-Devlyn Steele

As John sat in my office, I heard the familiar words uttered about how his wife got him so mad. He told me what she did and said, and then how he reacted and how they had a huge fight. Even discussing it charged him emotionally and he got mad once again. Countless clients tell me about husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, family members, bosses, coworkers, bank tellers, the waitress or waiter, or just a random stranger that gets them furious and what they did in response.

There is always something or someone doing something that is responsible for how we feel and how we react. We have all been there and/or keep going there, pointing fingers blaming and or complaining about this or that. There are things that we do not like and these people or events are the cause of how we behave. The bottom line is that we are not responsible.

In an attempt to discuss these episodes, often I am met with this statement, "If you were in this situation with this happening you would react the same way ... any reasonable person would!"  There is always a reason other than the responsibility for our behavior being ourselves. In truth, this statement is half true. There are two parts to every story, how we feel and how we act. The part that is true that how a situation makes us feel might be totally reasonable.

If you are in a parking lot and another person backs into your car without looking. You jump out of your car and see the damage and you feel angry, upset and annoyed. Feeling that way might be completely normal and reasonable. That is how you feel, the next part is what do you do with those feelings, meaning how do you behave? The behavior has no set rule in how a person will react. A person could get back into their car, open the glove box pull out a gun and shoot the person driving the other car, or could take it down a level, and just pull the person out of the car and beat them up, or take it down another level and simple go scream at the person, or take it down many levels and just politely ask to exchange information. 

What is true, is that we might not always control how we feel, or that feeling certain ways can be said to be reasonable, however how we behave is always up to us. That is one of the ways that separates us from other animals, the ability to choose responses and not let our feelings dictate them. We do it all day long. We might not feel like going to school or work, but we do...at least I hope you do. We might feel like eating, but we decide when and what to eat regardless of how we feel, again I hope you can. We might feel sexual desire throughout the day, but we don't just grab strangers on the street. Once again, at least I hope you don't...on second thought, maybe it would be more fun if we did?

Of course not, if we let our feelings dictate our impulses, we would be out of control. What we need to realize is that how we feel is how we feel, how we act is up to us. To say differently is to say that we are slaves to situations. That a situation has the control over us ordering us to behave a certain way. In essence then, we are puppets on a string and the situation controls the string and makes us act accordingly. Since we are aware that there is a wide range of responses to any given situation, we know that the situation does not control the shots, we do.

What I always explain to my clients, is that either you are a slave to a situation, giving up control and not taking responsibility for your behavior, or you are a master, deciding how you act. A true master not only owns their behavior, but behaves in manner to produce a positive outcome. Rip off the chains that hold you down that keep you a slave to the events in your life and don't use statements like, "I did what I did because of what so and so was doing or because of what was happening." Become a master and master your life.

Slave or master...it is up to you.