Our desires often lie to us and tell us that external things will heal our emotional pain, when all they do is mask it. If people were as willing to unmask their heart as they are their face, the world would be a better place.

When your thoughts, desires, and emotions are inwardly aggressive and trying to override your free will, you don’t have to let them. Perhaps instead of trying to control others, or letting others control us, we should control our own thoughts, feelings and desires.

Maybe to meditate and ponder yourself into a state of wonder and awe, can give you more emotional relief than to medicate yourself. Our thoughts, feelings, and desires should be questioned and examined to see if they’re true, not bowed to as gods.

Temporary relief from emotional pain isn’t healing. We need more than short-term pain removal. We need inner change.

We clean dirt off of our body, but often neglect to clean our mind and heart, forgetting that inner dirt is even more damaging. Perhaps, instead of being a victim of our emotional pain, we, ourselves, are enabling it by our thoughts and behaviors.

When you’re unaware of a particular emotion, you’re not feeling it. Distract yourself from negative feelings; focus on positive.

The goal of guilt is not to make us feel bad, but to motivate us to improve our thoughts and behaviors. When you feel a need to try to make other people think that you’re confident, you’re not very confident.