Control Your World

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

the courage to change the things I can change;

and the wisdom to know the difference.

– Serenity Prayer

It is critical for you to recognize that you can’t control everything.

However, you do have control over what you need in

order to create the life of your dreams.

When you focus on the part of life that is out of your control

and try to change it and fail, then you feel like your life is out of

your control. The emotions that stem from the feeling of being

unable to control your experience and help yourself are anxiety,

frustration, and depression.

On the other hand, when you focus on what you can

control, you feel strong and empowered to move forward and

attain your life’s goals, aspirations, and dreams.

Here’s an analogy to help you understand this better. Why

do most people feel in control when they drive a car? Because

they’re focusing on the steering wheel, which is the part of

the driving experience they fully control. Because, in essence

they’re mostly out of control when it comes to protecting themselves

from getting killed in a car crash. Most accidents don’t

happen because a driver drives off the road but because another

car crashes into their car.

When you focus on what’s out of your control, you get

anxious, frustrated, and depressed. But when you focus on the

part of life that you have the ability to control, you feel empowered

and calm. When you focus on what’s in your control, you

feel empowered and have the internal drive to make things

happen, because it’s in your power to succeed.

One part of your experience that you can control is your

emotions; you can make the rules as to when you experience a

specific emotion. You also have the ability to turn emotions on

or off. When you develop the skills to activate and deactivate

your emotions, then you have the power to choose to supercharge

your emotions so you win.

How Your Emotional Anchors Are Developed

You have millions of experiences in your lifetime. However,

experiences do not in themselves have any emotions associated

with them. Death is death. House is house. Car is car. Accident

is accident. Child is child. Wedding is wedding. These are all

neutral events and situations.

On the other hand, you have a vast range of feelings. We’ll

look at this in more detail later, but for now suffice it to say

that there are many different feelings that you can apply to any

experience.

According to developmental psychologists, by about age

eight we’ve pretty much compiled in our subconscious mind

all the different emotions we’re going to experience in our life.

These emotions become anchored to various events. There isn’t

any hardwired automatic connection between a specific event

and specific emotion; it has to be developed.

Your life experiences play a major role in forming these

connections; these experiences forge a connection between two

unrelated entities. For example, there is no natural connection

between being slapped and running onto a street. However, if a

toddler runs into the street, he gets a smack from his parent for

putting himself in grave danger. The toddler will connect street

with smack and most likely not run onto the street again. If a

child associates a lollipop with good behavior, she’ll feel good

when acting that way, even though, in essence, the behavior

and the lollipop are two completely separate entities.

It is your mind that makes the connection between those

two separate things. It’s important to know that you have the

ability to connect any feeling to any event.

This concept is going to prove very useful to you in freeing

yourself from limitations and supercharging yourself to win.

You have the ability to attach good emotions to desired actions

and propel yourself towards your desired direction.

Your emotional world is like a compass – its needle always

points north, which correlates to feeling good. You learn how

to forge the connections between feeling good and your desired

outcome. You learn to change and control your internal world

so that the things that you choose to move towards are in line

with your emotions. They can begin to move you in the proper

direction and it feels good.

When you wind up in a problem situation, where for some

reason something is causing you pain, fear, and stress, you can

connect a different feeling or a different meaning to that situation.

You have the choice to create a different feeling in response

to any event that has caused you discomfort up to right now.

In essence you’re not really changing a situation around you

– and yet you are. You’re changing your whole world. Because

you’re changing how you feel in a situation that in the past has

been troublesome, you’re freeing yourself from its clutches.

For example, suppose you have fear connected to heights.

Remember that heights stay heights; this fact will never change.

But you can change your feelings associated with heights.

“Heights” doesn’t specifically have to be connected with “fear.”

You can enable yourself to feel calm next to “heights,” despite

the fact that currently heights and fear are connected.

Why? Because experiences and emotions are not hard wired.

If a certain feeling – fear – has become connected with

heights, you can change that association. You can control your

internal world so “calm” equals “heights” or “exciting” equals

heights. You have the ability to do that with any event!

Here’s another example. If “public speaking” equals “fear,”

you can change that to “public speaking” equals “excitement,”

or “fun, “or “confidence,” or any other good feeling.

Because your feelings – which make up your internal world

– are totally under your control.

Taking Control of Your Internal World

To get yourself moving in a different direction, you’re going to

have to make changes to your mind and in your body. If you

continue to do what you’ve always done, you’re going to get

what you have always got. Or to put it another way, here’s that

well-known definition of “insanity”: doing the same thing over

and over again and expecting a different result.

To take control of your internal world, all you need to do

is change the way you feel in association with any experience.