Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life: How to Unlock Your Full Potential for Success and Achievement

202
CHANGE YOUR THINKING, CHANGE YOUR LIFE
➤
ccc_tracy_11_201-221.qxd  6/23/03  3:38 PM  Page 202

---

ple often quit and go back. Motivational speaker Charlie Jones says,
“It’s not how far you fall but how high you bounce that counts!”
■
THE TRIGGER OF NEGATIVITY
Most negative emotions are triggered by 
frustrated expectations
. You
wish, hope, or plan for something to happen in a certain way, and
when it doesn’t, you react with impatience and anger. This is quite
normal. If you care about a result, you are going to be hurt if you
don’t achieve it.
The challenge is that emotions are triggered instantaneously.
For this reason, you can have very little control over your emotions
and reactions at the moment that something happens to you. It is
too late. When the disappointment occurs, you will react instinc-
tively and habitually, depending on your previous experiences.
When things go wrong, it is too late for you to think of fine and no-
ble thoughts.You simply react.
Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, once wrote, “Circum-
stances do not make the man; they only reveal him to himself,” and
to others, for that matter. It is not the adverse situation that builds
your character so much as it 
reveals
your character as it exists at
that moment.
■