You Have a Distinctive Way of Feeling

What you hate, love, fear, laugh at, cry about, or observe without sensation is determined by your own unique and wholly owned emotional structure. You and I could cheer for the same football team, yet experience it in a variety of ways. You could attend a concert with your best friend and each of you would be moved by a different song. Two girlfriends for life could watch the same sad movie and one would cry while the other would not. It’s because each of us places a different emotional value on every word spoken, every deed performed, and every event observed.

Emotions are how you respond to a feeling of pain, pleasure, attraction or repulsion. They are the physiologically based responses to your feelings, and are as unique to you as your own DNA.

Think about it; when was the last time you felt something so deeply that you were moved to tears? When was the last time you were truly afraid? When was the last time you were filled with great joy or enraged with anger? What did it feel like? Where were you when it happened? Did you look around and notice that others did not share the same emotion? Did you feel the need to apologize for your emotional response?

Nothing influences every aspect of your life as much as your emotions. Your emotions are the arbiter of the extremes between passion and indifference, love and hate, faith and fear, hope and despair, joy and sorrow, pleasure and irritation, good and bad, anger and calm, etc.

Do you remember how you felt when you bought a new car? Do you remember your feelings when you saw the first dent or scratch on that car? How about the first time you were dumped by a girl friend or boy friend? Did you ever lose a job, or win a championship, or fall down in public, or earn a degree, or give birth to a child, or bury a mate, or laugh until you cried, or cried until you laughed, or jumped for joy, or wept for hours? Of course you have.

Everything in your life is impacted by your emotions. They are what empower you or emasculate you, clarify your thoughts or confuse them, embarrass you or cheer you, scare you or comfort you. Your emotions are the most compelling force in your life. How you manage your passions is one of the greatest challenges in life because any change in your world will begin in the confines of your emotions.

Someone once said that if you were to use a dictionary to complete the sentence, “I feel ______,” that you could list almost 2000 words. That’s a lot of emotion. And the way you deal with those emotions is very much a part of what makes you something special.