Just how you think, feel and perceive the world around you

We are thinking and feeling beings.

Our way of thinking determines what we feel and, as a result of what it provokes in us, we take what we think as proof of truth. This is an incredible ability, but it can also play tricks on us.

What came before the thought, the emotion or the feeling?

To answer this question, we must first briefly define three concepts:

Thought: Ability that people have to form ideas and representations of reality in their mind. Emotion: They are psychophysiological, biological expressions and mental states. Feeling: State of mind or emotional disposition towards a thing, an event or a person.

There is a thin line that separates our ability to think and feel. in which the emotion is halfway between them.

In our daily lives and due to the use we make of our language, on many occasions we use these three concepts as if they were synonyms, but the truth is that thinking, emoting and feeling are very different things.

We are rational beings. This does not imply that emotions and feelings are foreign and do not intervene in our personality, our way of interpreting the world, decision-making and the way we set our ideas.

We pay attention to our emotions and it is a human capacity that we should not keep from our lives. Reason without emotion or feeling has no meaning.

Feelings last longer than emotions, but emotions are more intense than feelings.

Learning how this relationship works in us is essential to foster our emotional intelligence, our way of relating to ourselves and others and, ultimately, to improve our mental health.

Emotion is associated with personality and people’s motivation.. Emotions are shorter than feelings and are what motivate us to act. They are more intense than feelings, but they last less.

Feeling comes from the verb “feel” and refers to an affective state of mind, generally long-lasting, that occurs in the subject as a product of emotions. Feelings are the result of emotions.

Let’s look at an example:

-I’m practicing Yoga. It is an activity that I like and that makes me feel good. We have been practicing for a while and it has been a learning process in which I have had better days and worse days.

The truth is that, objectively, my performance in the activity has been improving at a good rate, I am able to perform postures that at first seemed impossible to me.

Yesterday I went to a class again and it was one of those days where my activity was low performance. I was not able to carry out postures that I was able to do a few days ago without any problem and that seemed to have been fixed in my knowledge and in my activity as a Yoga learner.

My thought said: “I’m a disaster, this is not for me”

My emotion transmitted to me: “I’m angry with myself.”

My subsequent feeling for the rest of the day was: “I feel sad, down, discouraged”

Who do I listen to?

In the previous example, it depends on how we analyze it, it will determine the idea I have about myself, the motivation to continue attending classes and my attitude in the next session.

If I think I’m a disaster: Does it mean that just because I haven’t managed to do the exercise this way, does it mean that I’m a disaster just because of one bad movement? Doesn’t learning consist of trial and error?

If my emotion is anger: Does it mean that if I get angry with myself what I think is truer? Does that emotion say something really true about who I am? Does feeling an emotion confirm what we think?

If at the end of the day I feel sad: Does it mean that it has really been that important to me? Is everything we feel true? Is the feeling the result of what I think?

Here is the key to everything:

What can we do to improve?

When you catch yourself saying to yourself “If I feel this way then it is true that…” discover the automatic thought that accompanies the emotion you feel and ask yourself: What have I thought to make me feel this way? Do I have evidence to believe that this is always the case?

It’s about questioning and reflecting so that from time to time we don’t believe the stories we tell ourselves.