Continuing from my previous blog on why positive thinking could possibly be not helpful as it is deemed to be, I venture a little deeper to look into the power of emotions to create your destiny.
In my previous blog on the negative side of positive thinking Read Here, I wrote,
“The conscious mind and the sub conscious mind are interdependent. While the conscious mind is the creative one as it engages with the surroundings and can conjure up the “positive thoughts”, the subconscious mind is the repository of stimulus- response tapes derived from instincts and learned experiences. The subconscious mind is strictly habitual it will play the same behavioural responses to life’s signal over and over again. Further the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful in neurological processing abilities than the conscious mind. So if the desire of the conscious mind conflict with the program of the subconscious mind, which mind will win out? You can repeat the positive affirmation that you are lovable over and over or that your cancer will shrink. As a child you heard over and over that you are worthless and sickly those messages programmed in your subconscious mind will undermine your best conscious efforts to change your life.”
So that means unless you clear the emotions of the sub conscious programs, the conscious inspiration will be very short lived and then the old deep rooted sub conscious emotions will again come to the fore. Just like the New Year resolutions that don’t last past the first month of the year.
Let us say, you are counselled by professionals to change and adapt to a new behaviour (like say quitting cigarette or alcohol or any nasty habit that is not conducive to you for your health and wellbeing). But more often than not, we see lot many people fail to change or improve even after counselling. (Except for a small number of people who really do change). So what’s the reason?
Now the reason why these people don’t change their life for better is not because they don’t know what to do or how to do it, to change. At some point during counselling, the people reach a stage where they have all the necessary information and knowledge that they need to change in an instant. But then they still remain and stray back onto their past behaviour because they think that their feelings about the situation they are dealing with, is true.
So what’s really happening is that people respond to their feelings and not to their thoughts about a situation that is disturbing them. People never question their feelings. They believe that their feelings are making an accurate statement of their reality.
Simply put, your feelings define your response to a situation and not the thoughts about the situation.
But then just like one can mis-perceive something and later on given more information, realize that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion, similarly feeling could be mis-felt too.
Let me elaborate. You are a minnow and you are posting blog after blog at steemit but receiving very poor response with negligible to nil up votes and rewards. Now you start feeling depressed or dejected. Right? That will be the response to the situation. Now your feeling is: “My blog is very good and is quite valuable. But then I am not getting any up votes and rewards. I am being sidelined and neglected. Whales vote only within their own circle, nobody is bothered about the minnows, Nobody cares, steemit does not work !!!”
Well these are the feelings in response to your situation.
Now, what could be actual thoughts about the situation?
- The blog may not be really as good or valuable as it is made out to be.
- The blog is not reaching the right target audience
- The blog release time is not matching with the majority whale / curators country time. While you release your blog, it might be midnight in their country and they might be sleeping.
- Your blog subject or narration may not be interesting or improper tagging.
- Your blog does not engage or excite the audience.
- Blogging requires months of efforts and perseverance.
- You are an accidental blogger. you were never meant to be one.
Now look at the feelings and the actual thoughts up there. People get completely choked into their internal turmoil that goes on every day, month after month that they never doubt that what they feel is how things actually are. Thus their problem, whatsoever becomes deep rooted / chronic.
Now let us dissect the feelings. What are feelings? They are nothing but reactions to events. But they are not necessarily accurate statements about the event. They are interpretations or perceptions. However these feelings (the reactions to an event) become hard wired chemically into the nervous system that a person cannot look beyond them. It does not matter what one says to them, they only listen to their feelings
So, What do you do about it?
The foremost thing is to be aware of the feelings. But the feelings are so spontaneous and quick that they are not even noticed and taken for granted. In the above example, the feelings of the minnow are so spontaneous that he is not even aware that his feelings of dejection are causing him to see the whole situation in a different perspective. He does not notice his dejection though of course it is obvious to everyone else. He is focused on the problem and not the sensations that arise within him to make him believe that he is confronting a problem.
When you become aware of your feelings and keep watching it as a spectator, you begin to let go the huge internal struggle. Once the internal struggle is let loose, you see the emotion for what it is. When you grasp how your feelings are selecting your thoughts , you are able to choose a new way of interpreting your disturbing experience.
In simple words, it is hard to achieve anything when one is preoccupied with feeling bad. One sees everything with a distorted lens of his feelings.
The life that we are experiencing right now is because of the way we feel about the things in our life. If you want better things in life, consciously focus on the feelings that you want to have till they become dominant in the consciousness.
Feelings are the undercurrents that determine one’s destiny. So work on your feelings so that they become more real than the actual circumstances. The way one feels about everything will create one’s world. If one continues to feel bitter about tragic events in the past and they will continue recreate them as well. If minnows continue to feel frustrated over their current limitations and they will continue to recreate them.
It is not because human has conquered his personal reality that he feels triumphant. It is because he felt triumphant that he conquered his personal reality and shaped a world of rich experiences
Image Credit: Pixabay