Emotions Are a Choice

____________________________________________________________________

Today’s rant is really an extension of my last one. There is a valuable lesson that I had the fortune of learning when I was 17, and I wanted to share it because I know that a lot of people will benefit from it.  When I was growing up, I had a bit of a temper.  When I would be raging, I would say things like, “GRRAAARRR, I am Soooo MAD right now!” My father, being the wise man that he is, would retort back, “You’re choosing to be Angry, emotions are a choice.“ Of course being a teenager, I would vehemently disagree and have all sorts of reasons and excuses as to why some outside source was responsible for my Rage.  My wise father would simply reply, “Those things may be true, but you are choosing how You React.”

That always used to make me so mad, but, I soon came to find that he was absolutely right. Towards the end of my Junior year, and into the beginning of my Senior year of High School, I was having a pretty rough time.  I got caught for underage drinking and lost my License, nothing was working out with any of the girls I liked, my acne was spreading like the chicken pox, one of my best friends was killed in a car wreck, and a drug dealer came to my house, slashed my water bed, and stole all of my CDs.

This was in 1996, back when CD burners were over $500, and my music was my life… and I wasn’t a rich kid; I’ve had jobs since I was 12 so I could buy what I wanted.  To make things worse, I was a star on my basketball team, and I blew out my knee snowboarding right at the start of my senior season.  I’m sure a lot of you have been through things that were as bad or worse, but I was a young teen, and in the midst of all my drama, I got really depressed.

As I was wallowing in my emotions, a voice echoed in my head:

“Emotions are a choice, you are

CHOOSING to be Depressed!”

I thought long and hard about those words, until I decided to adopt them as a philosophy.  I made the decision to be Happy. Since that pivotal moment of my life, I have never been depressed for more than a day or two at a time.  Shit still happens, as it does to everyone, but I know that I have the ability to choose how I react to it.

If we can stop ourselves for a moment, and look at our problems as if we are a third party, it is much easier to quantify them.  The first step is to break it into two categories.  As I talked about in my last rant, there are really only 2 things: those that we can control, and those that we can’t.  If there is something in your life that is bothering you, and you can change it, then make the Change! If it is something that you can’t do anything about, then stop worrying about it.  This concept starts with our personal life, and transcends into our business.

The great thing about our business is that almost every element of it is something that we can directly control.  The only thing that we really can’t control is how other people react to our opportunity.  So if you’ve talked to five people and they all said, “NO,” you have your choice of how you are going to take it.

One could sit around and be depressed that nobody wants to join their business, or go find more people to talk to, and train themselves to be better at the exposure process.  Network Marketing works, and one key to having a thriving business is having the ability to manage our emotions.

Lance Armstrong made a great statement when speaking of his battle with cancer: “Pain is temporary.  It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place.  If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” During the course of his battle with cancer, he also said:

“This cancer chose the

wrong Damn Body!”

How powerful is that?  Lance had every right to sit back, be depressed, and quit on life, but he didn’t.  Lance Armstrong is a winner in every sense of the word, and even though his testicular cancer had moved into his abdomen, lungs and brain before he discovered it, he decided to rise up and fight. Having cancer was something that he could do nothing about, how he reacted to it was completely His Choice.

Draw the line and say, “I choose to Win!” We can’t control everything in life, but we can control our emotions, and our reactions to the circumstances that fall upon us.  These decisions  are what will make all the difference.  Isn’t it about time to decide to Win?  Isn’t it about time to be a Champion?  I’m going to close this rant with a great quote from Rocky Balboa in his final movie:

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done. Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him or her or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that.”

To The Building of Your Massive Empire,

Aki Wood: MLM Genius
Phone: 858-345-4891
Email: aki@akiwood.com

***If you got some great value from this, be sure to Tweet it, Share it, Leave your comments below… or at least hit the “Like“ button. Emotions Are a Choice! ***

Tags: aki, aki wood, balance, chuck norris jokes, control emotions, emotions, living in the moment, mlm success, mlm success tips, mlm tips, network marketing success, personal development