the power of owning your feelings

There’s a huge amount of power that comes from realizing that no one can make us feel a certain way. Our feelings are our choice.

Rather than waiting for other people to make us feel happy or apologize for making us feel sad or hurt, we can start to get curious about the origin of our feelings. Almost always we can trace a feeling back to either (a) something we really want (e.g., to be seen or to be loved) and (b) to a set of beliefs that we think are true (e.g., I’m not good enough, no one ever understands me, I’ll be lonely forever).

When we start to identify the things that we really want and question the things we think are true, but may not serve us, then we can begin to see the choice we have to feel what we want to feel because all of our feelings are part of our powerful choice.