Emotional Responsibility

Day 127

Affirmation:

My emotions are a response to my experiences.

How I respond to my experiences is my choice.

I alone am responsible for my emotions.

I live in conscious awareness of my emotions.

I choose how I feel.

I am emotionally responsible.

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Happiness – and its counterpart, unhappiness – are the result of an interpretation of an experience.   Every experience we have is interpreted by our minds (often unconsciously) as either positive, negative, or neutral and our emotional response is the result of that interpretation.  Our emotions are subjective and personal.  What makes one person happy (being in the woods, for example) might make another feel frightened.   How the experience is interpreted is up to the experiencer.  And it is a choice.  How do we know it is a choice?  Because we can program our reactions to experiences.  The person who is fearful of being in the woods can consciously choose to overcome that fear and feel at peace instead.  Others in our world contribute to our experiences, offering us opportunities to choose our interpretation and our emotional response, but they are not the cause of our emotions.

While we can not always choose our experiences, we can choose how we react to them.  And we can change old habitual patterns of response that may no longer serve us into healthier, better-feeling ones.  When we do, we become emotionally responsible, empowering ourselves with our own emotional well-being.