Feelings are our deepest friends. We feel and understand the world through them; they are always genuine. However, we try to push them down or ignore them or, even worse, try to control them directly. We can only lose when we fight with our feelings because we only generate stress, anxiety, and status when we don’t accept or understand ourselves.

One of the best advice we can get when in need is to let your feelings flow through you. Observe them, recognize them, and understand why this feeling is here now and what could be its message. It is OK to be sad sometimes. It is OK to be anxious, angry, happy, and excited. Feelings our responses to internal or external events happen now. Therefore, we don’t need to control them. Instead, understand why they are here, and if you want to control your feelings, you need to check your thoughts.

An event + your thoughts about it = how you feel about the event. Let’s see a classic storytelling example. When you have a challenging period, struggle with overcoming an obstacle, a break, or deliver a difficult task or project, you don’t feel joy or pride. Then you win somehow and look back to that period and feel something different. You don’t feel the anxiety anymore, but the feeling of success and pride.

We can control our feelings through our thoughts. How we think we feel is how we feel. Switching emotions on and off through thoughts is not easy, but that is the essence. I am alone now, and I am in desperate need of someone on my side. I feel sad and lonely. Then I shifted my focus and asked: “OK, how could I use this time to develop myself?” Then I start learning a new skill like cooking or dancing. Or I read a book waiting on the list for a long time. That is how we can influence our feelings through thoughts.

Change your perspective and narrative, and you change the entire scene. Someone is not texting you back for days, increasing your anxiety. “Did I say or do something wrong? Did something happen to her?” And then you might end up with a lot of stress just because you let your negative thoughts dominate your response. Turn the table now and also check the other side of the coin. The other may be only busy or want a better response and waiting for a moment when she can give her full attention to you. See the difference? Independently from thoughts, life is almost always more straightforward and positive than we think because we are wired to accept negative thoughts more easily.

So, don’t try to push it into the background when you get a feeling that makes you uncomfortable. Welcome it, then step back to observe why you feel that in the moment. Could it be an old and unhelpful habit? A false thought? You are playing the guessing game, and the negative thoughts won? Let’s do a fact-check, then. Don’t try to predict the future because you can’t control it. What you can control is what you think about the moment, which will influence how you feel.