Mindful Thought pt3

 

Today we explore more what emotions are and how they steer our reactions and our life. 

Let's take a look at the evolution of our emotional programming and processing.

Emotional competence is a developmental process that has 3 components: 1) emotion expression; 2) emotion knowledge; and 3) emotion regulation As we grow up we go through different levels of cognitive ability.:

As a newborn baby we are not aware we exist, emotions are purely based on survival, to influence our caregivers and surroundings.

Often you can see on a baby's face how nature trains the right muscles to communicate the emotions they will need to express themselves later in life.

Around 2 years old, the magic happens, the emerging of the emotional self separate from the parents or caregiver, 

our emotions are fully erupting and tantrums prove that, 

our emotions are no longer a mean of survival, 

still we  are not not fully conscious yes.

This happens when we are approximately 3 years old, we now have a conceptual self, a sense of identity. 

We are fully conscious and this starts to blossom between 3 and 6 years old. Here language is the concept, the noise we make to communicate

with others, we label our surroundings and the world around us starts to make sense. 

Emotions are now triggered by stimulus outside our self with an immediate reaction. 

Smile, cry... 

Between 6 and 9 years old we reach what we call concrete consciousness,  we start to learn the rules about governable concept. 

We learn to adapt and to accept the ways of the home, school and the society we live in, 

we are taught to control our emotions, to hide them if needed and we become aware of the emotions we can evoke in others. 

Only in our teenage years we make an attempt to go beyond the 

rules, teenage conflict is a developmental stage, a way of testing the rules. 

This will bubble on for a few years and is almost always suppressed by our parents or caregivers.

It is a period of deep and strong emotions: our body changes, hormonal changes, conflicts with authority and first love.

The transverse of our teen years fades and we go back into concrete consciousness, we follow the rules, our life become stereotypical, 

most of us do not question the rules, some of us are not even aware of them. 

This is the stage where we stay in for the rest of our life. At least most of us ☺

Here we have covered everything of 2 of the components, expression and knowledge, now about emotion regulating

The message of our emotions is strong, so it is very important 

to listen...

It is also important to be able to control them where needed.

And here we arrive at an important step for our well being.

Why is it so hard to control our emotions?

Let's look at an example:

You are 3 years old and there is a cookie jar on the table.

Your mind goes in a state of wanting.

You reach for the cookie and your mom says no, you can not have it

The feeling of wanting something and not being able to have it is hard to deal with

As a child this feeling is very confronting and you do not have the cognitive ability yet to think about it logically.

You do not understand that the cookie is not the best nutrition at this moment.

You explode into emotion as an immediate reaction

What you see here is a 3 step process:

 A stimulus

 the stimulus sparks an emotion

 and the emotion sparks a reaction

 

 Stimulus: Cookie, I want it but I can not have it

 Emotion: Frustration, anger, sadness

 Reaction: Crying and screaming

 

Sadly that is how most of us continue to operate for the rest of our lives and if you are emotionally reactive you will 

feel a lot of pain and you will cause a lot of pain 

 

Take a look at the world around us, there is many things that are quit negative, 

many people are operating from a very negative place, 

there is really hard circumstances in many people's life, in many places.

Life is suffering for most of humans on earth.

All those things are going to cause you emotional reactions if you do not understand the conscious next 

level of this process. That's the reactive model of emotional processing.

I have good news :D

This is where mindfulness comes into place...

Mindfulness adds a step to the processing of emotions and it is not terribly difficult

CHOICE

Instead of stimulus-emotion-reaction,

you have stimulus-emotion-exploration-choice. 

Choices are powerful. Choices are made with consciousness in a way 

that brings you FORWARD in life 

regardless if it's a hard choice, a negative situation or a positive situation. 

It doesn't matter.

When you are making a choice, 

you are ALWAYS moving forward. 

When you are reacting, maybe sometimes it works out well for you, 

most of the time it does not. 

Reactions are almost entirely out of ego. 

Choices are almost entirely out of consciousness and being aware.

Controlling and/or regulating your emotions is very important part of being able to live a happy life.

 

 And here I can add for you this little task: when your emotions are sparked in a negative manner, by something

 or someone practice this golden rule to count to 10 in your mind before reacting. It gives you time to make a choice

 how to react and it also lowers the strength of your emotion.

 

 I want to share this with you about the power of not reacting (really beautiful):