Only I can know how I feel, only you can know and experience how you feel. Don’t let others remove from you that exactness.

Why do people insist on telling me how I feel?

Or putting it the other way, why do people try to deny how I feel…. even when I clearly state it.

Politicians and the likes are one thing, they are masters at it, they make a living from it.

(don’t get me going on politics… I will loose myself and it will make me feel frustrated and angry)

Also, everyone from media to marketing will suggest how I might be feeling, again they are in it for the money. But when it is a closer circle of friends and family who brush over, rush past or deny how I am feeling because they have their own interpretation of how I feel then, I will state again, clearly. This is how I feel.

Everyone has an opinion… it is not a time for an opinion. Informed or not.

You are not me. You don’t get to decide how I feel.

I don’t get to decide how you feel.

What I do suggest is that you take the time to dig deep into how you feel and get clear on the words to describe the feeling.

I have said this before in a post, it is so much more helpful to your own mindset when you pause, reflect deeply and then put into words how you actually feel.

Proper diagnosis is the start of a great recovery to any kind of change.

Meditation and journaling are great tools to get to know your thoughts and build clarity.

Getting clear how you feel is a starting point and only you can do that, everyone else can only impact on how you feel.

You can only impact on how others feel, you can not tell them how to feel or how they feel.

Likewise. They impact on you. You can make your own choice how you feel about that and who you give the permissions to that will do that.

You can choose to surround yourself with people who positively impact on how you feel, choose to surround yourself with people who help support you through any change in mood and that they listen and understand your feeling…

or you can choose to surround yourself with people who just have a knack of pissing you right off!!

Your choice.

The same is said about your choice in how you impact on other people… are you the one that is doing the pissing off?

You can also choose how you impact others.

Be nice.

(‘Nice’ is a word that is often underused and gets a bad press, but stop to think about this word – it’s not a bad word, ‘not nice’ is the opposite and the bad version of it)

Be nice to each other.

In the words of the stoic philosopher, Seneca; ‘practice the art of having no opinion’ because opinions are reactions and often unrelated to what is happening in that moment…

So hold your opinion to yourself…

Listen to how the person is feeling, understand it and ask how you can help.

That is the nice thing to do.