How To Gain Control Over What Happens Within You

You gain a better control over what happens within you by managing and working with your thoughts and emotions. 

People and outside situations are out of your control. They fluctuate and change constantly, so your ability to control them is limited. 

But, how you respond to those people and situations is entirely in your hands.

You may feel that your thoughts and emotions betrayed you or that you can’t trust them. We all have been in situations where we reacted when triggered and then regretted it later, or felt sad without understanding why.  

Therefore, we want to answer the first question: How can you better understand and work with your thoughts and emotions? 

Years ago, when I became interested in personal growth and healing, I deeply related to the concept of positive thinking. I thought that if I could change my thoughts, everything would be settled. 

Although positive thinking may improve our mindset and how we see the world, feeling positive is not a constant. We all experience a range of different thoughts and emotions. For instance, if my hormones are out of whack or I am having a miserable day, switching to positivity seems impossible. 

Taking control through curiosity and understanding

What helped me was understanding that thoughts constantly fluctuate, so I can’t fully rely on them. One day, I am full of gratitude and patience, while the next, I am judgy and frustrated. 

Therefore, the first step to taking control of your life is to look at your thoughts with curiosity and some distance. 

You get curious about what you are thinking while keeping in mind that thoughts are like a river – constantly flowing and changing. Then, you become more present and conscious because it helps you to take the position of an observer and create a distance between you and your thoughts. This is where you train yourself to respond to situations, people, and triggers instead of reacting to them. I wrote a more detailed article on the topic of being conscious HERE. 

One of the best mantras I learned from a guided meditation designed by Sadhguru is: “I am not the body. I am not even the mind.”

One way to understand this is that you HAVE the body (emotions), and you HAVE the mind (thoughts) but you are not it. 

How you can work with your thoughts in a real-life situation

Let’s say you have a thought, “I can’t do this.” Without understanding that this is just an old, recycled thought, you feel its grip on you. It feels true and paralyzing because you are fully identified with it. It’s almost like you believe that since you have this thought, it must be true. 

But what if, instead, when such a thought comes, you work with it by reminding yourself that you have thoughts, but you are not them? Just because you are thinking it, it doesn’t make it true. You say the above-mentioned mantra, and in your mind, come back to this article. This is where you are consciously taking the place of an observer. Then, you get curious. 

You reflect and see that this is an old belief from the past. Therefore, you question it. You may ask yourself, “How often did I feel that I can’t do something but did it anyway?”

Or…

“What caused me to believe this might be true, and how can I reframe it?” 

You do all this while keeping compassion in your heart. I find it deeply healing when we look at ourselves with more understanding while striving to grow. Instead of shaming or judging yourself for thinking these thoughts, you get curious. 

When you begin to work with your thoughts and emotions regularly, trusting yourself will become inevitable. Instead of feeling lost in your reactions and rollercoaster of emotions, you will look at your thoughts and emotions with more distance.

Accepting what you are thinking and feeling

One of the common challenges we struggle with when we strive for growth is expectations of how this process should go. Therefore, when we relapse to our old ways and notice old thoughts showing up, we think we are doing something wrong. 

This creates tension in our bodies and prevents us from feeling our emotions. Have you heard of the saying, “You can’t heal what you can’t feel?” That’s why accepting what you are (in this case) feeling is healing itself. Therefore, when you accept thoughts and emotions you already have instead of resenting them for having them, you ease up. Because you decided to break an old habit of limiting thinking, it doesn’t mean that old limiting thoughts won’t show up. The point is not to eliminate them but to work with them when they come.

Remember that we are not here to be and act perfect but to work with our imperfections while striving to grow gracefully. It’s possible to do this with compassion which creates excitement for the next opportunity to expand even more.