing radio stations and as you tune into different information… you will see a different version of reality.

At the same time your Operating System synthesizes all the information you have on a situation or issue. Then processing these through your beliefs it determines what is good and bad in relation to the issue. From these it creates a Should Vision. This is the ideal outcome from the understanding you have.

This Should Vision is key to your emotions. Whatever you feel is determined by how close your Should Vision is to reality. If they match up… you’ll feel happy. The more contrast and difference that you see… the more miserable you will feel.

Stress is the tension of literally trying to pull reality into the same shape as your Should Vision.

Your emotions are your built in guidance system. We are naturally drawn to feel good and averse to feeling bad. So when we feel bad we are forced to try to feel better. There are three main ways to do this.

  1. Many people simply try to dull down the feelings. Some with drink, drugs, work, television, anything to dull and distract themselves from feeling. The problem with this is that they are always moving away from pain and the distractions never last for long. Meanwhile the pain is growing greater and greater all the time.

  2. More try to change the outer world. Life feels so hard, such a struggle when you are trying to control, influence and change the hundreds of variables you notice. Add in the fact that there are thousands more that you cannot even see let alone change and you have a recipe for frustration, anger and heartache.

  3. The easiest option is the least taken. It is so much easier to change the one thing that you have complete and utter control over... your beliefs. If you change these then immediately – though you may not see it in your reality immediately - one or perhaps two changes will occur.

Firstly by changing your beliefs you have relaxed your Should Vision and so it will become more flexible. Secondly by changing your beliefs, you may also have changed your perceptual filters… thereby changing the way that the world looks.