Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviors
I didn’t know thoughts came before feelings. I was always so in tune with my overwhelm that I thought my feelings created the thoughts. It was a big epiphany when I learned that my thoughts were actually creating my feelings. It goes thoughts then feelings then behaviors. Each of these are a gift to go deeper into our process. Feelings and Behaviors can be used to get to the deeper underlying issues that need to be resolved for healing to happen. If you connect strongly to feelings, ride them back to find the limiting beliefs. If thoughts aren’t changed, than consciousness stays the same and we create the same situations in our lives. Many people are solely aware of the consequences they are experiencing because of their substance abuse issues, mental health or trauma. They KNOW that they are feeling anxious, depressed or angry. People often ask, “Where do I begin?” Using what is present in your process is helpful. If you are anxious all the time, start with that. If you have a memory that continues to pop up, start there. It’s incredibly crucial that you get to the thoughts that are driving the feelings and behaviors. If those don’t get touched or changed, you will notice the same life events playing themselves out over and over again. Ever had that happen? Start by looking for thoughts that seem negative or hold you back. Our thoughts create our experience so if you feel bad you are holding negative thoughts in your consciousness and when you feel good you have positive thoughts in your consciousness. When we feel bad, we can always reach for better feeling thoughts; hence, the use of affirmations. Start becoming aware of your own experience and see how feelings and behaviors can be an indicator to you what thoughts you are holding in your consciousness.
There’s an empowerment that comes from mindfulness of how thoughts become our experience. For me, this is resulting in a shift away from identifying with being a victim of an old story to being a creator of a new one. With this is coming a renewed sense of self worth and confidence and a deepening of my connections with others. This strengthening of relating to others comes as a result of being able to observe and thereby shift the thoughts and judgments that have always kept me feeling seperate and behaving in ways that had only served to justify my original thoughts. And then I’m able to see how life events played out over and over because I was using the same thinking and getting the same experiences and “learning” that I was a powerless victim of circumstance in what I perceived to be a cruel world. That’s how the illusion becomes so convincing. Being able to see how my thoughts have created this seperation from others also allows me to have compassion and kindness for both my experience of life and for the way others experience their own journeys which only serves to strengthen my connection with others. I definitely agree that becoming mindful of the thoughts that create my emotions is huge and it continues to make a big difference in my healing process.
It’s powerful to truly understand that you are not your thoughts, your past or your story. You can completely reinvent yourself when you reframe old beliefs, practice self-forgiveness around those beliefs and create a vision for yourself. So cool!!!
Great awareness! You are noticing that it was your own belief system that kept you isolated from others. Sounds like the old story really comes present when around other people so makes perfect sense that coping including isolating.
I like how you mention affirmations. Our habitual ways of negative thinking can’t not so easily be stopped without having something to replace them with. Very important, because if we just wing it, we will inevitably fly off the rails of our mental roller coaster again and again.
When I first started, I didn’t have the positive thoughts to replace the negative ones with so affirmations were HUGE for me. Also, a lot of affirmations really resonated with my truth so I had fun finding ones that I liked and saying them to myself.
I’m curious Bev, how do you remind yourself to use the affirmations you like?
I use card decks that have affirmations or qualities on them. I have a deck on my desk and so usually before I start to work, I will draw a card. Or I draw a card when I want to center myself or ask for guidance on something. My personal work is very intentional so I remind myself to pull affirmations when I correlate affirmations and some other behavior I do.