How to Stop Letting Your Emotions Run Your Life

One of the ideas that has changed my life the most is values-based living, something I became deeply interested in through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT.

For a long time, I lived much more reactively than I realized. If I felt something strongly, that feeling seemed to require a response. If I had an upsetting thought, I became involved with the thought. If I felt afraid, angry, rejected, insecure, discouraged, or overwhelmed, my behavior often became an extension of whatever was happening inside of me at that particular moment. I wasn’t necessarily asking myself, Who do I want to be here? I was responding to what I felt. And those are two very different ways of living.

Before going any further, I think it’s important to explain what I mean by the word values, because that word can carry a lot of baggage. When some people hear “values,” they immediately think of religious values, family values, cultural values, or a predetermined set of rules about what makes someone a good person. That’s not what I mean here. In the context of values-based living, you could almost replace the word values with principles, what matters, or chosen ways of being.

I’m asking something much more personal. What actually matters to me? How do I want to move through the world? What qualities do I want my life to embody? When nobody else is defining “good” for me, what does good look like What kind of person do I want to become?

Your answers might include things like courage, curiosity, compassion, independence, honesty, creativity, health, adventure, connection, discipline, tenderness, learning, service, authenticity, or presence. And this is where values work becomes much deeper than simply making a list of admirable words.

It’s possible to inherit an entire system of values without ever stopping to ask whether those values were consciously chosen. We absorb ideas from our families, religions, communities, relationships, schools, cultures, and social expectations about who we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to care about.

Some of those inherited values may genuinely belong to us, but some may not. Values-based living gives us an opportunity to examine them. Not, What am I supposed to value but…What do I actually value?

For me, values work asks us to go even deeper. We inherit so many ideas about what we’re supposed to believe. We’re told what a good person looks like, what is right and wrong, what we should want, what we should reject, and sometimes even what we’re supposed to think and feel, but inherited beliefs and personally held values are not necessarily the same thing.

Part of becoming deeply rooted in ourselves is becoming willing to examine what we’ve inherited. I spent years questioning these inherited beliefs and values. I’ve had to ask myself questions like…Do I actually believe this? Does this principle reflect what I know, at the deepest level of myself, to be right and good? Does living this way make me more loving, whole, courageous, compassionate, honest, and connected? Is this something I consciously choose to organize my life around, or is it simply something I was taught I was supposed to value?

For me, this is profoundly spiritual. I believe that when we become quiet enough to be seated in the Self, underneath the conditioning, fear, expectations, roles, and constant noise of the mind, we come as close to direct contact with God as we can in this human experience. From that place, we may discover that some of the things we’ve been taught spiritually or religiously resonate deeply with us. We may also discover that some don’t. Something can have been taught to me as a religious value my entire life and, when I finally examine it honestly, I may realize that this isn’t actually something I value. This isn’t a principle I want to organize my life around.

That doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting spirituality or rejecting God. For me, it means the opposite. It means taking my spiritual life seriously enough to examine what I believe rather than simply inheriting someone else’s conclusions. Some religious teachings may become even more meaningful after that examination because I discover that I genuinely choose them. They aren’t mine simply because someone taught them to me. They’re mine because I’ve encountered them within myself and decided, Yes. This is how I want to live. Others may fall away. I think there is something deeply sacred about that discernment.

Values-based living isn’t about finding another external list of rules and becoming better at following it. It’s about becoming quiet enough, aware enough, and honest enough to ask…What do I know in my own spirit to be true? What matters deeply to me?What kind of human being do I want to be? And if I build my life around these principles, will they move me toward the person I believe I am here to become?

Now I don’t always get this right. Just the other day, I had a reactive moment in a store. That’s why this is called a practice. We continue to ask ourselves these questions. We continue to grow. There’s never a stopping point and when we are reactive, we lovingly reposition ourselves and try again in the next moment. There is no shame or judgment with this practice…only love.

Values are different from goals. A goal is something I can accomplish. I can graduate from college, lose 20 pounds, run a marathon, start a business, save a certain amount of money, or complete a fitness program. A value is a direction. I can value being disciplined, loving, curious, courageous, compassionate, healthy, present, independent, connected, or reliable. There isn’t a day when I finally accomplish “being compassionate” and cross it off my list.

Instead, life continually presents opportunities for me to move toward or away from the things I value. That distinction became incredibly important to me. I now ask myself, Is the action I’m about to take helping me become that person?

Feelings are information but they aren’t instructions. This may be one of the biggest changes values-based living has created in my life. I used to give my thoughts and feelings tremendous authority. If I thought something, I assumed the thought needed to be examined. If something hurt, I felt compelled to react to the hurt. If I felt anxious, I wanted to solve whatever my mind said was causing the anxiety. If I felt discouraged, stopping seemed reasonable. If I felt angry, responding from anger felt justified. There was very little space between. I thought. I felt. And then I reacted. The problem in that process is that our internal world changes constantly. We can feel confident in the morning and insecure that afternoon. We can feel deeply connected one day and disconnected the next. We can wake up motivated and lose that motivation three hours later. If our behavior is constantly organized around our current emotional state, our lives can become just as changeable as our emotions.

Values give us something more stable to organize our behavior around. That doesn’t mean emotions don’t matter. ACT isn’t about suppressing emotions. It isn’t pretending everything is fine. It isn’t positive thinking our way out of difficult experiences. Acceptance is actually right there in the name.

I can acknowledge that I’m angry, scared, jealous, hurt, discouraged, anxious, or that I’m having a thought that something terrible might happen. I don’t necessarily have to do anything about that feeling. I can let the feeling exist without immediately turning it into behavior.

I have always liked thinking of awareness as the second man in the room. Without awareness, there is just stimulus and response. Something happens. I think. I feel. I react. But awareness introduces another presence into that sequence.

Something different happens when we are in the practice of observing our thoughts. Awareness allows us to say…I notice what I’m thinking. I notice what I’m feeling. And now there is a little bit of space. Inside that space, I have choices.

I can ask in that space…What is happening inside of me right now? What is my mind telling me to do? If I follow that impulse, where does it take me? What matters to me here? Who am I trying to become? What action would move me toward that person?

Sometimes the space between feeling and action is only a few seconds but a few seconds can interrupt a pattern you’ve been repeating for years. This is how values interrupt emotional reactivity. Values don’t make emotions disappear. They interrupt the assumption that emotion must become behavior. Values-based living is about making our decisions consciously. The emotion doesn’t make the decision by itself anymore.

I have become far less interested in trying to control every thought and feeling I have. I don’t need to win an argument with my mind before I live my life. I don’t have to feel confident before doing something courageous. I don’t have to feel motivated before behaving with discipline. I don’t have to eliminate anxiety before doing something meaningful. I don’t have to stop feeling hurt before responding with integrity. I don’t have to stop being afraid before moving toward something important. And I don’t have to believe every thought simply because my brain produced it.

Instead, I can notice what is happening internally and come back to something much more useful: What kind of woman do I want to be in this moment? That question brings me back to myself.

I want you to understand though that in this practice, values aren’t rules for being perfect. Values-based living can easily become another way to beat ourselves up if we aren’t careful.

We’re human. We will react sometimes. We will avoid things. We will make decisions we regret. We will get overwhelmed. We will behave in ways that aren’t consistent with who we want to be. Values aren’t a courtroom where we prosecute ourselves for failing. They’re a compass. If I realize I’ve wandered off course, I don’t need to spend three days hating myself for wandering. I can simply notice…This isn’t the direction I want to keep traveling. And turn.

The person you’re becoming is built in very small moments. My mantra has become..,I can feel something deeply and still choose my next action. My goal is to become someone who can experience the full range of being human without handing every passing thought and emotion control over the direction of my life. I want my life to be shaped less by whatever I happen to feel in a particular moment and more by what I have consciously decided matters to me.

I’d love to help you if reactivity is a struggle for you. Reach out and we’ll come up with a plan that helps you live a more conscious life.

Much love,

Melissa 💛