Empowering the mind for commanding emotions is more of training it to subject the will to its decisions. Try to examine this sentence: “I will never be envious of Ana.” Note that “I” comes before “will.” This means your mind (the “I”) has authoritatively decided and concluded that stopping being envious of Ana will do the best thing for “I.” The “I” commands the “will” never to be envious of Ana.

Now, try to reverse the sequence of the two words “I” and “will”. It will look this way: “Will I never stop being envious of Ana?” The positive declaration earlier now becomes a question. With this kind of thought turning into a question, the mind is not empowered. Instead, its power and authority over the will is either questioned or undermined, or both.

Empowering the mind entails training it to assert its prominence and preponderance over the will. The first phase of the war is a battle between the mind and the will. When the will is conquered, their joint forces will overpower the emotion.

When the will, mind, and emotions go berserk

What happens when the will, mind, and emotions go separate ways? This results in a weak-willed character. Take these cases:

1. Have you seen a person who is all talk? Only a few (if any) about what he says is true in his life. He is a case of a mind that has no command over his will and emotions. If what you think is not what you truly believe in, you end up being like this man. All you have is head-knowledge. You are what they call a mere Pretender.
2. Belief as a mere head-knowledge is a sign of a failed mind. This does not mean a weak brain or a dull mind. The mind, in this case, may even be intelligent. It may even know a lot of things and be very smart. It may even earn titles and degrees in school. Yet, it has terribly failed in conquering the will and emotions. What it knows does not bear fruit in the will and emotions. In short, what it knows to be the best is not shown in the life it carries. This mind may know a lot of principles, but is far from being truly principled. It knows the disciplines, but it has no disciplined life.
3. On the other hand, if you are all emotions but no action, you are what they call as a Procrastinator. You depend entirely on your emotions. If it feels good to you, it must be correct. You never mind if it is not good or correct, what’s important is that you feel it. Hence, most procrastinators put off for tomorrow what can be done now. They already feel good just desiring what must be done or what is correct. They feel there’s little need of actualizing it in their lives. There is no sense of urgency.
4. Feeling good about what is correct but showing no action or change due to it is a sign of a weak mind and will. Emotions can take charge of the body for a while; but without the cooperation of the mind and the will, nothing done would last long. Procrastinators may also start what needs to be done immediately, but whether they will continue doing it the next day is quite another story.
5. The worst kinds are those who feel good about something, start doing it, and then maintain a semblance of doing it for a long time — without really believing in it. We will call them Robots. As we know, robots don’t have a mind of their own, and they have no will of their own. They just follow orders. But robots don’t feel anything either, you might say.

Our robots here do not have feelings of their own, but only what is fed to them —public opinion. They go by what is fashionable, by what is the latest fad or trend. When they see what clicks other people, they join the bandwagon. It doesn’t matter if they are not really interested about a trend or whether they really believe it is correct. They say, “If everybody’s doing it (especially the people they look up to), it must be correct. So let’s go do it!” That’s their motto in life.

A robot character is a sign that the emotions have wrestled power from the mind, pretty much like a coup de etat. It’s like the emotions have held the mind its prisoner, and the will its hostage. The reason why it can prolong its activity is that the mind and will are dragged unwillingly to what it does. The mind is strictly prohibited to stop a while and analyze if what is being done is indeed really important. Remember the intellectually willed? It stops awhile to ask and analyze, “Is this really correct? Is this really important? Will I die if I don’t do this? Or is this just a non-essential thing masquerading as a truth?” The intellectually willed unmasks all pretensions and fakes. The robot wears others’ faces.

All of the above — the Pretenders, the Procrastinators, and the Robots —have a common denominator. The mind is weak so that the will and emotions do not cooperate with it.

The worst thing is, at times the will even acts independently from the mind and emotions. It just does things to while time away. Never mind if it is wrong or doesn’t feel good. Never mind if the public is against it or not. These may be called Zombies. They live in limbo (neither alive nor dead). Zombies do not have a mind or emotions of their own. They just walk around looking for something to eat.

You got this book because you want extreme command of your emotions. That means you don’t want to end up just being a pretender, a procrastinator, a robot, and much less a zombie. Then you have to empower your mind to rule over your will and emotions. You must start to become a very principled individual in total control of his emotions, and later, his body and environment.

All the above depends on how powerful the mind is. How powerful the mind is, in turn, depends on how well you train it.