FEELINGS, THOUGHTS, ACTIONS!

Recently, I listened to an interview with Dr. Karin Anderson Abrell, psychologist and author. The general topic was about changing your behavior by recognizing feelings, changing your thoughts about those feelings and then altering your behavior. The technical term for this is Cognitive Behavorial Therapy or CBT. It was not a new concept for me, but I felt that it was worth sharing on this blog.

We have feelings about everything! There is nothing inherently wrong with our feelings. They ARE our feelings and we should own them.  The next step of how we interpret those feelings is the crucial aspect that results in POSITIVE or negative behaviors on our part. However, we have the opportunity every time we have a negative thought from some feeling we experience to ‘think’ differently about what the feeling means, which in turn changes our actions.

For example, let’s say that I have just experienced the loss of a job that was not expected. My feelings about this can range from anger and resentment to resignation….’well, that is how it goes’. Interpretation of these feelings can leave  me in a thought state of depression and  thinking I am not a good worker, not caring what I do or don’t do on a daily basis. This negative thought pattern may lead  to actions of sleeping very late, not taking care of my health and making unhealthy eating/drinking choices, skipping appointments with friends or family and procrastination in job searching…… feelings, thought patterns and action choices.

The feelings are natural and appropriate, but it is how we interpret them that fuels negative or POSITIVE behaviors. Let’s take the same example: accept the feelings but interpret the experience and subsequent feelings  not as inadequacy on my part, rather as an opportunity for growth, new learning channels, and an experience that can lead to added friendships and hopefully financial gain. These thoughts will energize the situation to include actions of dressing myself up, getting out there, networking, interviewing and landing ‘the’ job. The healthier thought pattern, resulting from those same feelings, has opened a new pathway for POSITIVE action producing a quite different life experience.

Accept the feelings ~ use a POSITIVE thought mantra ~ create POSITIVE actions. This can be applied to any feeling around any given situation.

“Take charge of your thoughts. Take charge of your life”  quoted from Dr. Karin Anderson Abrell.