Dennis PragerFounder, PragerU · Founder of PragerU | NYT best-selling author

Are You a Prisoner of Your Own Emotions?

12 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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In this excerpt from The Dennis Prager Show, the speaker argues that many people are effectively prisoners of their emotions, allowing feelings to dictate their perception of life and actions, which leads to unhappiness. While affirming that emotions are a spectacular and essential part of being human, he stresses that they should not control mood or behavior. He proposes a practical mindset: acknowledge and honor emotions (“I see you, I feel you, I recognize you, I honor you”) but refuse to let them rule you, asserting that one can feel awful yet still choose not to become an unhappy person. The monologue serves as a motivational call to emotional self‑management and ends with a promotion for the full episode on pragertopia.com.

Chapters

How many people are prisoners of their emotions? Very hard not to be, but if you are, your chance at happiness is zilch. Being a prisoner of your emotions because we think that that's what makes us happy. If I feel unhappy, then by golly, that's it, I'm miserable. But if you let your emotions dictate how you look at life and how you act, you're doomed and everybody around you is doomed. Emotions are spectacular. That's what makes us human. Emotions are wonderful, but they can't control your mood. They can't control whether you feel you're happy and how you act. The trick about emotions is to say, "I see you, I feel you, I recognize you, I honor you, but you won't rule me." That is the trick. That is what a human needs to have. And so you work it through, you work it through. You are perfectly capable of saying, and should be, "I feel awful now, but I will not allow it to make me an unhappy person." For the full episode of The Dennis Prager Show, go to pragertopia.com, sign up, and become a full member.