Taking Responsibility for Your Feelings

     Is it possible to control your emotional outbursts?  Do you even want to?  Chopra, in The Soul of Leadership says that a great leader is able to control their feelings by being in touch with them.  We all have automatic responses; anger to someone telling you 'no'; defiance when someone tells you what to do; frustration when you get cut off in traffic.  Your reactions have been trained and there is a way to untrain them.  A leader needs to take responsibility for their feelings.
     Untraining your feelings means, first of all, noticing patterns.  If you automatically respond by doubting for example, or by pushing away new things, if you cringe in the face of change or of new people suddenly appearing in your life, step back and notice your feelings.  Then, wait and see, giving way to space.  Most often the first response will fade away and your soul will begin to unfold it's feelings, explains Chopra.  This gives rise to your natural response instead of your trained response.
     I had to put this into practice so I just asked Nate to make me mad.  (I know, I'm responsible for my feelings and no one can "make" me mad, but let's just go along with it, please?)  He kicked the side of my leg.  I was mad and startled for a second so I let that sit for a few seconds to see how I really feel to untrain my natural response of whining.  It actually became funny to me!  My true feelings were to take the situation light-heartedly.  What in your life do you automatically respond to instead of waiting a second to figure out how you really feel?