You Are the Ruler

Everyone wants to improve their quality of life and feel more satisfied with it. However, almost all of us, at times, become trapped by our limiting beliefs and emotional patterns. We form habits out of feelings like hopelessness, worry, sadness, or distress. These disabling habits are what prevent us from doing the things we are truly capable of.

“The only thing you can control in life is how you respond to it.”

We cannot control the events that happen in our lives, but we can control how we react to them. People constantly face stressful situations, but we have the ability to change our mindset toward these situations by strengthening our emotional intelligence.

Over the past nine months (or more), the world has been shaken by external events. People are losing their jobs, their health, and even their loved ones. Things are happening beyond our control, and they knock us down. However, stress, anger, and sadness do not stem from these events and facts themselves — they come from the meaning we assign to them.

Yes, unfortunate events are real — but the question is:

Will you let them break you down, or will you use them to empower yourself and light your path forward?

“Stress, anger, and sadness don’t come from the facts of life.
They come from the meaning we give to those facts.”

These emotions arise entirely from the meaning you attach to the events and experiences in your life. When you assign a new meaning to an experience, that meaning can lead to a new perspective — and ultimately, a new life. This article will focus on personal development skills and introduce you to a self-coaching process for managing your emotions.

We unconsciously assign meaning to the events and experiences in our lives — we do this all the time, even if we’re not aware of it.

For example, consider an economic recession. One person might interpret it as:
“I’m going to go bankrupt.”
While another person might think:
“This means I need to work harder and be more creative about saving money.”

What kind of outcome do you think each person will experience based on their thinking pattern?
It will be completely different, right?
Isn’t it obvious why each of them has a different approach to life and why they feel such different emotions?
It all stems from the meaning each person assigns to the event.

Now, let’s take it to a more personal level. Imagine a woman who was adopted as a child.
One path she could take is to feel worthless and believe that being given up for adoption means she isn’t lovable.
Alternatively, she could take a completely different approach and see the fact that someone chose her — to care for her and love her — as a profound blessing.

Why does her decision about which story to believe matter?
How will that choice affect her daily decisions?
How will it influence the bigger decisions in her life?

The first story creates a sense of loss, while the second leads to a sense of gratitude and appreciation for her life and her value.
The story she chooses will shape her entire life — because the decisions that control us are the decisions about meaning — and meaning equals emotion.

If choosing a disempowering story sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
We all tell ourselves stories that make us sad — even when we could feel happy instead.

We create our own feelings of sadness, worry, anxiety, shame, guilt, fear, and anger. Why?
Because that’s how we’ve been wired.

The human mind is constantly looking for what could go wrong, what might be missing, or what we could lose. It sounds contradictory, but it’s part of our survival and protection mechanism.
You are biologically and naturally programmed to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

That’s why taking conscious control over the stories you tell yourself — and the emotions you feel as a result — is entirely up to you.

The key to this major shift is to coach yourself and replace expectations with gratitude.
If you do this, your life will change in that very moment.
And if you keep doing it, your life will change forever.

Returning to the story of the woman who was adopted as a child —
If she held on to the expectation that her biological parents should have kept her, that expectation could ruin her entire life.

But if she replaced that expectation with gratitude — recognizing that someone voluntarily and intentionally chose her and loved her — her whole life would change.

That is the power of turning expectations into gratitude.

The choice is yours.
What will you focus on?
Which story will you allow to guide your life?

You need to consciously decide what meaning you will give to events.
This is the power you have right now — and it can change everything.

Take the steering wheel of your life and regain control.
You are a beautiful, powerful human being with unlimited potential — and you deserve a happy, fulfilling, and successful life.

The only thing standing between you and what you want is yourself.
The only thing preventing you from feeling the joy you deserve is the disempowering story you keep telling yourself.

But what if you decided, right now, to tell yourself a new story?
What if everything was designed to work for you — not against you — so that you could have a better life, give more, and experience more joy?

It’s time to shift your perspective and ask yourself:
“What if every event in my life — including the most painful and challenging ones — was happening for me and not to me?”

If you want real freedom in your life, you need to decide that you will no longer let external events shape your emotional experience.
This only happens when you become the master of meaning — and find an empowering message in everything that comes your way.

“True freedom happens when you decide that you will no longer let external events shape your emotional experience.”

What negative emotions are you facing right now?
How do you usually manage those emotions?
Do you shift your mindset and perspective when you encounter challenges?

It’s time to take control — because you are the ruler of your emotions.

Taymour Miri is an ICF master coach and a Gallup certified strengths coach and more recently one of the first 136 coaches world wide to be awarded an Advanced Certificate in Team Coaching. He has 30 years’ experience in leadership roles and 20 years of experince in coaching. Taymour has trained over 1,500 coaches across five continents and is the founder of International Coaching Education (ICE).