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Finding yourself with your leg in a hole.

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What's worse is that you can make the hole bigger or smaller; you can imagine which one the expected direction is. Yup, you've guessed it correct, people dig themselves a deeper hole.

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I know you've done so before. I have; we're human. I'm more concerned about how we can now become sustainably efficient at never digging more holes.

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Now, I'm not talking about anything physical but a mental gap. Something that is stopping you from developing yourself into an unstoppable human being. I want to cover three problematic areas over three letters that keep us stuck and directly affect our emotions, but first, let's cover how you create your feelings.

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Understanding how you think

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Our brain is a powerful tool; here's how it creates your feelings. Firstly, it takes in some external stimuli. For example, you wake up hearing the coffee machine dispensing excellent coffee (ok, that's my mornings). Yours may be the kids running and shouting or perhaps the dog barking.

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The sensory inputs are received in the brain, interpreted and instantly create meaning; let's keep my coffee example going. It happens so quickly that the meaning creates emotion, and you make a feeling. So for me, my morning starts excellent; I can smell the coffee, my mood triggers me to feel like conquering the day's tasks, and I wake up, kiss my wife and say, "Morning, gorgeous".

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Whatever the stimuli are coming in, we create a meaning, which makes the emotion, and then we behave in accordance with it. We typically are aware of the feelings towards something; we skip the meaning part. So ultimately, managing that 'meaning' is essential to how we perceive the world.

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Here's a diagram of it.

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First Problem: Taking it personally

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If managing the meaning usually happens out of our awareness, then it's here that we MUST invest our time. Note that it's not the experience of life or what the other person said that triggered you to feel upset or in a bad mood; it's the meaning we assigned to it. This is a profound thought because we ultimately have the last say.

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You may be experiencing something in life today, heck, a bunch of things altogether, but ask yourself what meaning you associate. What you feel and react to contributes to you not taking action, living life in a fulfilling way, or feeling like you are being held back; perhaps you are taking it out of someone else.

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We tend to feel that it's only happening to us; funny, everyone is perhaps thinking the same thought, again the meaning they associate.

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I want you to shift your thinking for a second. Assess the situation, the experience of whatever is happening that is not working in your favour. Can you find a positive in it? Remember, life is happening for us, not to us; it's the cultural beliefs we have. Everything works for the greater good, regardless of how bad it may seem.

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Have you found a positive? Good, now create a positive meaning from it. Feel the goodness from it as if it's contributing to your personal development.

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What did you learn from it?
What lesson can you apply?
What changed need to be made?
How can we avoid it from happening again?

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Create the positive associations to it every time you think of it. Repeat that in your mind several times. We tend to associate more pain than pleasure, it's in this shift of association that you gain control over how you feel.

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Everything is feedback. It may be personal because it's meant to be, though you can overcome it. After all, you are the judge of what it means.

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I wish you well, friends.

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