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Here are 25 questions that we can choose from. When we notice our distorted thinking patterns, lets challenge the validity of these distortions. They can seldom hold up to this type of questioning.

·     Is this thought helpful?
·     What are the disadvantages of thinking this way? 
·     Do I have a trusted friend whom I can check out these thoughts with?
·     Are there other ways that I can think about this situation or myself?
·     Am I blaming myself unnecessarily?
·     Is it really in my control?
·     Is it all someone else’s fault? 
·     Am I overgeneralizing?
...

As we have been saying, the problem in our lives is not that we have negative thoughts or "cognitive distortions". The problem is that we believe all of these thoughts and assume that they are accurate or true. 

Instead of believing everything that we think, we can begin to notice our thoughts as they come and go without getting "hooked" by them. We can learn to become observers of our minds and its chatter and become aware of how much of it is automatically negative and unhelpful. 

The best way to do this is to intentionally set aside time each day to get silent and observe our thoughts as they come and go. When we notice our minds wandering into negative territory, we can bring our focus back to the present moment without further engaging with those thoughts. 

Once we become intimately aware of how our mind works, we can stop automatically believing and acting on our thoughts. We have a choice. We can notice our thoughts, let them go. Notice our thoughts and let them...

This pattern of thinking involves believing that we will be happy if people around us change to accommodate our wishes and desires. An outcome of this type of thinking is to expect that others will change if we just pressure or encourage them enough.

If I just nag my adult son enough, we may think, he will stop wearing un-ironed clothes. Or

Instead of focusing on our own circle of control, we focus our energies on ‘encouraging’ others around us to change. Of course, it seems that the more enthusiastic we get about our agenda for others to change, the more they seem to resist our good advice!!

Now we do need to mention a huge caveat here: let’s be honest. The behaviour of...

A lot of women (and parents) who believe they have done everything for their families are devastated when their relationships do not work out. They struggle to find the missing link – where did they go wrong, they keep asking themselves? What more could they have done? They never looked after their own needs and where did it leave them?

Now, wouldn’t it be lovely if things always worked out as they ‘should’?

But each and every one of us knows lots of examples of when hard work and sacrifice did not pay off. Reality is that sometimes no matter how hard we work or how much we sacrifice, we will not achieve what we hope to achieve. To think otherwise is a potentially damaging pattern of thought that can result in disappointment, frustration, anger, and even depression when the awaited reward does...

Personalization is a cognitive distortion where we consistently take the blame for anything and everything that goes wrong with our life. 

When we think like this, everything that goes wrong is all about us, even if there is no way we could have controlled or even influenced the outcome. For example, if we go on a picnic with friends and it ends up raining, we tell ourselves it is raining because of the bad luck and bad weather that follows us wherever we go. 

Now taking responsibility for our life, our words and our actions is the mature thing to do of course but we are not accountable for the outcome of actions and situations beyond our control. 

And we are certainly NOT responsible for the weather :) 

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?

A simple first step towards building emotional intelligence is to notice and label the feelings you are experiencing at any given time. 

Although a simple exercise, it can be challenging at first to name an emotion and it is easy to mistake a thought for a feeling. 

An effective way to begin this practice is to get in touch with the physical sensations in your body. When you experience an emotion, electric signals are triggered by your brain to your body and show up as physical sensations such as changes in heart beat, in pace and depth of breath, in muscle tenseness and change of temperature on your skin. 

You can take a moment to check in with yourself right now. Close your eyes and get present to what is happening inside right now. Begin to notice your breath and your heart rate. Do your muscles feel tight or relaxed? If tight, where is the tightness precisely?
Once you get comfortable with a neutral reading of your body, you may want to practice thinking about a...

If you are not aware of your emotions as they are happening, please don’t give yourself a hard time.

According to a credible study, only 36% of people are able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen. What this suggests is that the vast majority of us are being controlled by our emotions and are that they may be leading us to where we might not want to go.

If we are not aware of our emotions, we do not recognize that we are continuously having emotional reactions to everything that is happening around us and in our lives. We may find that we are overreacting to triggers and don’t understand what happened to cause the overreaction. We may find ourselves blaming others for our feelings rather than confront the uncomfortable truth that we did not recognize we were emotionally aroused until the feelings bubbled over as a behavioural overreaction. 

But you know what the great thing about awareness is? Just thinking about emotional awareness makes you more...

In 1972, psychologist Paul Eckman suggested that there are six basic emotions that are universal throughout human cultures: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, and sadness. 

In 1999, he expanded this list to include a number of other basic emotions, including embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement. 

But a new study out of UC Berkley professor Dacher Keltner now suggests that there are at least 27 distinct emotions—and they are intimately connected with each other. 

The study followed a demographically diverse group of 853 men and women who went online to view a random sampling of silent five- to 10-second videos intended to evoke a broad range of emotions. Keltner and his colleagues at UC Berkeley found that 27 distinct dimensions, not six, were necessary to account for the way these hundreds of people reliably reported feeling in response to these videos. 

The researchers also found that emotional experiences...

When we think of emotions, most of us only focus on how they "feel" but this is only part of the picture.

Psychologists explain that each emotional experience has three components. Understanding these three components of our emotional experiences is an important step in helping us manage strong emotions. 

Here are the three components:

1)    The Feeling/Physical Component: "How I feel in my body"
Emotions manifest in internal sensations in our bodies which can include heart palpitations, stomach distress, sweating, hot or cold flushes, shortness of breathe, fatigue, muscle tension or increased energy.

2)    The Thinking/Cognitive Component: "What I say to myself"
How we interpret events and experiences and the self talk that we engage in greatly impact what we end up feeling and doing. If someone cuts us off on the highway, for example, what we tell ourselves about the other driver will make us feel either anger or sympathy for...