photo credit: robinjp (creative commons)
I know you’ve heard that phrase before. I’m sure you’ve said it before. I know I have.
- People make you feel stupid
- Someone made you mad
- He made me watch that stupid show
- She made me go shopping
- They made her cry
You get the point. I used to think that way. People were always making me do something. One day a few years ago I was walking with a friend, venting about a job interview I had. It didn’t go the way I wanted.
“He made me feel like an idiot.
I’ll never forget her looking at me and saying, “People can’t make you feel. You choose to feel that way.” I was not impressed with her answer! Why? Because she was right.
Others can’t make you feel something…
If they could then you wouldn’t be in control of yourself. Others would be running your life for you. God didn’t make us for others to control our lives, and that includes our emotions and the way we feel about things.
So, if I choose to feel stupid it’s because I’m not believing the truth about who I am. Who am I? Who are you? Check out this list to help you. If I get mad, it’s because I choose to do so. If you watch a show with your husband you don’t enjoy, it’s your choice. Maybe do it because you love him, not because you feel you have to. The same goes for you men when shopping with your wife.
Our emotions can control us or we can control them. Either way we go, we are making a choice.
What will you choose to feel today? Comment below…
Choices!!
These are what direct our lives. We choose to be happy or sad. We choose to get up in the morning and to to work or ignore that alarm clock.
I am a trainer for a Fortune 500 company. It is my job to work with union employees to change their 100 year, deep rooted, culture. It is a tough job and a rewarding one when you see the lights of one of these mechanics come on.
The other day I was in a very rough meeting. One of the mechanics was spouting off lots of blame. Nothing was his fault. All the bad in the company and his working conditions were the fault of someone else. It was time for my motivational message of “we get to make our own choices.”
At the end of my soap box speech on the value of owning your daily choices, he said to me “you are a liar.” I could have taken offense to that. I could have (and wanted to) jump down his throat. What I did was invite the group to help me out. I made a better choice.
Like clock work the team did help. The supervisor stood up and shared a powerful story of his own negative thought pattern at one point in life. He said he was complaining at home and his wife said to him, “stop complaining or get a new job.” It hit him that he was making the wrong choices about his job. When he started making better choices his job conditions got better.
It all begins and ends with our choices. We can choose goodness or badness. The choice is always ours.
Thanks for this timely post.
Wow! Thanks for this story Spencer. Sometimes it’s hard to hold back when others are being so negative. Things were never my fault. So glad God woke me up.
So good, and so true. I can’t argue with you!
Thanks for sharing this.