The One You Feed - Mini Episode- Feelings, Thoughts and Actions

Episode Date: February 14, 2015

We are all interested in how we feel but our emotions are one thing we cannot change directly. We can however change our behavior or thoughts and then bring about emotional change.  Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Kino MacGregorStrand of OaksMike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's Eric from The One You Feed with this week's mini episode. Before we get started though, I wanted to mention again I am starting to work with a few select people on feeding their good wolf. I guess you'd call it coaching. I'm not a fan of the word, but I don't have a better one. So I believe that everybody is doing the best they can with what they know, with the skills they have, with the tools they have.

doing the best they can with what they know, with the skills they have, with the tools they have. And this is really intended to be a way to give people some additional methods or some additional techniques to move forward in places that they're stuck, as well as provide some accountability and support. So if that's something you're interested in, send me an email to eric at one you feed.net. And now we'll move on to the mini episode. What I want to talk about this week is the interplay of feelings, thoughts and behavior. I'm kind of fascinated by this topic because it seems that they all have some impact on the other one. But as I thought more about it, what I thought was interesting is that there is one of those three that we cannot directly impact. And I think that one is emotions. There doesn't seem to be any way that I know of to directly change an emotion,

to change how I feel. I can say, well, I should be happy, but it doesn't tend to work. The other two, behavior and thought, I have some ability to make some changes. So it seems to me that those are sort of the two levers that we've got to work with as we look at trying to make our lives better. If you look at cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy is very much focused on this idea. It talks about recognizing that when our thoughts are incorrect or misguided about the world and trying to change those thoughts and work through them. And I think that's a really powerful approach. And I also think there are some times that simply behavior is the right way to move. We may not change how we think about something. We certainly can't change how we feel about

something. Sometimes we simply have to change the way we behave. And that's the phrase that you've probably heard on the show, which is, you can't think your way into right action, you have to act your way into right thinking. That's not 100% true. But there's there's certainly some truth in there. And I thought I might illustrate this with an example. And this probably not the best one ever, but it will have to suffice for a Saturday afternoon at 6 p.m. And I'm thinking back to a time where I enter a new work situation and there's somebody there that I just immediately don't like. I'm sure we all have these situations. It's not something I really feel great about, like, oh, I dislike this person on site.

But it happens. And so there's a couple ways I've learned over the years to deal with that. One way, this would be the thought-based approach, is to try and change my thoughts about that person to try and think things. Well, I bet that they are, they're nicer than they look, or you know what, I bet that they have struggles in life the same way, or to change my thoughts about that person is one way to approach it. The other way to approach it is simply to change my behavior to that person, to suddenly be nice, to make the attempt to get to know that person, to engage with

them instead of staying stuck in my thoughts and my feelings. And that almost inevitably works. And so, again, it's sort of two ways to the same place, which is I don't like this person. That's based on some thought I'm having about them, which is translating into an emotion. So I can either change that thought, or I can change the behavior, which will put me in a different position where my thoughts might more naturally change as I get to know that person. Again, I'm not really thrilled with that example, but I think it works well enough that you get the point. Just to kind of recap the heart of the episode here is that I think we are all very interested in how we are feeling, our emotions, that I think we are all very interested in how we are feeling, our emotions.

But there's no lever to grab that we can pull there. But we can use the levers of changing our thoughts and changing our behavior. Those almost always produce a change in our emotional state. So hopefully that's helpful. Again, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, send me an email, eric at oneufeed.net. We'll have another episode out Tuesday. Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye. you