The messed up experiment I conducted on my daughter and what it taught me

Thought precedes emotion

I did an experiment on my daughter a few years ago. When I picked her up from school, she was in a happy mood. I asked why and she said it was because there was a birthday party at school and they had cake and lots of candy. I told her I missed my daddy, her grandpa who passed recently. She suddenly became quiet and her mood changed. I asked what was wrong. She said she was sad because she missed Grandpa too.

I said, “How? You were so happy a few seconds ago.”

She said, “Yeah, but I just thought of Grandpa and I miss him.” Her smile turned into a frown.

Then happily, I said tell me all about the birthday party. How old is your friend today? What color was the cake?

She thought of that and she was jumping up and down in excitement again, answering all my questions. Her frown turned into a smile.

Then I did it again. I said, “Hmm, I really miss my dad today.”

She stopped laughing and got quiet. Again I asked what was wrong. She said she was sad because she also missed her grandpa.

Then I smiled and said it’s okay, Grandpa is okay and hugged her. Then I did it again. I asked if the whole class sang Happy Birthday to her friend. She said yeah they did, and she was back to being happy telling me all about her great day at school.

This doesn’t just work with kids. It can work with anybody. If you can see how this will work, it can be a game-changer for you.

Thought becomes things! They become the things you feel. If you can control the things you think, you can control the things you feel. If you can change the thoughts in your head like I made my daughter do, you can change the emotions you feel like she did. When you think peaceful thoughts, you feel at peace. When you think happy thoughts, you feel happy. You never feel angry when you think peaceful thoughts and you’re never at peace thinking angry thoughts. So, to master your emotions, you must learn to master your thinking. You must learn how to shift your thoughts when you know the emotions that will follow won’t feel good. It only takes a thought to stop yourself from breaking down.

If you feel sadness coming on, it only takes a change of thought to stop the emotion of sadness in its tracks. If you feel angry and you can quickly change the way you see things, the things you’re looking at will change. If you can think of a different thought, you can stop yourself from putting a hole in the door.

Whoever controls your thoughts controls you

In the experiment I conducted on my daughter, you might think I was messed up for me to mess with her in that way and it was. It is messed up when we allow people to mess with our thoughts.

I was controlling her thoughts, so I was controlling her emotions. At that moment, I was controlling her.

Whoever controls your thoughts controls you. If your mother controls your thoughts, she controls you. If your partner controls your thoughts, he or she controls your feelings and, therefore, controls you. If it’s your boss, he or she rules you. If it’s social media, television, or the news, then it controls you.

This experiment proved that not everything you think belongs to you. Everything you think is a result of something.

My daughter’s own thoughts were happiness. That’s how she was feeling before I came along. I put sad thoughts into her head and she reacted to it. This shows how important it is to understand that not everything you think is yours.

When you’re doing just fine and you turn on the news and what you hear makes you upset, then you pick up emotion (energy in motion) that doesn’t belong to you. When you’re happy and your friend comes over and tells you something and now you feel down, you pick up energy that doesn’t belong to you.

Emotions do not have intellect

Emotions don’t have intellect, but you do. Your emotions don’t think. They do not have a mind of their own. They don’t know what to think unless you do. They merely follow your thoughts to stimulate feelings.

Without thoughts, there are no emotions.

To feel happy, it takes a happy thought. To feel sadness, it takes a sad thought. Whatever you think, you feel. You can have emotional intelligence so you can control your thoughts and emotions.

To have emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, master, and rule your own emotions. It’s the ability to perceive thoughts and discern which are yours and which don’t belong to you.

When you think of something that produces a highly charged emotion, emotional intelligence will help you first take the thought captive and then evaluate it before reacting or responding. This allows you to hold your emotions back for a while so you can think more rationally about the situation before reacting.

Channeling thoughts

Sometimes you can’t control your thoughts because there’s too much going on in your world and other times you can’t control your thoughts because they don’t belong to you. Regardless of the reason you’re battling your thoughts, they’re going to keep coming until you turn them into something.

When you feel attacked and overcome by painful, intrusive, annoying, triggering thoughts that you didn’t invite, the easiest way to let them pass is through you. The trick is to get them out and lay them out in the open so you can rise above and look at them from a different angle. When they are out in the open, you can observe them for what they are and then decide what to do with them, whether to preserve or discard them.

There are many ways to preserve your thoughts. Your life is a story and your thoughts help you write it. When your thoughts have become things — words — in front of you, you can turn them into stories. Writing and speaking are powerful ways to rise above thoughts and look at them clearly.

If a thought is in your head, then a thing is in your mind and the thing needs your attention. Unless the thought doesn’t belong to you, your thoughts are prompts to address an issue in your subconscious mind.

When you’ve addressed the things lingering in your subconscious and your mind is cleared, then you can focus on turning thoughts into valuable things like a book, a podcast, an article, a song, a movie, a tweet, or a text message shared with a friend.

Thoughts are powerful things and you have the power over the things you create. You can channel thoughts into works of art that inspire you and anyone who comes in contact with it. You can’t turn thoughts into things? Then turn them into trash and discard or recycle them.

And when you don’t even know what your thoughts mean or why they’re there, then look to the spirit that lives within you. For who knows a person’s thoughts better than the spirit that lives inside of him?

For the messed up experiment I did on my daughter that day, I make up for it these days by filling her mind only with thoughts of Barbie dolls, big tubs of candy, days at the beach, and slices of cake just because it's today.

She’s as happy as she was created to be.