Even if all outer aspects of our lives seem wonderful, our emotions can still cause us to feel unhappy. Traumatic memories can stifle our development. Negative thought habits can fill us with feelings of frustration and powerlessness. Negative self-talk can cause us to sabotage any goals we set.

Emotions can be a tricky thing to understand, but it becomes easier when we consider that our emotions are fueled by our thoughts. If we THINK negatively about ourselves, we will FEEL badly about ourselves. If we focus on the negative in our lives, our lives will seem to have a negative theme. It’s all about what we focus on the most that determines how we feel.

Think about the last time your day took a sudden nosedive because of something simple. Let’s say you were driving to work, singing along with a song on the radio, and some jerk cut you off in traffic. Your first thought might be, "What a

jerk!" (Or a more colorful term) Your next thought might be, "People are so rude these days, and I seem to encounter the rudest of them all! What did I ever do to deserve this?"

From there your mood can continue to spiral down as you ponder your bad luck in having to deal with inconsiderate people. Do you see what happens in situations like these? You have a negative experience, and then you internalize it. Not just for the moment either, but for the rest of your day. Even

worse, because your attitude tends to attract most of your experiences, feeling negative will continue to attract more rude and inconsiderate people into your day.

Though it seems impossible, we can control our emotions. We can choose our emotions, moment to moment. And we begin by choosing our thoughts. Using the example from above, what would be a more empowering response? You could simply say, "That wasn’t very nice," and then turn your attention back to the song you were singing.

That may seem like a difficult thing to do when your anger is ignited, but with practice it gets easier. Rather than internalizing the things that happen to you (especially things you can’t control), simply let go of them and keep your emotional balance. If you pay attention to how you feel throughout the course of your day, you’ll become aware of whether your thoughts are negative or positive. Then you can simply choose to release your negative thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts – which will make you feel better. Again, it takes consistent effort to fully master this technique.

Releasing the Past to Make Room for Something Better. Letting go of past traumas is a little more challenging because they are often buried deeply in our subconscious minds. But buried or not, they can still wreak havoc on our level of happiness.

One of the most powerful techniques I’ve learned for releasing old baggage is to relive the painful experiences. It doesn’t sound like much fun (and in fact it isn’t) but it is definitely freeing. If you stop to think about it, much of our emotional baggage is "buried" simply because we didn’t allow ourselves to

work through it the first time around. We squelched down the feelings and tried to ignore them, and there they still lie, festering. If we unearth the painful memories and work through them like we could have done when they originally happened, we are able to release them and achieve closure.

To bring one’s self to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy.

• Thomas A. Buckner.

This is a simple process you can undertake on your own, but if you’ve had very large, life-altering traumas, you may want to consult a counselor or therapist to help you work through them. While the process is simple, it can be emotionally overwhelming, and having a trained professional as a guide can

provide invaluable support.

Once you’ve worked through your emotional blockages, you may also want to examine the underlying beliefs that formed because of them.

For example, an abusive childhood might result in a deep-seated belief that you’re not worthy of being loved. Working through painful memories can be freeing, but it won’t automatically change your underlying beliefs about your worthiness as a human being. You could still find yourself avoiding intimacy and sabotaging your efforts to create a fulfilling life.

The good news is that once you identify your limiting beliefs, you can begin changing them with a little conscious focus.

One of the best methods to change limiting beliefs and dissolve emotional blockages is hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis. These alternative alternative healing methods date back as far as recorded history. Hypnosis / hypnotherapy has been called and referred to by many different names. It has been long believed by healers all over the world that there is a mind - body connection. Even the most ancient cultures and civilizations in the world used different forms of hypnosis (suggestions,sleep analysis, meditation) to assist in healing.