There is a common theme throughout all of my articles that talks about being aware of and acknowledging your own thoughts and emotions. The reason for that is because you won’t be able to have control over your behavior if you don’t have control over your thoughts. The energy required to allow yourself to get triggered by unimportant things in your environment, or to have negative thoughts about yourself and others, to feel upset, angry and sad on a regular basis is all energy taken away from your goals, happiness and well-being. If you want to change patterns of thoughts and behaviours that at worst are destructive, and at best not constructive to building the life you want, then you have to first become aware of your current thoughts and behaviours. Self-awareness is the basics of self-development, mindfulness and meaningful long lasting change. Self-awareness is a lifelong process and will help you evolve into a happier, more creative and productive person. Some of the benefits of self-awareness include:
- Greater self-love
- Greater empathy for others
- Increased creativity
- Improved relationships
- Better leadership qualities
- More likely to stick to your goals
- Improved self control
So how do we stop being the type of person who gets sucked into negative emotions? Especially when we have no power over the circumstances that seem to be causing the negative emotions. How do we stop being a slave to our thoughts that do not serve us or our long term goals?
You first have to recognize that you have two brains. I have talked about us having two brains in the context of behaviour, as your human brain and animal brain. The human brain can plan for the future and is the brain that makes decisions for the greater good of your future self. The animal brain is impulsive, always running towards anything that will please the senses in the present moment, and trying to stay away from anything that may be uncomfortable regardless of what is in your best interest. An example would be deciding not to give into eating a piece of cake because you are making a genuine effort to eat healthier on a regular basis as using your human brain. Starting an affair with your married boss would be an example of thinking with your animal brain.
When it comes to thoughts the two brains you have should be aware of are your thinking brain and your observing brain. Since all behaviour begins with a thought you may save yourself some of the struggles between the human brain and the animal brain if you can deal with the issue at the thought level first.
The thinking brain is the never ending inner dialogue that is sometimes helpful but usually toxic and unproductive. The thinking mind is the brain that can’t keep quiet when you try to meditate. The thinking mind is what reminds you to get triggered and angry when someone says something you don’t like. To get control over your thoughts you need to deidentify with them. You are not your thoughts nor your emotions, and the best way to be aware of that is to acknowledge when you engage in an unhealthy thought process. When you identify with the thought, it brings about strong emotions, that breed more negative thoughts and stronger negative emotions which may or may not lead you to act. Even if you don’t take any action it’s still energy draining and bad for your emotional and mental well-being. So next time you’re feeling angry for whatever reason, you change the patter by first changing your wording to describe the situation (words matter!) Rather than acknowledging the situation as “I am angry” say instead “I FEEL anger”. Then take a minute or two to reflect on the physical attributes of anger, is it a tightening in your chest? a hot feeling in your face? are your hands tingly? Is your breath shallow? Then think about what triggered you to feel that way and try to figure out if you are projecting qualities we don’t like about ourselves onto others? If you may exaggerating the gravity of a situation? If there are steps you can take to find a solution rather than wallowing in negative thoughts and emotions. Tell yourself it’s okay to be experiencing these emotions but that they are not you. And then here comes the radical part. Be thankful for the opportunity to work on yourself. When you are having a negative thought or emotion that is the time to put in the self-work which will turn a seemingly negative moment into a teachable moment.
Doing this once or twice will not get rid of all of your negative thoughts and impulsive behaviours, but with consistent practice of observing your thoughts you will see an improvement in negative self talk and emotional control.
A recent example of feeling the benefit of self-awareness was today when my sister posted a clip on Facebook of a girl who trains like a horse. Meaning this young girl trains by running, galloping and jumping on all fours like a horse. My sister posted the video talking about how weird this horse girl was and basically putting the girl down for her unconventional way of training. I didn’t agree so I came on to the thread saying that quadrupedal movement and animal flow are very real ways of training and that the girl in the video was actually giving an impressive display of athleticism, and that what she is doing is better than being a couch potato. My sister replied to my post by saying that horse girl will injure herself training that way and that she would prefer a couch potato over this strange way of training. She commented on this girl she does not know as if the she must have psychological issues to be training that way. This TRIGGERED me. For a couple of reasons. I felt that my sister should have respected my comment as a fitness trainer and someone who does practice quadruped movement rather than trying to have the last. I also felt she was out of order to be judging something so harshly simply because it’s not her cup of tea. All of this was my ego. My automatic, no self-control, thinking mind, wanted to shoot back with another response to call her out on her very close minded attitude. Maybe even throw in some of the benefits of quadrupedal movement.
Instead I became aware and said to myself “okay I’m feeling annoyed” “this social media post has triggered as so many social media posts have in the past” “I’m feeling a desire to get into a social media argument to get her to see my point of view”. I then did a head to toe body scan to feel where I am “holding” this feeling. My heart rate had accelerated, breathing was a little more shallow, and I felt hotter (temperature wise). Then I looked at what triggered the emotion. Her post made annoyed because she was judging something based on not understanding it. Her reply annoyed me because although I know more about fitness training and explained what the girl was doing, she still wanted to stick to her judgmental post and original assessment. I asked myself why this triggered me. I had no other answer to that except for EGO, because in reality the outcome of this situation has no bearing on my actual life so why waste any energy on this at all. I asked myself if there have been times when I have been closed minded or aggressive with wanting the last word or making comments on things that I was not 100% informed about. Of course the answer was a resounding YES. I then asked if there is a solution to this situation. The answer was easy….STOP REPLYING TO A SILLY FACEBOOK POST. I also asked myself if there is anything I can learn from this. In this case I learned that I also sometimes don’t back down when I think I’m right about something, even when I don’t always have all the facts and that I need to be compassionate with others who display those same HUMAN characteristics. I learned that I can let myself get worked up over social media comments and that it’s a waste of energy.
I then ended with a thank you to the cosmos for the opportunity to improve my self-awareness and self-control by going through this process. By the end I no longer had the desire to prove anything by continuing to reply to the post.
The entire process takes only a few minutes and I ended up feeling much better than before the situation began because I felt like I grew a little as a person. And I did it all without resisting and repressing the feelings, instead I examined the feelings. It takes consistent practice of observing your thoughts to start seeing and feeling the benefits of a less cluttered mind. But its totally worth it the day you see a difference in your reaction to different scenarios that may have caused you to go off in the past. A peaceful mind is a powerful mind!
