Positve Proactive Emotions

Sunday, March 31, 2013

What is your emotional cycle? We all have one? Do you have a cycle of positive proactive emotions or negative re-active emotions? In order to create more joy in our lives, we need to learn how to create a cycle of emotions that lead to peace and joy. Christ desires for us to live in joy.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. John 15:11

  Many of us do well with positive emotions UNTIL someone “rains on our parade!” Then we often feel we are entitled to a time of self-pity and negativity. When circumstances don’t go our way or someone hurts us or makes us mad.

 

First of all, let’s make sure we understand what “negative emotions you believe you deserve” means.

 

• Holding grudges against someone who hurts us
• Sulking in response to being disappointed
• Giving others a cold shoulder if they’ve offended us
• Keeping an unforgiving spirit against someone
• Saying mean things
• Ignoring someone on purpose
• Going into our cave of seclusion
• Avoidance
• Procrastination
• Choosing to live in denial and ignorance
• Refusing to talk it out
• Being closed minded
• Being “snippety-snappity” – (My coined word but we all know what it means to snap at people)
• Being brash and harsh
• Having to be right
• Others? _____________________________________

We find ways to justify negative emotions that take us down into a pit of sadness, anger, and withdrawal. It’s important to examine each situation that has a potential to draw us down and examine what our overall goal is. Consider these questions:

• Do you want to be right or happy?
• Do these responses move you toward a goal for a joy-filled life or away from that goal?
• Do these responses bless others?
• Do these responses glorify God?

 If your goal is to live a life pleasing to God, one that draws you closer to him and to draw others to him, then do your emotions match your goal?

 

We all have negative triggers from time to time. A time of reflection allows us to think about how to effectively respond when we’ve been hurt.

Animals have trigger responses. They have reflexes that allow them to respond without thought. On the other hand, humans are the only known species to have highly developed communications skills. We are able to reflect and make judgments about our actions and others’ actions. God designed us with the ability to make moral choices. And God has given his most valued creation something more – the ability to pause between an action and our response. There is a gap between the two.

We get to choose how to respond. Even in a split second we can ask ourselves, “What is my goal in this situation?”

 

It is Christ’s desire that we be filled with the joy that only can be found through him. By being proactive about our emotional goals, we can be ready in the gap. What we do in the gap determines our joy level!