Last week, I started talking about how to conquer your emotions. Your feelings can be temporary and fickle, but still prevent you from ever changing or moving forward in your life. Learning how to change these feelings and become in control of them can really open you up to a future of possibilities and change. Here are four of the six steps.

1. Do Not Deny Your Feelings:

No matter how powerful your feelings are, it’s important that you never cover them up or deny them. The key to conquering is not simply to ignore. If you want to change your feelings, you must quit surrendering to them. If you want to change how you feel, you need to change how you act. Remember that all negative, disabling feelings point directly back to negative, disabling beliefs. If you present your body like the Word tells you to do, you will have a significant impact on your beliefs.

Let me give you a biblical example. Isaiah 61:3 tells us to put on the “garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” In other words, you can break that spirit of heaviness if you begin praising God physically. Some people do the opposite: they put on the spirit of heaviness for the garment of praise. No wonder they’re discouraged! To stay depressed you must act depressed. By keeping your facial muscles, your shoulders, and your body looking depressed, you will stay depressed. Likewise, I guarantee that if you purposefully put on the garment of praise by jumping around for joy for just three minutes every day, it will change your life. It will affect how you feel and it will affect your beliefs.

2. Presenting Your Body Physically:

When we begin to present our bodies in physical areas such as eating, smoking, and drinking, we run into tremendous emotional resistance. Try to help an alcoholic who does not want help! First of all, he must realize he has a problem. Second, he must want to be free. His body is addicted to the alcohol, but that pattern of addiction can be interrupted if he will cooperate. To experience change, he must change the presentation of his body in regard to the way he releases to alcohol.

Let us say this alcoholic always drinks at home in his favorite chair in front of the TV. Well first, he needs to stop drinking alcohol in this environment. He should make himself go outside in the backyard or go sit in his car to drink. Second, he should change the way he consumes the beverage. If he always drinks beer from a can, he should pour it into a plastic cup. There are actually many things he can change in this area: the brand of beer he always chooses, his posture when he drinks, what activity he performs right before and after. You may say, “Well that’s not easy for me to change.” They may not be easy, but they are simple. It just takes faith that it is going to work. When you present your body, you must do so by faith.

Have you ever made an appointment to go to the doctor when you really didn’t want to go? You knew you were sick so you made yourself present your body. You did it by faith, knowing that going would make you feel better in the long run.

I had to come back early from elk hunting in the mountains one year. I had eaten some food that did not agree with me on that trip. For a whole week I felt miserable, and I couldn’t seem to  shake it. My doctor wasn’t available, so he recommended I go to the emergency room. Let me tell you, I really didn’t want to go visit a strange doctor. But I did it by faith. And you know what? He helped me out and I was much better!

3. Present Your Body in Every Way:

We need present our bodies unto the Lord in every way—through our posture, our facial expressions, our breathing, our gestures, and even our tone of voice. Have you ever been around a person who has offended you? Your voice tenses up. Your muscles tighten and your facial expression changes. But you can change your whole reaction by changing what you do with your body. Begin to identify the ways in which you present your body on a daily basis and start changing some of those negative reactions.

4. Present Your Body in Every Area:

If you are believing that your finances and success are increasing, then you need to present your body accordingly. You need to act as if what you are believing for is true. And by acting, I am specifically referring to what you do physically. Do you carry yourself well? Is your posture the posture of a successful person? What about how you walk? The tone of your voice? How you smile? Are you animated enough in conversation? If you want to be successful, get around people who carry themselves with success and start copying the ways they present their bodies. Soon you will absorb some of that posture.

Thanks for reading! Tune in next week to learn the other two steps.

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