Week 2 - Lesson 6

Imagine if the things that make you upset, mad, or angry right now didn’t have to make you angry any longer. How would that make you feel? Your partner says or does something that usually triggers your anger leading to an argument. What if it didn’t have to? How might that impact your marriage?

Tony Robbins has helped millions of people around the globe to understand themselves better and achieve great success. His four and five-day events cost thousands of dollars to attend, hold eight to eleven thousand people, and sell out continuously. For over 40 years, he’s refined his craft of teaching people how to master their emotions.

I have been a student of Tony’s for many years. I have many of his DVD and CD programs. In late 2017 I attended his 4-day event called Unleash the Power Within (UPW). That event is nothing short of life-changing. I recommend it to everyone.

In this lesson, I will summarize a couple of Tony’s core teachings. If you follow along and put this lesson into practice, you will start to see changes within yourself that empower you. When you have better control of your emotions, you stop allowing other people to control you, and you put yourself in control.

Don’t worry, this is not a lesson in psychobabble. Everything here is time-tested and used by millions of people. When I talk about my services being holistic, this is an example of what I am referring to. This lesson impacts your overall happiness in life, not just your marriage.

If you’ve received my emails for any length of time, you know about my past struggles with road rage. I would put myself into situations where a school bus, farm vehicle, or any other slow-moving vehicle would trigger me to get angry behind the wheel. After applying what Tony teaches, I am now equipped to handle such situations and frequently laugh off what once used to make me angry.

What I am about to reveal is not something you read once, and you are healed. No. Emotional control works only with practice. The more you practice it, the better you will become. If you stop practicing it, you can easily slip back into your old ways, allowing others to trigger your anger and raw emotions. With practice, you will discover patterns that can alert you, allowing you to change emotional course and guide you to empowerment.

What do Robin Williams, John Belushi, and Anthony Bourdain have in common? They are celebrities who died when, to many, they had everything going for them. They had countless fans, money, and fame. Yet, they didn’t have one thing they needed – emotional control.

How many times do we hear about such celebrities turning to drugs or alcohol to find peace? How many commit suicide to escape some internal torment?

We all have some similarities to these celebrities. We all have our own ways to cope and escape from internal pain. Some may turn to anger. Other may turn to drugs or alcohol. Others yet turn to porn, sex, or violence. Regardless of the outlet, how we cope with our internal struggles, pain, and emotions has a direct impact on our lives and marriage.

State – How We Feel in the Moment

How you feel right now is a result of your state. If you feel confident, secure, happy, or relaxed, that is a result of your state. If you feel anxious, angry, uneasy, or nervous, that is also a result of your state.

The quality of your state has a direct impact on the decisions you make.

Let’s say that your neighbor has a guest in from out of town. This guest is in a bedroom by themselves. The guest is very depressed.

Describe how the guest appears. Is the head looking up or down? Is the breathing full or shallow? Are the shoulders back or forward? Is the back upright or slouched? Is the guest thinking about something happy or sad?

If you answered down, shallow, forward, slouched, and sad, how did you know?

How is it that without seeing this person, you can pretty well describe how they look? The answer is because you have probably at some point in your life been depressed and this is how you appeared. Am I right?

The good news is that your emotions do not have to control you. You can control your emotions.

Your state is controlled by three things - physiology, focus, and language.

Physiology

Your body has a lot to do with your emotions. You see two people walking down a hallway at work. One is walking slowly, the head is down, shoulders are slumped, and you can see that their breathing is rather shallow. Coming up behind them is another person who is walking fast, the head is up, shoulders are back, arms are swinging, and there is a big smile on their face.

You can tell the moods of these folks very quickly.

Do you want to feel confident? Act confident!
Do you want to feel happier? Act happy!
Do you want to feel more energy? Act energized!

Can it be that simple? Yes, indeed! Have you ever heard the phrase “fake it until you make it?” It’s true. Act the way you want to feel, and you’ll start feeling that way.

Motion creates emotion.

Science research tells us that when we move, we stir up emotions within our body.
Walk with purpose. Anytime you walk, walk briskly, put the shoulders back, smile, and keep the head up.

Your body is a tool for your emotions, not of your emotions. Change your bodily actions, and you’ll start to change your emotions.

Now, think of a time you were very sad or depressed. Relive it. Think about that time you were very sad. What was happening? Who was there with you? What was your breathing like? Were you tense or relaxed?

When you compare how you move your body when you are happy and excited versus when you are sad or depressed, you should discover you do indeed move your body differently.

Focus

What you focus on greatly impacts your emotions. To me, this is my number one strategy to change my emotions.

Think better thoughts, and you’ll improve your emotions and how you feel.

Too often, when faced with a problem, we focus on the problem. Using the 80/20 rule, 80% of our thinking time should be on the solution and only 20% on the problem. Most people reverse that and spend 80% of their time on the problem, complaining to everyone who will listen, and focus on how bad the situation is.

Our internal questions frame our thinking. Again, when faced with a problem, people too often ask themselves “why do things like this always happen to me?” That’s an awful question. First, problems like this more than likely don’t always happen to you. Second, if you ask yourself that question, your mind will give you an answer that is not going to be productive. The question is based on a false premise.

Ask better questions of yourself, and you’ll get better answers. A husband is at home while the wife is doing some food shopping. He is tasked with vacuuming the house while she is gone. He hates to vacuum. He’s bummed that he has to do it. Can you guess what his body language is like? What if his focus, his internal question, was not “why do I have to do the vacuuming,” but rather something like “how can I do the vacuuming and have fun while doing it?” Maybe he’ll put on some music he hasn’t listened to in a while, or think about their next great vacation.

Another question he could ask himself is not about what to do while vacuuming, but rather, what can he reward himself with when the vacuuming is completed.

The questions we ask ourselves are critical to emotional control. The better the question, the better the answer. Focusing on quality questions improves emotions.

TASK #2: Assess where you tend to put your focus. Think of the last time you struggled with your marriage. What was it about? What were you thinking about during this time? Where was your focus? Did you try to understand the situation, and then come up with a solution, or did you focus on the pain of the problem? Is this focus pattern common? Think about other times you faced an argument or some difficulty. Where do you commonly put your focus?

Language

The language we use has a direct impact on our emotions. Words have power. We hear the words we use and supply emotions to those words.

You have a headache. Someone asks you how you are feeling. If you reply back that you have a severe pounding migraine, you are telling yourself it is very bad. With a severe pounding migraine, you might expect yourself to feel awful, put your head down, and talk slowly. However, if you reply that you have a mild tension headache, you will act very differently.

Your wife confronts you about needing to fix the leaking bathroom sink. She talks to you harshly. You reply back harshly saying that her constant bitching won’t get it fixed and you’ll get to it when she gets off your back. A better response might be to thank your wife for reminding you of the leaking sink. It was careless of you not considering her feelings by not tending to it for so long.

In times of conflict, it is better to tone down the language. Use different words. We all have favorite words we like to use. If I were to say “you make me furious when you do that” has a very different meaning than if I were to say “I feel like I’m all alone when you do that.”

Practice changing some words you use. Tone down the intensity of negative words.

Responsibility

Your emotional state is a reflection of your physiology, focus, and language. All three play important roles. There is another element that also plays an important part in your emotional control; that of responsibility.

You and only you are responsible for the emotions you feel. No one else MAKES you feel anything.

If you are of the belief that your partner makes you angry when they do or do not do something, I challenge you to change that belief. Believing that someone else can make you feel angry, sad, disgusted, happy, joyful, or whatever would mean that they control you.

When you admit that someone can push your buttons, or trigger you, you are admitting that they have control over you. Do you really want others to have control over you? Do they lead you around by a chain? That’s what having control over you would be like.
When you take responsibility for your emotions, you break their control over you.

You break the chain!

That’s how I overcame my road rage. I took responsibility for my emotions.

When Tony Robbins suggested that when I got angry behind the wheel because they were driving too slow, I was allowing them to take control of my emotions. I surrendered control of my emotions to someone I didn’t even know. That shocked me! When I took responsibility for my emotions, I realized I was in charge. When I got behind a slow person that may cause me to be late for an appointment, I realized it was my fault. I should have left a few minutes earlier. If I did, I wouldn’t have gotten behind that particular driver. It was my behavior, getting a late start, that drove my anger, not the other driver.

When you allow your partner to control your emotions, you are handing the chain to them to do with as they wish. Is that what you want?

Take responsibility for your emotions, and control your physiology, focus, and language.
It will get easier over time. In the beginning, you have to catch yourself when you start feeling the blood pressure rising. When you start getting angry, take control of yourself. Instead of feeling your muscles tightening, relax your muscles (physiology). Instead of talking fast, slow down your rate of speech (physiology). Instead of assuming negative intent, ask yourself a better question, perhaps something like “what happened during the day to have her react in such a way (focus)?” Instead of using harsh, bombastic words, tone the language down. Phrase things regarding how you feel, instead of what they are doing (language).

Once you start taking emotional control, your life will change. Walk down the street exhibiting empowerment. Show confidence when meeting with the boss. Be in control with family members who may have pushed your buttons in the past. In all aspects of your life, emotional control is power.

Blueprints

State refers to how you are feeling in the present. A blueprint is a structure of beliefs, values, and rules. A blueprint is how we expect something to be. We all have many blueprints. You have a blueprint about marriage. You have a blueprint about how work should be. You have a blueprint for money. You have a blueprint about how friends should act. You have blueprints for many aspects of your life.

Blueprints are created through your life experiences. Your childhood experiences have a huge impact on your blueprints. How you remember your parents and their marriage has an impact on your marriage blueprint.

Blueprints guide us subconsciously. Sometimes we can feel uneasy about something but not able to put our finger on what is causing the unease. When such is the case, we need to reevaluate what makes up our blueprints.

Feelings come from your present life conditions and your blueprints.

Consider your blueprint about money. What are your feelings about money? Is money good? Is money the root of all evil? Is your money situation what you expected it to be at this point in your life? Do you have the saving and retirement funds you expected to have at this point in life? If you are generally happy about your financial situation, it means your present life conditions meet your financial blueprint.

Does your marriage blueprint meet your current life conditions? If you were expecting your marriage to be happier than it is at this point in life, your current life conditions do not meet your marriage blueprint.

Blueprints can be changed. Blueprints are changed by examining the meaning we assign to our beliefs, values, and rules for life.

“Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning you give it.”
-Tony Robbins.

Have you ever come across a situation where you believed something to be true, only to find out much later that it wasn’t? Perhaps you believed someone said something negative about you. For years you treated that person and made decisions based on that belief. How did you feel when you learned it was not true?

Now is the time to evaluate your beliefs and meanings regarding marriage. Do this exercise. Take plenty of time to dig deep and reveal what you truly believe.

I want you to start thinking about your marriage blueprint. Take some time to think about these questions. Write out your answers. If your partner is doing this with you, both should answer these questions individually.

If your partner completes this exercise, swap your answers and discuss both sets of answers.

If you are working solo, review your answers and make a note of where there are differences between current life conditions and your blueprint. Those are the areas that need work.