How do we control our emotions more?

Auto-generated transcript. It may contain mistakes.

How do we control our emotions more? Think of the last time you been around a kid that absolutely loses it. Freaking out, yelling. They could be at the dinner table if you got kids, or freaking out in public in the middle of a grocery store. They don't care who's around. Now, our emotions may not be as public, but we feel them just as much. When I got my own kid, I learned this incredibly helpful hack. Not just to calm her down, but also helps me control my emotions better. Okay, so imagine a kid full freakout mode. In the brain, what is happening is there's an emotional part and a reasoning part. Now, during the freakout, the emotional part is taking over. And so, the reasoning part starts to shut down cuz they don't operate at the same time. Unless you're able to somehow trigger the reasoning part of the brain again. So, practically, here's what it looks like. When my daughter is freaking out, maybe because she wanted a different blanket than the one I gave her. Psychology says, when people are freaking out and the emotional part of the brain has taken over, you ask a question that's completely unrelated to what is happening. So, my daughter's freaking out about the blanket, I will ask her, "What's that on your shirt?" Through tears, she'll be like, "What?" And like, "That's really cool. What's that on your shirt?" Again, completely unrelated. She might say like, a a dinosaur. You see what's happening? The reasoning part is starting to open up and trigger. And at that point, I'll just start encouraging her. I think it's a really cool dinosaur. I love that you chose to wear pink today. And it just diffuses her. And I'll ask, "Do you want a hug?" And everything changes. Starts to calm down. "Yeah, I want a hug." It becomes more reasonable. We've taken a level 100 emotion down to like 10, where we can have a conversation again. Now, we're not all kids, but we do have the same things happening in our brains. And it's not always going to be helpful to ask random questions because we're all so so determined and focused. We're not going to talk about a dinosaur because somebody else asked us a question while we're freaking out. So, how do you break out of that? Now, for me, I'm most susceptible to the emotion of anger. When I was in my teens and my 20s, I could go from zero to 100 and just get really upset and hold on to that. Now, I still get angry and upset, but I've used this hack to be able to turn it off, or at least reframe. And here's how. In the Bible, it says, "Where there is no revelation," which means vision from God, "people cast off restraint." Okay, so how does that help? Well, the second part of it says, "But blessed is the one who heeds wisdom's instruction." So, remember that hack. When we were so emotionally charged up, crying for no reason, just so angry, we need that third party to trigger a reset in our mind and help us calm the emotions and increase the reasoning. So, what I do now is I built in this habit that when I get upset, doesn't matter what emotion, I ask God, "What do you want me to do with this?" And sometimes, honestly, I will target those emotions toward God. I will express my anger to him. I will cry to him. The Bible says we can do that. It says, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Give all those emotions to God and say, "What do you want me to do with this?" And I'm opening the door for that ultimate third party that created me, knows how I'm wired, knows how the situation ends. I'm giving him the chance to give me direction. Remember it said, "Blessed is the one who heeds wisdom's instruction." And because we pause, we can receive a feeling from the Holy Spirit by reading scripture during that time, listening to worship music, or God could use somebody else to send us the perfect word at the right time. But, we have to be open to it to receive it, right? So, I'm praying that the next time you feel you're losing it, that for a millisecond you could pause, give it to God, and say, "What do you want me to do with this?" And just watch him move. We can do this. I'm praying for you tonight. God bless.