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Feelings are not just emotions that happen to you. Feelings are reactions you choose to have. If you are in charge of your own emotions, you don’t have to choose self-defeating reactions. Once you learn that you can feel what you choose to feel, you will be on the road to “intelligence”—a road where there are no bypaths that lead to N.B.D.’s. This road will be new because you’ll see a given emotion as a choice rather than as a condition of life. This is the very heart and soul of personal freedom.
You can attack the myth of not being in charge of your emotions through logic. By using a simple syllogism (a formulation in logic, in which you have a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion based upon the agreement between the two premises) you can begin the process of being in charge of yourself, both thinkingly and emotionally.
Logic—Syllogism
MAJOR PREMISE: Aristotle is a Man.
MINOR PREMISE: All men have facial hair.
CONCLUSION: ARISTOTLE HAS FACIAL HAIR.
Illogic—Syllogism
MAJOR PREMISE: Aristotle has facial hair.
MINOR PREMISE: All men have facial hair.
CONCLUSION: ARISTOTLE IS A MAN.
It is clear that you must be careful as you employ logic that your major andminor premises agree. In the second illustration, Aristotle could be an ape or a mole. Here is a logical exercise that can forever put to rest the notion that you cannot take charge of your own emotional world.
MAJOR PREMISE: I can control my thoughts.
MINOR PREMISE: My feelings come from my thoughts.
CONCLUSION: I can control my feelings
John the Ransford School of Philosophy and learn more
Your major premise is clear. You have the power to think whatever you choose to allow into your head. If something just “pops” into your head (You choose to put it there, though you may not know why), you still have the power to make it go away, and therefore you still control your mental world. I can say
to you, “Think of a pink antelope,” and you can turn it green, or make it an aardvark, or simply think of something else if you so choose.
You alone control what enters your head as a thought. If you don’t believe this, just answer this question, “If you don’t control your thoughts, who does?” Is it your spouse, or your boss, or your mamma? And if they control what you think, then send them off for therapy and you will instantly get better. But you really know otherwise.
You and only you control your thinking apparatus (other than under extreme kinds of brainwashing or conditioning experimentation settings which are not a part of your life). Your thoughts are your own, uniquely yours to keep, change, share, or contemplate. No one else can get inside your head and have your own thoughts as you experience them. You do indeed control your thoughts, and your brain is your own to use as you so determine.
Your minor premise is hardly debatable if you examine the research as well as your own common sense. You cannot have a feeling (emotion) without first having experienced a thought.
Take away your brain and your ability to “feel” is wiped out. A feeling is a physical reaction to a thought If you cry, or blush, or increase your heartbeat, or any of an interminable list of potential emotional reactions, you have first had a signal from your thinking center.
Once your thinking center is damaged or short-circuited, you cannot experience emotional reactions. With certain kinds of lesions in the brain you cannot even experience physical pain, and your hand could literally fry on a stove burner with no sensation of pain. You know that you cannot bypass your think-center and experience any feelings in your body. Thus your minor premise is lodged in truth.
Every feeling that you have was preceded by a thought, and without a brain you can have no feelings.
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