subject: Emotional Wellbeing And Self Awareness [print this page] Is it better to trust our feelings or our minds? On the whole our emotions are generally delivered from our unconscious nervous system not necessarily from our conscious thinking mind. Much of the time these animal like responses or feelings, just fire off under the radar moving us towards what we feel is good for us and away from what we feel is bad for us.
But we don't see ourselves as animals these days, we are human, we are not animals! Not true! We are animals and most of our unconscious guidance system acts very much like an animal, yet the world we live in is very different from our ancestors. The prey that track us these days are marketing men and bosses that demand more.
Have you ever tried to change your emotions? It is possible. It seems that the body has to follow what we hold in mind. If think bad thoughts we get bad feelings and if we think good thoughts we get good feelings. So perhaps our emotions can be modified by changing how we think?
When we learn that emotions are not scary and won't hurt us, then we can begin to take back control. We can in fact choose our emotions at anytime, to prove this, take a few moments to consider past incidents that you did not enjoy and you'll notice that your feelings respond, run some movies in your mind about fun things and you'll feel better. As you practise this more and more you'll soon realise that we generate emotions by our thoughts.
The more you try this the more you will find it to be true.
As you take responsibility for your feelings and emotions it becomes time to let your guard down and allow yourself to become more vulnerable and most honest about yourself, because if emotions are no longer troublesome then guilt, shame, remorse etc. can all be let go of.
Not listening to the racing mind
It is one thing to not want a racing mind and quite another to make it stop! I feel the real way to handle intrusive ruminations is to realise that these voices in your mind are characters and they are talking to each other, not you. Predominantly they are the judge and the victim and they watch everything around you and have a running commentary about what is right or wrong, good or bad, what should have happened and what should not have happened, so many judgements about fairness, luck, life and people.
It's important to realise that these voices are not talking to you, they are talking to each other based on the beliefs that you have about yourself, what you think you can or can't do. If these voices were us we'd be able to tell them to stop, anyway be don't have to listen to them and we certainly don't have to believe them.
Stop believing them, stop listening to them, they are not you. They are not productive, they hold you back.
When old beliefs no longer serve you well
The path to emotional calmness and wellbeing is about letting go of the ego and dissolving old out of date beliefs, then not listening to the voices in your mind.
Our mind plays a trick on us by assuming that we are the same now as when we were younger, and we are not, we are so much more. We need to see through this trick and unpick the lies that we tell ourselves to keep us in a state of self doubt.
Real change comes when you begin to doubt those doubts, identify those unhelpful self beliefs and replace them with new ones that are aligned with your vision for the future, assuming that you know what your future needs to look like, and that is a whole other story.
Sometimes we are too close to our feelings and emotions to be able to see this and break it down to reveal the myths beneath, that's when a mentor or a therapist can help you to gently explore yourself in a more productive manner, so you can master your emotions and have calmness and choice at the very foundation of all your interactions with life, then confidence and self respect just naturally follow.
