Many people, for example, easily succumb to the desire to rest just a little bit more. They find it enormously difficult to get out of bed or their armchair, to stop watching television and start studying, to begin a conversation or end one, or whatever: everything feels costly to them, they suffer tremendously over any detail that demands an effort, however small.

Many other examples could be given, such as the shy person who keeps letting opportunities to speak pass by, despite realizing they should; or the one who maintains individualistic or uncooperative attitudes despite noticing that their small selfish advantages embitter them and isolate them from others; etc.

One must speak to oneself sincerely. If it’s common that before those small personal efforts a long and stormy battle breaks out within us, perhaps self-pity takes up too much space in our life, and we are not very much masters of ourselves.

… Sometimes the solution will be to act on the causes of what is affecting us negatively. Other times this won’t be possible, and we’ll have to strive to change our emotional response to inevitable things that happen to us. As that old saying goes, we must have the courage to change what can be changed, the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to tell one from the other. … …Each person must acquire self-mastery, imposing the rule of reason upon themselves, and this is the path of what Aristotle first called virtue: joy and happiness will come as the fruit of a life lived according to virtue.

Aristotle compared the person driven by passion to one who is asleep, insane, or drunk: these are states that indicate weakness, not knowing how to control forces that take over the individual and that are foreign to them.

There are feelings that diminish our freedom and feelings that reinforce it.

… It happens then that our desire to seek the good sets limits on our other desires. And so a whole series of ethical norms come into play that must regulate our desires.

… Within us there are feelings that push us to do good, and alongside them, there also swarm others that are like infectious insects threatening our moral life. That is why we must strive to shape our feelings so that they help us as much as possible to feel good about what helps us build a harmonious, full, successful personal life; and to feel bad otherwise. Because, as Ricardo Yepes has noted, one could say that

Ethics is the science that teaches us
—among other things—
to feel optimally.
And, seen this way, it becomes
something perhaps much more interesting
than we thought.

Excellent text for learning to manage and properly use our feelings. It was in the section Know yourself. A text by Alfonso Aguiló.

I would leave you the link, but unfortunately a few months ago, Catholic.net suffered a great data loss on their servers, due to the irresponsibility of the hosting company (which by contract was supposed to make backups at regular intervals, an obligation they hadn’t fulfilled for 3 years). Seven years of work were lost…