DR. JOE RUBINO: You may say that you hate living your life in continual turmoil and are tired of being at odds with others and feeling badly about yourself. You may think that this should be incentive enough to keep from reacting emotionally in response to the words and deeds of others. However, for most of us, it is not!

If you are having difficulty releasing the juicy emotions that arise in response to what others do 'to' you, reinterpreting what happened in a way that allows you to remain calm and centred, recreating your future with joy, peace of mind, and the stillness that comes from being non-reactive and reclaiming your self-esteem, it may be because you are keeping the old patterns of reacting to others in place.

The challenge lies in the addictive nature of our emotional reactions! We hate being angry, sad and scared. But, like a heroin addict who hates being hooked on drugs but can't seem to pull that needle from his arm, so it is with our addictive emotional reactions. Our emotional moods keep us churning in the drama cycle we call life. Though we say we dislike them, they are familiar and comfortable like an old habit. They make us feel alive.

Our reactive moods also provide us with several contrary pleasures and ironic benefits. They make us right and make others wrong. They allow us to feel as though we are dominating others or avoiding being dominated. They often make us a victim of our circumstances. As a victim, our self-esteem suffers and we get to feel sorry for ourselves. Victims attract the pity and sympathy of others. It is often easier to wallow in self-pity rather than to take responsibility for making our lives work optimally. As we continue to suffer, our self-esteem dwindles further. Our lives seem full of things we don't want and we want all the things we don't have. We point to our low self-esteem in an effort to justify why our life is the way it is. It's no wonder that we continue to suffer and feel badly about who we are!

But continuing to drown in self-pity without taking responsibility for reclaiming our self-esteem has profound costs. One of these costs is the peace of mind that can only come from learning to become non-reactive. The secret to choosing stillness and peace is to create interpretations that allow for these states to replace the addictive emotional responses that are sourced in anger, sadness, and fear for most people. Here in a nutshell and the steps to manifesting a peace-filled life:

1. Recognize your predominant emotional reactive state (it's typically a version of anger, sadness, or fear.)

2. Release the emotion, counting backward from 5 to 1 while taking deep breaths.

3. Give up your right to the interpretation that 'made' you angry, sad, or afraid.

4. Choose a new interpretation that keeps you in relationship with others and is free of any destructive emotional reactive state.

5. Focus on the blessings that this new interpretation contributes to your quality of life and peace of mind.

6. Practice the above in times of upset and know that as soon as you forget to do so, you will be back to the turmoil created by your reactive nature.