In a real baseball game, after you run around the bases, you must sit
down for a while and wait your next time at bat. Not so here. In this game
you can go around the bases again right away, if you don’t yet feel the
passion you want after your first circuit.
How do you feel now? Do you feel more motivated to achieve your
goal? Are you emotionally involved in attaining it? Can you truly appreci-
ate where you will be when you achieve your goal? Now keep going.
Don’t stop here.What We Control
The impossible struggle to control those things we have no control
over represents a significant waste of energy. Therefore, a brief dis-
cussion about the things that we do control seems in order, even if
it is elementary for some.
We control our major body movements: walking, writing, and
the like. Minor body movements such as blinking, digestion, and
perspiration are beyond our control. We control our thoughts.
Regardless of the situation, we have the freedom to think what-
ever we like. An offensive person may be behaving badly to make
you upset; or she could just have learned that her husband has a
terminal disease. Not only may you never know the cause of the
offensive behavior, you are completely free to come to any con-
clusion about its cause. Even in the midst of your worst obsessive
thinking, you can catch yourself doing it and decideto think about
something different.
We control what we put into our mouths. Judging by the num-
ber of diet books for sale, the exercise of this choice troubles many
people. We control what comes out of our mouths (and what does
not). This means we are responsible for what we say and for keep-
ing our word. Errors of omission matter, also. We are responsible
for the times that we neglected to speak up to ask for what we want,
failed to point out injustice, or failed to say no when we would have
been better off doing so.
We also control how we interpret our feelings. We don’t control
the feelings themselves, because they are stored and generated by
our unconscious mind. That we feel sad related to loss, afraid re-
lated to danger, and angry related to unfulfilled expectations is part
of the human condition. However, each of us has a personal choice
about how we interpret the energy of feelings and then, based on
that interpretation, how we respond.
Although it appears that many humans would wish it different,52 The Emotional Dynamics of Change