Creating More Joy, Love, and Happiness is a Choice
There is ample research that shows we create our emotions and feelings. The concepts we have in place were learned implicitly when we were children but we feel these are more reactions and things that are innate because of the speed at which they seem to flow. They're not.
Our emotional concepts and our behavioral and thinking prediction loops were established when we were just children. This was a time when most of who we are as adults today came in not fruition. We have a handful of instincts and automatic responses but most of who we are is conditioning and learned responses.
Every person responds to the same stimulus in a different way. Seven and a half billion people on the planet each and every one of us with different conditioning.
Our behavior impacts what we think and feel. Our posture and our movements impact our moods and states. When we want to be happy we have to do happy. Yes, you read that correctly. So what exactly is happy? Helping, being generous, exercising empathy, compassion, and gratitude has been shown to increase our level of happiness.
Renowned marriage expert John Gottman's single best advice for married couples when they feel like have lost their love is to be loving to one another.
Because our emotions and feelings are so strong and fast, we think that they are predicated upon an external stimulus and in a sense they are but we create the response. If you can imagine opening your closet looking for an outfit to wear, you choose outfits based on what you feel appropriate for the occasion. We all have our own ideas about what is in fact appropriate for a given occasion. This is exactly how we create our emotional responses to situations. We just do it at 180,000 miles an hour or so.
Just like changing lanes in a car, in order to effectively do so we need to slow down to a speed that is manageable. This takes practice and mindfulness but is more than possible. If we want more joy, love and happiness in our lives, we simply have to practice it. Do joy, do love, do happiness and you will be it.
What we feel is a choice. This concept can seem foreign to many and there are exceptions where conditioning is so strong it seems impossible to change but it will just take more time and patience. Of course I am operating on the assumption that one is living at or slightly above levels of subsistence. If one is subject to third world or developing world conditions of water scarcity, electrical scarcity, political instability, or civil war that defensive posture creates a mode of survival that s necessary. But if these conditions do not apply to you, you do in fact have a choice about what you feel. Be mindful.
Our emotional concepts and our behavioral and thinking prediction loops were established when we were just children. This was a time when most of who we are as adults today came in not fruition. We have a handful of instincts and automatic responses but most of who we are is conditioning and learned responses.
Every person responds to the same stimulus in a different way. Seven and a half billion people on the planet each and every one of us with different conditioning.
Our behavior impacts what we think and feel. Our posture and our movements impact our moods and states. When we want to be happy we have to do happy. Yes, you read that correctly. So what exactly is happy? Helping, being generous, exercising empathy, compassion, and gratitude has been shown to increase our level of happiness.
Renowned marriage expert John Gottman's single best advice for married couples when they feel like have lost their love is to be loving to one another.
Because our emotions and feelings are so strong and fast, we think that they are predicated upon an external stimulus and in a sense they are but we create the response. If you can imagine opening your closet looking for an outfit to wear, you choose outfits based on what you feel appropriate for the occasion. We all have our own ideas about what is in fact appropriate for a given occasion. This is exactly how we create our emotional responses to situations. We just do it at 180,000 miles an hour or so.
Just like changing lanes in a car, in order to effectively do so we need to slow down to a speed that is manageable. This takes practice and mindfulness but is more than possible. If we want more joy, love and happiness in our lives, we simply have to practice it. Do joy, do love, do happiness and you will be it.
What we feel is a choice. This concept can seem foreign to many and there are exceptions where conditioning is so strong it seems impossible to change but it will just take more time and patience. Of course I am operating on the assumption that one is living at or slightly above levels of subsistence. If one is subject to third world or developing world conditions of water scarcity, electrical scarcity, political instability, or civil war that defensive posture creates a mode of survival that s necessary. But if these conditions do not apply to you, you do in fact have a choice about what you feel. Be mindful.
Comments
Post a Comment