Claiming Responsibility For Your Emotion
What emotions are running through your body in this moment?
What if you were to write down every emotion you felt in the average week. Well I decided grab a scrap piece of paper, be honest with myself, write. The bellow photo was the result. I encourage you to do it it yourself as you read. It may help internalize the concept that has helped me so much along my journey.
Whether I felt happiness, sadness, love, shame, joy, heartbroken, excitement…I wrote it…now across all of those emotions I wrote the following phrase:
THIS IS MY FAULT
If you haven’t done the above. I would encourage you to please stop reading.
It appears one of the most significant elements of experiencing emotion is how we respond to our environment.
Often we look to lay blame on our environment for the reason we feel a certain way. We blame what a person said or did to us as a cause for our erratic emotions. We blame our upbringing. We blame our government. We blame our friends. We blame our genetics. We blame everything we have no control over…
Know that how you respond and how you feel doesn't have to be a product of exterior influences. You can choose to be a product of your own mind. As human beings we have the autonomy to control that.
Laying blame temporarily makes me feel better about myself because now I have delayed action and responsibility through the form of excuse I have no control over.
But I inspire NO ONE with my fabricated rationale.
Leaders don’t make excuses.
Leaders take responsibility for their actions.
Leaders don’t give others the power to control their emotions.
When you get emotional as a result of your partner…or that girl or guy your dating…or your boss…for something they did or said, you donate all your cognitive control and power to them. When someone cuts you off in traffic and you start losing your shit ask yourself:
Am I really going to give that person the power to influence my emotion like that?
