Stay Calm, no matter what Managing Emotions for Peace of Mind There is a story about a rider and horse that came galloping rapidly down the road. It seemed as though the rider had somewhere important to go. Another fellow, standing on the roadside, shouted, “Where are you going?” The man on the horse answered, “I don’t know. Ask the horse.” The horse symbolizes our habitual energy. The story depicts how we usually live at the mercy of old habitual energies that have been established by our surroundings and mindlessness, but not by conscious intention. Thus, our horse, our habits pull us along, making us run here and there without even knowing why. If you stop and ask yourself, “Why am I running around so much?”, you might have an answer, but it is never a good one. You are just used to it. That is how all of us have been taught to live. If you ask people why they are a Lutheran, a Baptist, a Pentecostal, a Presbyterian, a Democrat, a Republican, a blue-color worker, a business owner, a horseback rider, a poker player, or anything else, much of the time the answer will be because their parents were or because they were raised that way. In other words, they don’t have a good reason. They are simply following the habits of their upbringing. As much as they gallop here or there, proclaiming this or that, it gets them nowhere. You need to take the reins and let the horse know who is in charge. You are the boss. You have always been the boss. So, start acting like it. This story is also a metaphor for the way we let our emotions run away from us. We have established habits of reacting to things without clear, focused intention. To be the boss, we have to govern, not suppress our emotions. We have to calculate when and how we react. To do this, we must discover the bigger picture of emotional management. Our thoughts are electrically charged and our feelings are magnetically charged. Our brains evolved biologically from the past and are rigidly programmed with tribal beliefs and memories. Consequently, our emotional reactions are also programmed from past orientation. We tend to repeat the same circumstances over and over because they are the ones imprinted in our psyche. If you want to expand your present and future, you must change the pictures in your mind. If, for instance, you would like to be rewarded more abundantly at work but relate to an old image of low wages and being passed over for promotion, you would have to create an impassioned, deeply felt new mental movie of being applauded at work and abundantly rewarded. You would have to feel jubilation when you receive your paycheck and internally experience the pride of promotion. You would have to feel yourself smiling, joyously dancing in celebration. This new magnetic-feeling energy would have to be repeated until you have replaced the old images of lack and discouragement. As you go through this mental movie, you are altering your neurology and, as your neurology adjusts, your body functions better. Overall, your health improves. The body was made to operate in high energy, in joy. Notice that babies are happy until taught otherwise. The happier you become, the better you feel. An interesting fact is that the mind and body do not know the difference between a real and an imagined experience. So, as you live in this new movie/broadcast of great reward and abundance, your mind, body, and neurological system accept it as real. The more you enter and feel the movie, the closer you identify with these new circumstances, and you will, ultimately, see the manifested results in your life as opportunities show up to fulfill your desires. Many people won’t imagine a new life because they are afraid. They are so used to living a certain way, even though it is not a happy existence. They are intimidated with newness and will not venture into the unknown to create something new, even though they really want it. It does take courage to gamble on a new way or to travel a new path. Sometimes, the situation has to be so bad that a resistant person finally gives in and tries a new way. That is the painful approach. Changing Your Emotional Identification People tend to identify themselves by their emotions. Angry people have a hard time believing they can be peaceful. Depressed people identify with sadness and spend little or no time remembering happy moments. Instead, they take pills to adjust their neurology. Consequently, the same repeated memories keep them trapped. To shift to a new paradigm may seem daunting, but it can be done and is done all the time. It starts with training. What are you willing to dream? Can you dream a new reality and become impassioned by it? Just as I described doing the candle concentration exercise to develop strong concentration skills in the beginning of this book, you can do an identical process to adjust your emotional, magnetic resonance. You hold your attention on what you want and feel it. You keep your mind focused and, in so doing, lay down the tracks for future life experiences. This practice has to be repeated until it becomes your natural, default way of thinking. You are creating new neural pathways. It is the same as pulling up weeds. To keep that space clean, you consistently plant new seeds. The seeds eventually take hold, and you become a new person with a new reality. Jean Walters' books are available on Amazon.com - Set Yourself Free: Live the Life YOU were meant to live! Be Outrageous: Do the Impossible - Others have and you can too - live your bliss. AND Dreams and the Symbology of Life by Jean Walters-Lucy You can find her at http://www.spiritualtransformation.com