“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be” – Abraham Lincoln

Our emotional state has a significant impact in our lives and the people around us, we all know this because we’ve experienced it first-hand.  Yet knowing this, most of us dedicate little to no time in learning how to control our emotions, mostly because we think they are beyond our control. 

There is a lot of great information out there on this topic.  To give a couple of brief examples, Tony Robbins talks about changing your mood by changing your body language.  He states that you can trick your mind by acting as if you were in a better mood (posture, eye contact, facial expression) and your actual mood will eventually follow. 

Another method that is more focused on when something occurs that suddenly shifts your mood like when someone cuts you off while driving, something with sentimental value to you gets ruined, someone close to you does you wrong, etc… is from Mel Robbins (no relation to Tony Robbins 🙂 ).  In her book, The 5 Second Rule, she mentions how you can take action when otherwise you wouldn’t by counting down from 5 and springing into action, countering the typical pattern in your brain that keeps us from taking that first step.  But she also mentions you can use this countdown to change your emotional state.  Lets say someone cuts you off, you get angry and are about to do something stupid; count down from five and make it a point to shift away from that anger when you get to zero, or at minimum shift to another action rather than the emotional stupid one you were about to do.

This all links back up to the advantage we gain by understanding how our brain works and being conscious of it so we can learn how to control it.  As I’ve mentioned below, I’m not a believer in providing detailed instructions on anything related to self-improvement as it’s when you do your own research and come up with your own method on how to get there, a method that is believable to you; it is then when you make it your baby and own it!  Your own recipes are really not the best tasting, but they are to you because you came up with them!  So what are you waiting for, get on your browser and google “change your emotions”; 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO!