Emotions come in many flavors and sizes. Sometimes we begin teaching children four basic emotions: mad, sad, glad, and hurt. On the other end of the spectrum, Live Bold & Bloom undertakes to list 400 “emotion words” – names of emotions, or adjectives describing the emotions. Some emotions are …
Feelings Primer
Feelings are considered the conscious experience of emotional reactions. Many people when expressing themselves will use the word “feeling” interchangeably with the word “emotion.” Feelings are, in their most basic definition, senses—like the sense of smell or taste. A cool breeze might give us a …
Next Up: Feelings
We are complex beings. Many parts of us interact to produce “who we are” or “what we do” or “how we feel”. There are also many areas where we can intervene in these interactions to bring more satisfying outcomes. The more we observe ourselves and the greater awareness we have of our own inner …
More Thinking Aids
One of the strategies for countering rigid or harmful ways of thinking is to ask ourselves questions about our thoughts and assumptions. Likewise, we can treat our thoughts as “best guesses” rather than as facts. We can also use the PACE model in our own inner dialog: Playful, Accepting, Curiosity …
Better Ways of Thinking
We’ve talked about several ways of thinking that are not helpful—and even harmful, along with suggestions about how to counter each one. Let’s do a round-up of these: Black-and-white thinkingAsk questions to arrive at a more balanced viewpoint: “Really?” “What do you mean by…?”Use more nuanced …
Overgeneralization
Overgeneralization is another way of thinking that can add to negative feelings and sabotage constructive effort. The motto of overgeneralization is not “if you don’t succeed the first time, try, try again.” It is rather “Because you didn’t succeed the first time, you are doomed to failure” or …
Negative Filters
Have you been wearing dark glasses lately? Negative filtering is one way to get ourselves into a negative-feedback loop that can be challenging to get out of. This type of thinking keeps us aware of and dwelling on negative aspects of ourselves or our situation, and either discounting or entirely …
Labeling
Labeling is a form of negative over-generalization used for people. We take a single event, behavior, or characteristic and use a label to generalize it to the whole person. We can label ourselves, or others. This is also called global labeling or mislabeling. The problem with this kind of labeling …
The Inner Prosecutor
Self-blaming often goes along with mind-reading, but it also has a life of its own, separate from mind-reading. In self-blaming, we attach too much power and responsibility to ourselves. We hold ourselves accountable for things that are outside our sphere of control, and take responsibility for …
Mind Reading
Mind reading and taking the blame are two skewed thinking patterns that often go together. We think we know what the other person is thinking, and it’s probably our fault. That can bring on a lot of stress! “The boss looks upset. She’s probably unhappy with me again.” “Jack looked a little …
Black and White Thinking
Black and white thinking, also called polarized thinking, is a way of viewing situations that fails to acknowledge the nuances that exist between two extremes. With black and white thinking, situations, problems, outcomes, and even people are seen in extremes. Accompanied by our tendency to …
Thinking Skills
Our thinking patterns have a big impact on our emotions and our ability to act in positive ways. Becoming aware of how our thoughts affect us and developing helpful thinking patterns is a skill that can help us realize more positive outcomes in our career, our relationships, our health, and in our …
Coping Skills Overview
As you’ve seen in the past weeks’ posts, there are a great many coping skills available to us to deal with the demands and challenges of life. Let’s jump up to the 30,000-foot view to categorize some of these. We are complex beings, with thoughts, emotions and behaviors all working together. Our …
Flexible Thinking
Physical flexibility can help us reach places and do things that we couldn’t otherwise, keep us from getting hurt if we fall, and help us to make progress by getting over, around, or through obstacles. Mental flexibility is much the same. It can help us solve problems, reach conclusions, be safe …
Visualization
Visualization can be a powerful technique for ‘Living Better’ – achieving successes that are important to you. What is visualization, anyway? Visualization is “seeing in your mind’s eye”. In a word, imagination. It’s not just thinking. Visualizing includes imagining with true-to-life images and …
Stop, Look, and Listen!
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. - George Bernard Shaw Children are encouraged to “Stop, look and listen” before crossing railroad tracks or streets. Why? Because being unaware can be life-threatening. Have you ever considered the consequences …
Feelings and Emotions
Feeling is one of the basic physical senses—perceiving by touch. It has also been generalized to mean perception of events within the body. A feeling is also an emotion, or an emotional perception. Feelings as emotions can be initiated by bodily responses—the interaction between physiological events …
Emotional Intelligence
The term “Emotional Intelligence” was coined in 1990 by two researchers who described it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and …