motional Awareness.

Q - What is a Thought?
A thought is : the act of thinking about or considering something, an idea or opinion, or a set of ideas about a particular subject within a persons mind. Memories also invoke mental images which can become thoughts. Thinking is normal, problems arise when the thinking becomes irrational and ruminating. This is what is called Maladaptive thinking.

SOME IMPACTS OF NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
When we worry or have negative thoughts, we trick our brains into thinking that there is an immediate threat that we have to take care of. As a result, our fight or flight response kicks in to deal with the stress. This in turn heightens all of our bodily senses using up energy that for prolonged periods of time can leave us feeling a constant state of tiredness, fearfulness, agitation irritability.

Negative thinking can manifest negative feelings like sadness, frustration, jealousy and anger. People can become ill as a result of perpetual negative thinking. Anxiety, chronic stress and depression are often tied to negative thoughts. Negative thinking has a detrimental affect on the body, mind and quality of life. Negative thinking tends to complicate things, requiring more effort from you to achieve goals.

If you focus mainly on the negative aspects of a life event, you’re more likely to replay those negative thoughts and images in your head for longer periods of time. This kind of repeated negative-thinking clouds your vision and affects the way you interact with the world — and yourself.

The Past: The habit of thinking about the past robs many people of experiencing the possibilities of the now. If your thinking pattern slips backwards and you find yourself often in a state of describing your present as it relates to your past, or if the story you tell yourself about yourself is heavily dependent on things that happened awhile back, then you are closing you and your partner, family and friends off from creating a new story today. What happened before is over, unless you choose to bring it with you.

The Future: The habit of thinking to far into the future also robs many people of experiencing the possibilities of the now. It is good to prepare for the future, problems arise when the preparation eats into the present by becoming obsessive. Thinking that everything has to be done within a strict time-frame may leave limited or no room for being spontaneous. If you base life being heavily dependent on future preparations you may also be closing yourself form family, friends and life as it is happening which could lead to regret at a later stage. life is happening now.

Your challenge is learning how not to judge your experiences, but to make a conscious choice as to what you want to experience.

The Link Between Thoughts & Emotions
Emotions stimulate the feelings that may be born from perception. Although how we perceive something does not necessarily make it true, real, right or wrong. Thoughts come automatically in relation to situations. If we are experiencing a negative situation our thoughts or emotional state is more likely going to become negative. The same could be said for positive situations leading to positive thoughts and a positive emotional state.

For example a negative situation: You have just found out that a friend has be taken to the hospital after a car accident. This is all the information you have received. You start to think the worse. (THOUGH). Your thinking is distorted. As your thinking spirals out of control you may start to experience many different (EMOTIONS). Your emotional response is the stimuli which creates sensory (AFFECT).
Question ; What type of thoughts could you be Thinking?
Question; What types of emotion could you be exhibiting?
Question; what types of sensory affects could you feel?

Thought, Emotion, Affect (TEA)
T.E.A is an abbreviation for Thought, Emotion, Affect. This is taking a realistic approach to situations.
T - Thought. After you got the limited information from the example above, you started to process it. Because of the scenario and lack of information your imagination feed you negative thoughts. ( death, pain, blood).
E - Emotion. Your negative thoughts feed you an emotional response.( fear, worry, dread, apprehension, tenseness, distress).
A - Affect. Your emotional response feed you sensory affects.( felt sick, trembling, sweating, etc.). By now your headspace is in total disarray, your heart rate is elevated and your judgments somewhat distorted.

How could you have handled the situation differently?
You could have use T.E.A to rationalize your experience.
Thought - think the thought through clearly and mindfully.
Emotion – Try not let one emotion lead to another. Catch the emotion from spiraling out of control.
Affect – don't try to fight the affect, explore it. Ask what, why, how, etc.
Here is another Solution for awareness.
ROOM - Rationalise it– I don't have all the information. OR have I got all the relevant information.
Own it– I own this emotion. I am in control of the emotion not the emotion in control of me.
Overcome it – overcome TEA by being mindful
Mindful of it– I know these thoughts are unrealistic and this is why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling.
How is this achieved you ask? It is achieved through the practice of Mind Cultivation.

Next Lesson - Negative Thoughts Record.