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Did you know that the average person thinks between 50,000-70,000 thoughts per day? The thoughts that pass through our brain last only split seconds and range from the mundane -- I need to do groceries, to the significant – My family really matters to me, to the self-destructive -- I'm not good enough.

And did you know that most of these thoughts are the same thoughts we think every day? Our thoughts seem to be on autopilot most of the time and appear to come from nowhere.

AND did you know that the majority of these automatic thoughts are negative. (The reason for this is rather interesting and something that we will deal with on another day)

Psychologists have coined a phrase for these thoughts: ANTs – Automatic Negative Thoughts.

I like to think of them as ANTs eating the positive side of my brain. A yucky but powerful image, wouldn’t you say?

How many ANTs can...

Over the last little while, we have been talking about the link between emotion and motion – in other words how taking action can change your feelings. 

This week, let’s explore how we can sometimes get to the very source of negative emotions to prevent them rather than changing them once they appear.

Before I explain this further, let’s do a quick exercise. 

Imagine that your family is rushing to get out of the house in the morning and you are trying to do several things at once: get ready for work, make sure the children have everything they need for the day, feed them breakfast and connect with your spouse about the evening plans. It is one of those days and everyone is running a bit late. 

Get the picture?

Now, just as everyone is about to bolt from the breakfast table and get into the car/bus/bicycle, your six-year-old spills the entire box of cereal on the floor. Oooops. Now everyone will be late for sure.

What is your reaction? 

Do you think:...

Feelings, as we have been discovering, can often change by changing our behaviour.

Here is a recap of the actions we can take to impact our feelings:

Try power poses to increase your confidence [DW#473]

Which ones are the most challenging?

Remember how nervous you were? How unprepared you felt? 

So how did you become better in these areas of your life?

You prepared yourself by learning, studying, passing a test . . .

And then you practiced.

A lot.

If you had waited till you had the confidence to do any of these things you would not have taken the car out of the garage, cooked your first meal or spoken a word of another language.

The confidence came from two things: preparing and practicing.

How about applying the same formula to areas of your life where you currently lack confidence?

You already know how, right?

Fear is one emotion ALL of us have experienced. Whether real or imagined, personal or professional, our hearts have trembled with the prospect of coming face to face with what we fear. 

What is fear, anyways? 

Here is how the dictionary describes it: 
Fear noun "an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm."

Given that all of us do and will feel fear, it may be helpful to recognize that we can still act as we must, despite the feeling of fear. Courage, as it is often said, is NOT the absence of fear but rather taking action DESPITE the fear. 

The idea of taking action is embedded in the very definition of courage:
Courage noun "the ability to do something that frightens one".

To put it very simply:

So can one turn fear into courage by reading, listening, intellectualizing or philosophizing? 

Sadly, no. 

The only way to foster courage is to practice acting despite the feeling of fear. 

And each...

Even if we care deeply about our spouses, it does not mean that we will always feel positively towards them. It is quite normal to have negative feelings like irritation, anger, hurt and doubt from time to time. The problem lies not in these feelings but in the fact that we may take it to mean that we have "fallen out of love" with this person. When we start thinking like this, we stop doing loving actions and our relationship gets stuck in a downward spiral.

Because feelings change over time, going up and down from time to time, feelings by themselves are NOT a good indicator of relationship health at any given time.

What if we start thinking of the absence of loving feelings as a sign that we need to start doing more loving actions? That we need to act in a loving...

Research that was done about a year ago and published in the journal Emotion, shows that doing something nice for your spouse can boost your emotional well-being —even if he or she isn’t aware of your good deed.

The researchers found that couples benefitted the most when their acts of kindness were recognized and...

What can we learn from this? That if you act like lovers on a set with your significant other, it is quite likely that you can kindle or rekindle the feelings of love.

However, science now suggests that smiling can trick your brain into happiness — and boost your health.

The strange thing is that for the most part, the brain cannot detect whether it is a genuine smile or not. It is the...

When we are sad, we tend to look down and frown, when anxious we might tap our feet, fidget or shift our eyes and when we are happy we often smile.

But how we position our bodies doesn’t just reflect how we feel, it can also change how we feel.

For example, if we act confident even when we are not feeling confident, we may increase our feelings of confidence.

According to recent research: "Posture has a bigger impact on body and mind than anyone believed. Striking a powerful, expansive pose actually changes a person’s hormones and behavior, and even have an impact on how you are perceived in the working world," saysWall Street Journal columnist Sue Shellenbarger.

And we don’t have to change your posture or pose for long. A few minutes seems to be all you need to have an impact on our feelings.

In her research with Dana Carney at UC-Berkeley, Amy J.C. Cuddy has focused on...