For years I was overly concerned with what other’s thought about me. And I often thought they thought I was too emotional. I thought I was too emotional. I wanted to stop my emotions. But thankfully, God has shown me…

Too often we make how someone else feels or what someone else is doing mean something about us.

For example, the other person is angry, we think we did something to upset them. The other person is having a “bad day,” we think we need to do something to make the “feel better.”

I have come to realize, whatever they are feeling most likely has nothing to do with me. They generate their feelings based on the thoughts they think. I am not responsible for how they feel. I cannot make them feel any certain way because they are responsible for their feelings just like I am responsible for my feelings.

The thoughts we think, the stories we tell ourselves, determine the feelings we generate. We must stop telling ourselves a bad story which creates unneeded stress or “hard” emotions in our lives.

Let’s believe the best about people. Let’s tell ourselves a good story. Our brains will find evidence for what we think about.

If we assume the worst, are negative, doubt everything, we make ourselves miserable with our own thinking. The thoughts we think create the feelings we have. We think, “oh I’m just a negative person.” No, you have trained yourself the think negatively over time and now it is a habit.

We tend to catastrophize circumstances or responses or challenges assuming the worst outcomes, that usually don’t happen or turn out way different than we were thinking.

Why do we waste our energy and cause ourselves such unnecessary stress?

Often, we try to control other people’s emotions when we don’t even know how to control our own.

We try to control all the people and things around us because we think that our circumstances cause our feelings. Often, we are afraid of what we might feel if we do not attempt to control the factors outside ourselves. But. The only thing we can control is ourselves! And how we think about the people and circumstances in our lives.

We tend to try to take responsibility for everyone else’s emotions but not our own.

We cannot control other people! We can try to people please and manipulate them to get them to be a certain way, but this is NOT loving!

We must learn to let other people be who they are and live their lives how they feel is best.

As we trust God and spend time with Him, He expands our capacity to feel what we feel. He expands our capacity to show up in love without expectations of others.

We must do our work to be our best selves, who we are, how God made us. We must be responsible for our choices, for our lives.

Sometimes that means someone else is happy, or grumpy, or frustrated, or quiet, or excited, or any number of other emotions. Sometimes that means I am happy, or grumpy, or frustrated, or excited, or any other number of emotions. AND BOTH ARE OKAY.

We must learn to be okay with ourselves in all our varying emotions. Emotions come and go. We recognize them, allow them, and then move through them.

We practice being okay with being with ourselves in our joy and in our pain.

We usually want a quick fix, to make the “pain” of our emotions stop. We must learn to feel what we feel and move through it. There is no need to be afraid of our emotions. God gave us emotions. Emotions are indicators. We can get curious about them and learn from them without being overtaken by them.

We can start to pay attention to the thoughts we think. We can begin to see what we are creating for ourselves with our thoughts. We can notice what our brains tend to offer us. Then we can intentionally practice thinking new thoughts. We can intentionally choose to think on positive, good, Truth, things. And as we practice over and over again, with time and effort, we will train ourselves to more readily see the positive and live from Truth. We will train ourselves to be hopeful and believe the best.

A prayer for us…

May we be open to see Your Truth in everything because You, Lord God, are in everything.

May we be open to new ways of thinking and doing and being.

May we not limit Your provision and possibility because of our limited thinking.

May we seek to understand, not to be right!

May we rest in Your love for us no matter what.

Amen.