If you observe newborn babies and young children, you realise that human beings are not born with judgments; rather we are born open, receptive, accepting and loving. A newborn baby or small child is present in the moment and is naturally in a state of love, gratitude, peace and joy. They have an amazing sense of wonder and awe which you can see in their eyes. They are so clear of obstructions in the mind that they seem to literally emanate light. This is why they are so attractive and unique.

So, what happens to us as we go through life? How is it that we end up with so much baggage and find it impossible to experience the peace, joy and love we all desire? Little by little, as we grow up, we are conditioned and programmed by everything we come into contact with until there is little or no room left to love and be at peace.

We are not born with morals and ethics. We are not born with judgments. We learn these from our environment. We learn what to think, how to behave, what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong from our parents, teachers, peers, religion and everything else we are exposed to as children. We are conditioned through a system of punishment and reward, praise and reprimand, through repetition over time. When we followed the rules, we were told that we were good, we were rewarded and we received positive feedback in the form of praise, love, good grades, recognition etc. When we broke the rules, we were told that we were bad, we were punished and we received negative feedback in the form of reprimand, removal of love and approval. This happened at home, at school and in every other situation we encountered.

Our natural tendency as human beings is to seek pleasure and attempt to avoid pain. So, over time we became addicted to the pleasure of the reward and the fear of the pain of punishment grew. What developed as a result is the overwhelming need to please and receive the approval of others. The need for approval and the fear of rejection eventually become so strong that we are willing to go to almost any lengths to receive praise and avoid punishment. In doing so, we begin to think and behave just like everybody else.

Layer upon layer is added as we go through life. Eventually we are so full of moral and ethical judgments of right and wrong and good and bad that we are unable to be at peace. We accumulate so much baggage throughout our lives that most of us have little or no idea that at our core is a pristine and unaffected space of peace, joy, love and gratitude just waiting to be rediscovered. All these judgments about right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative cause us to swing from one extreme to the other in our emotions, from high to low, happy to sad, ecstatic and excited to down and depressed. Sound familiar? I call this ride the ‘Emotional Roller Coaster’.

Although we often feel that we have no control over our emotional state, emotions actually have specific causes originating in the mind and they are not out of our control. An emotion is our body’s physiological response to a mental perspective. To put it another way, our emotions are produced as a result of the way we think about, perceive and react to our experiences. They are produced by our imbalanced or one-sided perceptions. Emotions arise any time we perceive a person or event to be more negative than positive or more positive than negative. They arise any time we judge things as being good or bad, right or wrong, pleasurable or painful. As a result of our conditioning, we judge virtually everything and this is what causes our emotions to constantly fluctuate. Any time we are judging, we have emotions and we cannot be at peace.

The second line of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali states that yoga (meaning ‘a state of union or oneness’) is achieved when the fluctuations in our consciousness cease. This tells us that while we have positive and negative perceptions occupying our mind we cannot be present and at peace. How then can we stop judging and move beyond the emotional roller coaster?

The founder of modern psychology, William James, said ‘The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.’ He was essentially saying that we can change our experience of life by changing our perceptions. If you think about it, our perception – the way we see the world – is the only thing that we really have any control over. You can’t control what’s going on around you or how others act and react, but you can control the way you choose to see the world and this determines how you will experience it.

The philosopher Epictetus said that we ‘are not disturbed by things but the views [we] take of them.’ This means that it is our perceptions about events that create suffering and not the events themselves. So, if we can alter the way we see an event, we can change the way we feel about it, heal, move on and experience more peace in our lives.

Let’s get practical – how can we actually do this? Next time you experience a situation that you perceive as negative, in order to raise yourself out of the resulting negative emotions and return to a more balanced, calm and peaceful state, you will need to uncover the hidden blessings in the situation you are seeing as negative. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What benefits can I derive from this situation? • What can I learn as a result of this situation? • How can I use this experience to help me to grow? • What empowering qualities is this situation encouraging me to develop? • How can I use this situation to my advantage?

There is no denying that these are tough questions to ask yourself when you are in the middle of a challenging experience, especially if you have never done this before. There is a part of you that will do everything it can to resist completing this exercise. You might hear this part of you saying ‘I am justified in being upset,’ ‘That person did the wrong thing,’ ‘There are no positives in this situation,’ etc. But if you discipline yourself to disregard this limited little voice inside, to look beyond the surface of the event and not stop looking until you find them, you will uncover hidden treasures that will make the effort worthwhile – you will move from being upset, angry, down or depressed to peaceful, loving and appreciative. You will come across what I call the ‘magic in the middle’.

When your perceptions are perfectly equilibrated, when you see a balance of positive and negative in a person or event, you transcend the polarised extremes of the emotional roller coaster and instead you experience the profound states that reside in the middle – peace, joy, gratitude and unconditional love. The experience of this centre point is extraordinary and overwhelming. The feeling is more amazing than any emotional high – it is blissful. When you are ‘in the middle,’ you become filled with energy and vitality. You come alive; more alive than at any other moment yet balanced, centred and calm at the same time. In this state your mind becomes inspired and gains access to greater levels of creativity, ideas, imagination and intuition and your body functions as a more cohesive system bringing about wellness.

The peace, joy and love you desire resides within you. By unravelling the tangled web of conditioning and overcoming the judgments you have accumulated throughout your life using the process described above, you will reveal the diamond of peace, joy, love and gratitude that resides unchanged and unharmed, waiting for you in your heart. By balancing your perceptions and searching for the blessings in all your perceived negative experiences, you can tap into the ‘magic in the middle’ and truly move beyond the Emotional Roller Coaster.

About the author: Anthony Salerno, best-selling author of Beyond the Emotional Roller Coaster, is a Life Mastery Strategist and Transformational Healer. As a professional speaker, Anthony shares his exceptional wisdom and understanding about life with his audiences and inspires them to open their hearts and minds and awaken the magnificent potential within.