When we accept total responsibility for our lives, we begin to understand that we create these situations, and we create them for a reason. While we cannot control actions or behaviors of others, we can control our emotional response. With that perspective in mind, we start to look at these situations as opportunities for growth and change that they really are.

Here are some simple questions to ask yourself when you find yourself responding emotionally in a way that you don't like. One of these questions (sometimes two!) will probably allow you to release emotional response and get on with your life.

1. Is it them?

What if whatever person said or did that pushed your button wasn't about you, but about them? What would that mean? Sometimes we play a role for others in their development, offering them an opportunity to grow and change. If we ask these questions, how does answer leave us feeling? Does seeing that whatever happened is a reflection of them and not us help?

Feel calmer? Send a prayer to bless and release other person, providing them support to work through their issue, but in a way that does not involve you emotionally.

2. Are they a mirror?

What action or behavior of other person reminds you of you, of an action or behavior that you don't like or are ashamed of? Can you recognize yourself at all in other person's behavior? When we are uncomfortable about a behavior, we sometimes ask (unconsciously, of course) someone to mirror that behavior to keep us in check. Seeing someone else take selfishness to extreme serves as a good reminder to us to keep that occasional selfish act at bay. The problem is twofold. One, on a scale of 1 to 100, we tend to perform problem behavior on a 5 or 10, but we ask someone who operates on a 90 or 95 to be our mirror. Second, we forget that we asked them to be our mirror and we get lost in injustice of their behavior. Do you see a connection? Be brutally honest with this one.

Feel calmer? Write a postcard to other person. You won't send it, you'll burn it. In postcard, release person from contract. Thank them for providing service, but tell them you no longer need it as you are now aware of issue. You now understand that you do not have to keep yourself in check way you thought you did. When you burn postcard, do a prayer to bless and release both of you to proceed forward with your lives, either separately or together in a healthy, happy way.

3. Is a value being violated?

Very often our deepest emotional responses come when one of our values is being violated. This is actually one of clues to help you identify your values. Pay attention to when absence of something (like respect or justice) pushes your button. It is probably one of your core values.

Feel calmer? Identify ways to bring this value into your life in a more active way. Identify at least one major goal that is linked to this value and start taking action on it.

You might think this is a strange topic, but I think there is a relationship between what's in our refrigerators and how we filter past experiences. In order to truly look forward to future, we need a clean starting point, and that point is now. In order to truly live in 'now', we need to be free of past beliefs, past hurts, past situations.. If we are hanging on to old hurts, or to negative beliefs about ourselves because of past situations, it is very difficult to put all of our energy into creating life as we want it to be.

So, when you look in your refrigerator, if everything you see isn't vital and fresh, it's very possible that you're hanging on to old stuff in your consciousness as well. The problem is that, like bit of cheese that gets lost way in back and when you find it you have trouble remembering it was cheese, these memories go deeper and deeper. The deeper they go, more likely they are to influence your life today, and harder it is to remember that that's why you do what you do.

It's a lot easier to clean out your refrigerator than to clean out these old hurts. But it is possible. Here is a 4-step strategy to release yourself from these limiting memories. Doing any one of these steps will go a long way towards liberating you from past. I've also included a 5th method, a shortcut for those of you who, like me, prefer doing things easy way!

(1) Identify areas of your life where you do things that are designed to protect you.

Some examples of this might be not trying something new (so you won't fail), not initiating communication with others (so you won't be rejected), having trouble trusting people for a long time (because they might hurt you in some way), not committing to a relationship (because they might leave you). You may need to think about this for a while. Because we don't like to think of ourselves as living defensively, we usually come up with other reasons for our behavior. Seeing connection between what and 'true' why may take some time.

(2) Remember when you first felt that way.