A meditation by Eva Straková, NF Melodio coach on December’s topic about emotions
Emotions as the “taste” of thoughts and “What if…”
Do you know that situation when a thought suddenly flashes through your head and your body reacts instantly? Something like when you’re tasting wine or trying a new perfume. After a while, you know whether what you feel on your tongue is pleasant for you or not. And you can also safely tell whether the perfume smells good to you or not.
And it’s the same with our thoughts.
A thought can also trigger a reaction, either positive or negative. And we perceive this reaction as an emotion. Yes, we can call emotions the “taste” of our thoughts. And how does this taste arise? It’s a chemical reaction in our body that forms as a response to what’s behind our thoughts—our experiences, beliefs, settings. When some food doesn’t taste good, we can just spit it out. When something doesn’t smell good, we pinch our nose so we don’t feel that aroma.
And what do we do when we suddenly feel some unpleasant emotion?
We start looking around and searching for the source of our unpleasant feelings outside ourselves. Sometimes it’s our colleague’s reaction, sometimes bad weather—we can be quite quick in finding the “culprit.” But why does it often not help us and the emotion persists even when we move away from the supposed cause?
Because what we label as the originator of our emotions is merely an external reflection of what we carry in our head. If we want to find out why some thoughts evoke very negative emotions in us, we need to look into our own head—our values, beliefs, inner settings, and experiences.
The first step in the journey of personal development can be mastering the technique called the OBSERVER. Thanks to it, we learn to detach from our thoughts and look at them as an observer. We can detach from them and decide how to deal with them.
When you feel an emotional “aftertaste” that doesn’t suit you, proceed as follows:
- Stop and become aware of what you’re feeling. Name your emotions and observe their intensity, where you feel them in your body, how you’re breathing, what your body posture is like, how you’re facial expression looks.
- Then ask yourself 2 questions:
What thoughts preceded how I feel now?
Will these thoughts help me resolve the situation I’m in?
- Once you’ve answered, make a decision: “I don’t want these thoughts to control my life, I want change. I decide to change my thoughts to ones that will support me and be positive.“
Example: Thought—”They won’t hire me for that job anyway…”
Just change it like this: “What if it goes well today?”
❗The phrase “What if…” opens a new perspective on the situation.❗
- Then straighten up, smile, and take 3 deep breaths in and out.
I guarantee you that you will immediately feel better.
Ing. Eva Straková
Self-Esteem Coach and Personal Development Lecturer
NLP Master Practitioner
