Controlling Our Feelings

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We are controlled by our feelings.

Wealth Managers tell me their biggest problem is to get their clients to make decisions based on what is true and good rather than emotions and fears. This is the crisis of our age.

We act on emotions, preferences, likes and dislikes rather than truth and goodness.

Thinking should rule our lives, not feeling.

However, most people do not know how the soul was designed to function therefore they are not using it properly to make good decisions.

There are three powers of the Soul

1.  The intellect perceives (becomes aware of) reality

a.  through the five senses, the imagination or the memory

b.  and presents it to the passions as “Hey, this is good for me” or “Hey, this is bad for me."

2.  The passions respond to what the Intellect presented with, “I like this,” prompting the will to choose it; or “I dislike that,” prompting the will to avoid it.

3.  The will chooses the apparent good; avoids the evil

The intellect perceiving what is true and good or false and bad  should guide our decisions – not our feelings.

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Our Problem: We don’t exercise our intellect.

We let it go to sleep.

This is very dangerous because our passions our emotions or feelings are always awake and active. And since the intellect is asleep at the wheel, the feelings take over and drive.

Thinking should rule our life, but it takes effort to exercise the intellect and think. It is hard to think and it is easier to feel.

So we let feelings rule our life.

Our feelings were not meant to rule.

The passions are good servants and bad masters.

Our feelings were not made to appraise what is true and good or false and evil. That is the job of the intellect. Feelings only know what they like and dislike.

We are ruled by likes and dislikes (that is how we came to be servants of the social media Kingdom)

With God living through us and our cooperation, our soul can be healed by three practices:

·       Daily Meditation

·       Exercising the Intellect by commanding

·       Exercising the Will by checking

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Daily Meditation is the best way to begin to exercise your intellect.

Our sense of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smelling, which drive our likes and dislikes, will rule our lives like animals ruled by instincts unless we go to a place that is without distraction and think and talk to God with our mind.

In daily meditation we set aside enough time to think deeply. Thirty minutes is the bare minimum for deep thinking.

Remove all distractions.

Then read or listen or recall something from the Word of God in Scripture, Tradition or the Magisterium and think about it. Reflect on it. Try to understand it. Talk to God about it with your mind.

Apply it to your life and make a firm resolution to put it into practice.

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Our feelings can be harnessed re-shaped (changed) by exercising the intellect and the will.

Beginning with the Intellect we can Cultivate, elicit or Command the right feeling by

·       Thinking, imagining, visualizing or anticipating some good thing

·       Causing the right feeling

·       Prompting the right action in the will because we desire what looks good to us.

I really like bread. Fresh hot bread with lots of butter is so pleasing. But lots of bread makes me feel crummy later. If I think about how rotten bread makes me feel, if I think about the displeasing aspects of bread before I eat it, my intellect telling my feelings that it is not good for me, then my feelings eventually get the right information and respond with a big dislike. Then my feelings prompt my will not to choose bread but something else. Eventually, my desires are trained and I don’t even desire bread any more. By thinking of the displeasing aspects of something our emotions can be trained to respond with dislike rather than like.

It works the other way as well. I used to feel like prayer was no fun. Very displeasing. I did not like it. But then I thought about all the great benefits of prayer, like God directing me rather than me always making a dumpster fire out of my life. Prayer became more pleasing in my mind and my feelings responded with good feelings toward prayer, prompting me to choose to spend time in prayer. Thinking of the pleasing or displeasing aspects of things will form our passions to respond appropriately.

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The 3rd Way to form our Feelings is by Checking  

The will can reshape wrong feelings by choosing not to follow the wrong passion – which is Temperance; or by choosing the right action – which is Fortitude.

I know intellectually that exercise is good for me. But at first I did not feel like working out. I felt like taking a nap, eating, getting something else done – almost anything seemed more pleasing than working out. I had to check the wrong feeling, meaning, refuse to give into it; then use my will to make the choice to walk out the door and go for the walk or get to the gym. As soon as I made the choice and took action the rest followed, and it became easier and easier.

·       If you choose to act a certain way enough

·       You begin to like it – it becomes pleasing to the emotions and then we have a good habit.

So don’t live like a brain dead pile of urges. Take the time to reflect on what really matters, what your life should be like. Then train you’re the powers of your soul and get into the right habits - and become the saint you were made to be.