Picking how you feel can change your life. It almost sounds magical; waking up in the morning and just picking out your emotion for the day like you pick out your outfit (or scrubs). Getting to work, looking at your schedule and deciding what feeling would be a great compliment to the activities from the day. Getting home from work and picking the perfect emotion to have the best possible evening (whatever goes best with your sweats).
If Disney is looking for ideas, this would be a great one.
Except that it’s not magic and it is totally possible to have in your own life. Intrigued? Skeptical? Read on.
It may seem impossible that emotions can be controlled like this. After all, if this is true, why would anyone choose to feel dread, overwhelm, frustration, or sorrow?
Emotions can be picked and created IF we intentionally do so. Otherwise, we are at the mercy of whatever our default thinking creates. Let me give you a real life example.
I woke up this morning and my very first emotions, before I was even totally awake, were dread and overwhelm. Maybe you have had mornings that start like this.
Why was I feeling dread and overwhelmed? I will give you all my reasons (aka default thoughts)
I have a million emails to go through, some of which are important and time sensitive. I was at a conference last week, came home to a very busy work week and haven’t even opened my email. I may be a little ashamed about some of the people I have not responded to.
Likewise, I HAVE to do my bills, these got pushed to the side as well and now I probably have late fees etc. Not my proudest moment as a grown adult and “responsible” mom.
I have some lectures to complete and submit. If I had done these earlier, it wouldn’t be one more thing today.
Basically, today is going to be hard. I should have been better organized, better prepared, better equipped, more responsive. I might not get everything done and by the end of the day I will probably be exhausted. You get the idea.
I have been “practicing” these thoughts all week, knowing that Friday would come and the dread and overwhelm would come with it. Here’s the real problem, taking productive action from dread and overwhelm is really difficult. Cleaning out the junk drawer and scrolling tiktok is much more likely if I don’t create a different emotion.
Now for the skeptics who are thinking, “well you can’t just choose to be happy about these things.”
This statement is based on the misconception that when given the choice of emotions, people will always choose happiness.
This is simply not true.
We all have an understanding that not everything in life can be jammed into the happy bucket.
But there are so many other emotions, emotions that feel positive. The truth is,we take action based on a subconscious belief of how taking that action will make us feel.
This is true even when we are doing something we don’t want to. We don’t want to drive to the airport at 11pm to pick up a family member BUT we want to be the person who is helpful to our family. We do it because we want to feel that we are that person.
We don’t want to have a difficult conversation with a coworker, but we do it because we want to be the person who can communicate clearly. We don’t want to be passive aggressive. We will feel proud that we were able to do this.
As bedside nurses we do this all the time, we start an IV for the 3rd time because it’s the right thing to do. We want to feel competent and compassionate. Those are the feelings that drive the action.
So back to my potentially awful day, happiness is not one of the feelings I am going for (although I will probably end up there).
Let’s look at some of the emotions that are available.
Determined
Peaceful
Competent
Calm
Capable
Accepting
Compassionate
Confident
Energized (I wanted to choose this yesterday but never got around to doing this exercise, the furthest I got was writing ENERGY on a post-it)
Supportive
Excited
These emotions are NOT going to come from my default/unintentional thinking of “today is going to be so hard and I shouldn’t have let myself get into this situation.” So, I have to come up with another thought.
Yes, this is just creative writing for your brain. We get to CREATE thoughts that support feeling the feelings listed above.
Here’s the thoughts I created, the feelings that resulted, and the actions I will take because of them.
Intentional thought: I am going to give myself 100% to each task today→ feeling: connected and sufficient → actions: take pride in my work, release any shame about not responding faster, be thoughtful in my responses.
Intentional thought: I can change my whole experience of today → feeling: empowered and relaxed → actions: make a list and work through things calmly, shut down any negative self-talk. I got this.
Intentional thought: Exploration of new topics restores me (in reference to preparing my lectures). → feeling: anticipation → action: start the research/slides without procrastinating because I actually enjoy the process of learning.
Intentional thought: Prioritizing is a skill, not a weakness → feeling: supportive of myself → action: changing the narrative of last week. I prioritized being present at the conference over things that could wait until this week.
My day has already changed and it’s only 10 am (and my palpitations have subsided somewhat).
So let’s recap the steps to picking emotions.
Identify the feeling that you are currently having: dread, overwhelm etc.
Ask yourself why you are feeling that way → reveal your unintentional thoughts.
Sit with this for a minute and see how your thinking is creating the feeling EVEN IF it feels like it is the other way around.
Ask yourself where you would be without those thoughts. Use your imagination to picture what your experience would be like if you simply didn’t have those thoughts. Would you feel differently? (If you want a deep dive into this step, look up the work of Byron Katie. She is a genius.)
From this place of identifying your unintentional thoughts and the effects they have in your life, ask yourself what else could be true? What other thoughts are available? OR pick an emotion you want to have and ask yourself what you would have to think to feel that way. You can do this in either direction.
Desired feeling: calm → Intentional thought: I can always handle what comes my way.
Intentional Thought: Straightening out my bills is just busy work, not a moral failing. → Feeling: In control/competent.
Yes, we can DIY our emotions.
Yes, it is super satisfying.
Yes, we will have to do it over and over and over.
Yes, it’s worth it.
P.S. I am including a pic to show you that yes, I actually do this exercise. It takes 5 minutes, and it has changed my life.
P.P.S. Are you too busy to even think about trying strategies like this? Is your brain spinning ALL THE TIME? Then you do NOT want to miss my next free workshop, Debunking Mindfulness for Type-A Personalities, happening on Wednesday, October 30th at 7pm EST. You can register here
Not a nurse but still intrigued? You can come too :)
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