As someone who leans towards logic and rational thinking, I find this one difficult to accept. But if I turn to the facts, based on my experience, I can see that the behaviors and moods of others, the weather and world events impact how I feel.

Which of course means how I behave impacts others too.

So it sets the wrong expectation of ourselves that nothing can get through our armor. It’s true that over time we can build more maturity so that less can, or if it does impact us, the duration of the effect goes down. But to strengthen our self-mastery we need to accept this. It may even come with a sense of relief that you’re not ‘weak’.

The question then becomes what do I do with this information?

So we can’t totally stop external factors impacting our mood. But we can control how we respond, and over time increase our resilience so less knocks us off our axis and/or reduce the time that it does.

It starts with recognizing when it’s happened, and then what you should do next. It also means reflecting on how you would handle yourself differently in the same situation next time.

In reality it might takes days to grapple with the feelings before you break out of them. But the important point is that we can take back control by creating some space, applying some thinking and choosing our next step.