The guy has it all together, right?

COMING UNRAVELED.

She cries a lot. She can't handle the stress. She gets uptight about the smallest things. She wears her heart on her sleeve. She's too sensitive. Say one word and she comes apart. It takes three days to get her back in the basket so she can even qualify to be a basket case.

HEY, GUY!

I'm glad to see that you aren't that emotional! But, what's all this anger stuff? Isn't that an emotion? And I thought she was the one that was so emotional. I thought you didn't like emotionalism. So you holler and shout. You drive yourself into a frenzy and throw out a choice curse word to emphasize your anger. You snarl and raise your fist to frighten her into obedience and submission.

You want to make her afraid? Fear is an emotion. I thought you didn't like emotionalism. Why are you trying to drive fear into her? You egg her on. You want her to get mad, too. You actually want her to get emotional and you won’t stop until she does get mad. Why? That doesn’t make sense to me.

JEALOUSY IS REASONABLE?

Jealousy is a feeling. It's an emotion. How do you get by with being emotional again? I thought you were a macho man, the strong one in the home. Why do you let it go so deep? It saps your strength and ruins your happiness. This is being emotional.

Hate? You hate? That's a feeling; an emotion. It's not good for you or anyone else. Why do you have such a hard time expressing love? And why is it so easy for you to demonstrate the emotion of hate? If you can do one, surely you can also learn to do the other. Have you ever resented someone? Have you ever felt bitter? If you are going to have emotions, you might as well cultivate the right ones. Right?

TOUCHINESS?

Touchy, touchy, touchy! Say one little thing wrong and you come unglued. I thought your wife was the one that was too sensitive. Touchiness is a sensitive emotion. I thought you weren't emotional.

SHE SAYS YOU POUT? IS THAT TRUE? Pout. Go ahead. Pull up. Pull back in your shell. And that's not an emotion? Refuse to talk. Simmer in your own emotional juices. Pull the silent treatment on them. Pull your feelings back inside you. Pretend they are not there. But they are and you know it.

ENVY KILLS!

Have you ever envied the rich? Have you ever had a nasty feeling inside when someone else got a promotion or a new car or a better paying job and you didn'?

Envy is a deadly emotion. It blinds you to opportunities while you are focusing on disappointments. It robs you of your own productivity. It makes you turn against them in your heart. You aren't emotional?

WHAT ELSE?

Do you hold any grudges? Do you have any unforgiveness? Does meanness ever come out of your mouth? Any cruelty in your feelings? And I thought you weren't emotional.

GOT ANY ROOM FOR LUST?

Lust? You lust? I can't believe it. Lust is a feeling. It can be a strong feeling. It can almost be an uncontrollable feeling. Surely you can't be guilty of such a strong emotion as that? I'd never believe it in a hundred years. You are just so unemotional that no one would ever suspect it of you.

DON'T GET EXCITED!

Excitement? When that animal instinct in you gets a chance to let go, do you ever get excited? I mean real excited. Or do you sort of lolligag your way through those experiences? I'm smiling while I write, guy. Do you know why? Because I know you are emotional. And you know it, too. Does a football game ever get your adrenaline going? And how come you tense up so much when you see some guy on TV getting beat to a pulp? That doesn't grab your muscles and tighten them up a bit? Sure it does.

EVER HAD A RATIONAL FEAR?

Do you have any fears? Oh, I'm not going to ask you to admit to that in front of God and everybody. Men are not supposed to be afraid. So how come you are? Anxiety and worry is a part of the ‘fear’ family. They are all emotions.

Insecurity is something. What is it? It is a feeling. Inferiority? Do you have any of that? You embarrass easily? And you don't like it? You won't do a lot of things in life because of the fear of embarrassment. And I thought you wouldn't let emotions control you. I think you've been lying to yourself.

Maybe the time has come to be honest. Maybe it's time to deal with those feelings. You can't just let them hang loose and keep creating problems in your life forever.

Emotions can be subdued, modified, changed, controlled and overcome.

We can learn to express more good feelings and increase our happiness quotient.

But those processes involve rational decisions. You have to reason your way through tough situations instead of reacting.

You need this kind of positive input to break the cycle of wrong thinking which produces harmful emotions.

It doesn’t hurt to be a bit emotional once in a while. In fact, it’s impossible ‘not to be’ emotional.

When you don’t get enough of it – you begin to suck up other scrappy little bits of negative impulses.

When you became too big to sit on your mother’s lap, you had to pull away from a source of good feelings. And because tough guys don’t cry, you had to suppress a lot of your reactions to hurt and rejection, instead of letting it out in a cleansing flow of tears.

Because you didn’t want anyone telling you what to do – you felt like you had to rebel against your parents and others. Rebellion involves a strong emotional reaction. Stubbornness involves a feeling. Where did it come from? Is it good for you? The next time you pull back in a sullen refusal to cooperate with someone – remember, you are being emotional.

Love is like a beautiful woman. No one ever got married to a beautiful woman without courting her, wanting her, being nice to her and making her want to stick around.

Emotions can be your friends. You can have comforting emotions and good feelings every day. But, to have friends – one must show himself to be friendly. You need to warm up to those good feelings and ask them for a date. You need to invite them into your life. Develop a craving for good feelings and then do what’s necessary to keep them around all the time.

You must remember one thing though –beautiful women are sensitive creatures. If you are going to hang around uncouth friends all the time, you will scare her off. Those mean, stubble-faced feelings you’ve been bringing home every day are going to drive away the one good thing you really need.

How can meanness and sweetness live together in the same house? Harsh attitudes drive away gentleness. A combative anger forces peace and quiet from the home. Sullen attitudes breed uncomfortable clouds of discontent in a relationship.

Does kindness cuddle up with a porcupine? Loving someone with a critical attitude is like trying to embrace prickly-pear! Sure, I know that misery loves company, but misery makes its company miserable.

Merriment loves company too, but it will never love misery. So, you’ve got a choice – love misery or court happiness.

It is possible to divorce yourself from miserable feelings. Oh, I didn’t say it was easy. I just said it’s possible.

Miserable feelings will never want to leave you. Misery loves company, even if it’s only your company. She will hang onto you like an insecure woman clings to her ‘sugar daddy’.

Misery is like the old lady who lived in a shoe. She produces snotty-nosed little brats and expects you to pay for their upkeep.

If you try to divorce Misery, she will sue for child support. She will want you to take care of her precious little ‘self-pity’ darling. She will want you to nurse her little grudges or pay through the nose if you don’t.

While you are wrangling with her, love will leave your home forever. Peace and contentment will depart from you, also.

It’s impossible for anyone to go through this life without feelings. Babies are not born without legs unless they are abnormal. Emotions are just as much a part of us as bones and flesh.

The question is: Do we want healthy feelings or diseased emotions? Do we want a clear complexion or the rotting flesh of leprosy? Does anyone in their right mind want to have cancer in their lives? Cancer is nothing more than one part of the body fighting against the other part. Feelings that oppose your greatest desires are the worst form of cancer.

It’s one thing to have cancer – and another thing to ignore it until it’s too late. When you find yourself in a constant state of ‘being against’ someone else – you are cultivating a malignancy which threatens to devour you as well as others.

People who hate themselves often hate others. And those who harbor feelings of rejection often cause others to reject them even further. The fear of being rejected produces the very situation that they dread. It’s a self-defeating portion of their lives that should be dealt with and eliminated.

Cataract surgery is possible and effective. Why would anyone ignore the cataracts on their eyes and allow them to get bigger and worse all the time? Probably for the same reasons that people keep carrying misery to work in their lunch boxes and keep feeding on it every chance they get. It’s simple. It takes time, trouble and expense to resolve difficult problems.

My suggestion for today is: Why not take inventory? Look inside of you and label all the various kinds of feelings that ride your train. List them – one by one – on a piece of paper. Then, separate them into two categories – the feelings you like and want to keep and those that are not good for you.

Find out how much of your life is devoted to self-defeating emotions. Take steps to ‘know the truth’ about yourself. It is only then that ‘truth can begin to set you free’. But, truth can only set you free if you will diligently seek for ‘more truth’ – the truth of ‘how’ to successfully deal with the undesirable elements of your life.

Today’s message is simply a message of hope and incentive. By itself, it can never cure anything. What you do with what you’ve got is the key to where you are going.

Take a good turn. Head in the right direction. Keep your eyes on some worthwhile goals. Don’t let anything impede your progress or dampen your enthusiasm. Be single-minded. Let endurance get you through the blizzards of adversity. Hang onto determination and persevere until you get what you really want out of life.

Look up - and ask for a little wisdom and encouragement from time to time. Why not? It couldn’t hurt. Listen to the suggestions of others. Measure out what you want to get back. Be at peace with yourself first and then it will be easier to be at peace with others. Life can be better than it is. It will be worth the time and effort it takes to make it so.

Take time to seek for the better.