Has this ever happened to you? You think about your ex and you feel this sudden rage or sadness. You feel angry about how he used you, tricked you, betrayed you and cheated on you.

Alternatively, do you feel like he was “the one that got away’? You remember how handsome he was, the sound of his voice, how he made you feel, how smart he was, how kind and loving he was. You feel this empty void in your life. You feel that you let the very best thing that ever happened to you slip through your fingers.

What if I told you that these experiences are not really different from each other? They all have the same process. They all operate out of the same place in your mind. They all follow the same sequence. It’s actually very predictable.

You start with some sort of mental trigger. This can be a mental image you remember. This can be a sound that somebody made which triggered a memory. If can even be a smell of some sort. Whatever the case may be, there is some sort of trigger both within your thoughts or things you perceive from the external world and this this pushes you to feel certain things which lead to certain actions that you may or may not regret later on. Sound familiar? Well, that’s how most people respond.

This is why ado many of us have a tough time separating our thoughts from our emotions. The moment we start thinking about something that stresses us out, we start shutting down. We feel overwhelmed by negative emotions. The problem here is not the thoughts themselves. Those thoughts will always appear.

The problem is the the response.

Guess what? There are a lot of people out there who sound just like that amazing ex-girlfriend or boyfriend that you had. There are a lot of people who sound or look like that horrible boss that you had in the past or humiliated and embarrassed you. There are a lot of people out there who may do things that remind you of that teacher who insulted you or made you feel small and dumb.

The question here is how are you going to respond to that moment? How are you going to process the triggers that life sends your way so that they work for you instead of against you? At the very least, how can you process all of this information so that at least they produce a neutral result instead of a negative one?

It’s very easy to get all caught up. It’s very easy to let our emotions get the better of us. We get triggered by a certain sound, taste, smell or sight. Whatever the case may be we get triggered and all these memories come back, and we interpret them as these very negative things. Sooner or later, we start saying negative things and, before we know it, we habitually do things that we regret later.

This is the process and, although it may seem automatic, please understand that this is not set in stone. It isn’t. It’s a choice. It may seem like it’s your instinct or it may seem like it’s even part of your personality or part of who you are, but it isn’t. That’s just an illusion. These are all choices.

The moment that mental image flashes of your boyfriend, and your best friend in the past hooking up behind your back, you don’t have to feel angry, betrayed, used, abused, small, weak, powerless, ugly, unattractive or unappealing. You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to ride that train.

How do you do this? Well, click here for a simple process that would enable you to see things without the emotional baggage. You can learn how to acknowledge your thoughts without getting owned by them.

When your thoughts own you, your worst instincts take over. Your worst emotions get the better of you and guess what? It doesn’t lead you to a good place. It leads you to place of powerlessness. It leads you to place of smallness. It leads you to a place of regret, guilt, remorse and fear.

Use this technique to start taking control over these mental triggers. They already happened. There’s nothing you can do about them. It’s not like you can hop into some sort of time machine and change what happened in the past.

What you can change is your response to them in the here and now. They don’t have to own you. They don’t have to define you in a negative way. You have a lot more control than you give yourself credit for.

Your thoughts, your ability to judge the external world, these are not set in stone. They’re not automatic processes. They are not “part of who you are”. You can take ownership of them. You can take control of this process and let it lead to a totally different place.

What place is that?

A place of empowerment, contentment, happiness, fulfillment, responsibility and self-control.

The choice is up to you.