…is difficult if you are emotionally involved in a situation. Even if you have an extra-good radar for the truth, as I do, if you add emotions, the lie-dar gets fuzzy, making the truth harder and more challenging to decipher.
As long as you remain emotional, you’re likely heading down a dangerous path if you have to act or make decisions!
I believe that as humans, we have two conscious brains for thought: our emotional brain and our logical brain. I also believe that it is critical to be able to differentiate between our emotional brain and our logical brain. It’s quite easy to do, but you must be disciplined with yourself in order to do it.
When we endure a painful situation, our emotional mind starts playing tricks with our head. It keeps “replaying” over and over again the good memories of things we’ve lost, as if we can have them back: “if only…” Or it makes a difficult situation seem outright desperate. Our emotional mind makes us feel like we’ve been stuck into a dark abyss that has absolutely no way out (or only one out: the wrong one!). Our emotional mind torments us, cripples us and keeps us in a limbo situation. It doesn’t ever give us peace or resolve.
We can be having a good day (trying to get back on our feet) when “WHAM!” our emotional mind decides it is time for us to remember something “oh, so sweet” that is now gone (your children in divorce, a failed relationship, a loved one, etc). Our emotional mind is the one that moves us to tears in difficult situations and makes us torn about what to do! It is deceptive, and represents a trickery to our sanity. It paints things rosier-than-rosy and blacker-than-black. Our emotional mind is very dramatic.
Your logical mind, however, does not trick you. It is honest and straight to the point. However, like the devil and the angel, the angel doesn’t always prevail unless you force it to. You have to consciously work at being logical and at denying your emotional mind the liberty to sabotage you.
Your emotions will never be up to any good in difficult situations. This is when they will not be trustworthy—only your logic will be…
When you start to feel overwhelmed with either happy past memories of what was, or you get overburdened with all that you don’t have now, you have to stop your mind from creating all those vivid thoughts of lost times. You have to stop it dead in its tracks and say to yourself, “That’s the past—this is now. Where can I go from here? Today is the first day of the rest of my life.”
Then you have to force yourself to see the truth. Was it really that rosy (or is it that dark)? What it really that good (or bad)? Weren’t there problems that caused things to get to this point (There always are!!)?
What were those problems?
The problems you think about are your truth. They will be logical occurrences that happened to bring you where you are today. Write down the problems that popped up before things got to that stage of emotional torment. Own them, claim them, and then each time your brain plays tricks on you and you start to get emotional, pull them out, read them, and remember them. Then continue to take steps to move forward.
By doing this, you will logically deprive your emotions, and your brain will slowly clear. You will start to think rationally. With that, logically you will see problems for what they are, and you will see the truth about how to resolve your situation. It may take a few days, but if you are vigilant, the truth will come so long as you stay in your logical mind and deny your emotions by pushing them out of your head. You can succeed and find your truth!
When I am really having a difficult time deciphering the truth, I ask myself:
Is this fear?
Or is this what I really believe to be the truth?
If I am facing something fearful, I realize that I am dealing with my emotions, so I dig deeper. I dig until I know I see the truth and I know I have no fear. You will know the truth—you will feel it. You will feel confident and strong. Lies makes us feel weak, and vulnerable, and afraid. Emotions can deceive us, make us feel weak and incapable. Just remember that.