1. In the end, you choose your emotional response to any situation:

This is the most important principle and every succeeding principle depends on it.  Here’s an illustration:  Suppose you are driving to a job interview and are stuck in traffic.   What you feel in that situation will depend on what you think.  Let’s say your thoughts are something like, “This is terrible.  Nothing ever works out for me.  I’m always messing up.  I’ll never get a job.”    Obviously those thoughts will cause you to be extremely upset. 

But let’s say your thoughts are something like, “I need to learn from this and leave earlier next time.  All I can do is get there as soon as I can and try to explain to them what happened.  I hope they’ll understand.”  You’re still not going to be happy, but you’ll be a little less upset. 

That is not to say that choosing your response is easy.  We all have habits of thinking that are so engrained that they are “automatic.”  We don’t intend to think this way.  We might not even be aware of the thoughts.  Nevertheless, they are always there.   Many of these thinking habits are negative, so we refer to them as ANTS (Automatic Negative Thoughts).   Much of our unhappiness is caused by our ANTS. 

So you got ANTS, I got ANTS; all God’s children got ANTS.  There is no point in being ashamed of them or even trying to stop them.  The mind doesn’t know how to NOT think something (e.g. Try real hard to NOT think of a pink elephant.), so any efforts you make to get your ANTS go away are bound to backfire. 

What you can control is how you choose to respond to your ANTS.  Do you take them as absolute truth or can you allow yourself to explore a different way of thinking?  It is your CHOICE where you go from there. 

That is why I say “In the end…” you choose your response.  You might not be able to control the first flash of emotion, but all human beings have the capacity to stop, reflect, and figure out how you want to think and feel about any situation. 

So when you are upset, wait!  Become aware of your ANTS and use your human capacity to think things through.  Your distress will be lessened and you will be more likely to find an effective solution to the problem. .  However, if you continue to feed your ANTS with more negative thinking, your distress will increase, and it will be more difficult to find an effective solution to the problem.    

Copyright 2011 Stanley E. Hibbs, Ph.D.