self {reminder}

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”

- Manual for Living, Roman and Stoic philosopher Epictetus

When things don’t go our way, it’s so easy to get engaged in wrong thought.

We drift into spaces and ideas we have no power over.

We start ruminating on all the things that aren’t working in our favour, worrying about all the bad things that could happen next.

We cloud our judgment and lose sense of our role in shaping our reality.

Such can be the case today.

We’re fighting through a global pandemic and I can assure you each and every one of us is having good days and bad days.

On the good days, we try to stay positive and be productive. On the bad days, we sulk into the worry of predicting what the future is going to be like. We imagine it, and then we start living it, which leaves us feeling helpless and scared.

That’s because “thoughts really do create your emotions,” explains neuropsychologist Dr. Shannon Irvine.“Thought fires before emotion, then your brain connects. You repeat that link enough, and it starts running automatically.”

Thoughts fire before emotions—that’s why when we think negatively, we feel negative emotions.

But there’s a way around this.

Whenever I find myself moving from a positive outlook to a negative one, I try my best to bring my attention back to the most important aspect of all.

I ask myself these three questions:

1.     What is worrying me?

2.    What is within my control?

3.    What matters most to me and what can I do about it?