“There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.” ~Samuel Beckett
Feelings. That’s a chick thing, right? Men everywhere are getting nervous as they read this because they know they have feelings just like any little girl and it scares them to death. So the way out they make for themselves is to say it’s the other guy’s fault I feel this way.
Here is a truth that people (and especially men) are afraid to live by: You are responsible for your own feelings.
Have you ever said, “You make me so mad”? No, they don’t.
Maybe you have been schooled a bit so instead you passively aggressively said, “When you do X, it makes me angry.” But that just shifts the responsibility from your target (we’ll call them the “blamee” to your “blamer”) to the blamee’s behavior.
Either way, you have assigned responsibility out there instead of in here.
By so doing, you have delivered your power to someone else or, worse yet, to an inanimate concept associated with someone else. Could this be more obtuse?
“Who says men don’t like to talk about their feelings?” click to tweet
Do you wish you weren’t so hateful/fearful/despairing/humiliated? The straightforward solution is: don’t. Don’t feel that way. Because you get to choose how you feel. Imagine the freedom you have to just feel otherwise. Picture the power in it. Conceive of the notion that you are in charge.
When you own the truth about the source of your feelings, you create a whole new relationship with them. You because the master instead of the slave.
So when have you found it surprisingly hard to man up and take responsibility for your own feelings? How did you get past it? Tell us about it by commenting below.
Photo credit: Scarycrow
So what am I supposed to do about feeling a certain way? It happens before I can make any decisions about it. Once I feel mad, I’m mad. Now what?
There are a couple of steps to this process. The first step is to be aware that you had a certain feeling. Right now you are going on “muscle memory”: something happens, you react with anger. Its action -> reaction. There is no thought and no choice in this process. But look, just from reading this you now have a new process: action -> reaction -> thought. This is an improvement but don’t stop here. Next, move to: action -> reaction -> thought -> new action. Make the choice to not stay mad. This is better but you can do one better. Finally, move to: action -> thought -> new action. It’s just a new habit. It doesn’t even take that much practice. Take charge of your feelings, they work for you.
i tried this method but but what if the other person keep bugging you and presses your buttons
As you note, they are YOUR buttons. You choose what your buttons are wired to, or even if you have buttons at all. This is where the rubber meets the road. Own your own response. Do not cede them your power by allowing a button to exist that gives someone else control over you.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you really don’t like it when someone leaves the cap off the toothpaste. You’ve got loads of good reasons too: the toothpaste dries out, toothpaste isn’t free, the cap can get dropped somewhere unsanitary, and your dear departed mother always put it back on. So when someone leaves it off, they clearly are wasteful, dirty, and disrespectful. Except…none of those judgments are true because none of your “rules” are the truth, they are just preferences. There are other ways to get your preferences if someone doesn’t share them. Get your own tube for instance. Put it someplace inconvenient for them if you have to. See the world as it is and work with it.
Thank you, Kenneth, for the very clear description of how to insert “thought” into the “action -> reaction” sequence. When we take 100% responsibility for our actions and reactions, we no longer have to be swept about by other peoples’ behaviors or emotions and we experience true and lasting FREEDOM! Isn’t this what most men crave?