0
comments
Truth is the Highway to Intimate Relationship
Roads that we travel on any journey are not nearly as important as the destination itself. Many highways, paved roads, or less beaten paths can be different routes to the very same place. There are express highways and scenic routes. This is also true of the journeys we take into intimacy with God.
It has become very apparent to me that whichever route we choose to encounter the Living God in a personal way, the road we travel must be paved with truth. No matter what our truth is on any given day, that is the requirement to achieve true intimacy and without truth there simply cannot be intimacy. Intimacy requires vulnerability, willingness to be known as we truly are without the covering of any fig leaf or facade. This requires risk. There is another word for risk and that is faith. Faith is the currency of the heavenly kingdom of which we are citizens. If we are short on faith we simply need to ask for the gift of faith necessary to allow us to embark on this journey toward knowing the very heart of our God.
Positive and Negative Moments
According to the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, each day weexperience approximately 20,000 moments. A moment is defined as a few seconds in
which our brain records an experience. The quality of our days is determined by
how our brains recognize and categorize our moments—either as positive,
negative, or just neutral. Rarely do we remember neutral moments.
There is no question that the memories of our lives are recorded in terms of
positive and negative experiences. Now scientists propose that each day our
brains—i.e., our thoughts and emotions—keep track of our positive and negative
moments, and the resulting score contributes to our overall mood.
Our emotional tone or mood is defined by the number of positive versus negative
moments experienced during the course of a day. This is not really news to those
people who study emotional intelligence and how the brain works. Yet it has
major implications for how we can improve the quality of our lives.
Positive and negative emotions are your inner guidance system.
Whenever you feel negative emotions, it is a signal that you are doing something that is moving you away from what you want. Negative emotions are a cause for action. Either you need to change what you are thinking or what you are doing that is creating the emotion you don’t like. Ask yourself what are you thinking or doing that is causing those negative emotions. Find out what you can think or do in order to feel good again.
When you feel really happy about doing something, it is a signal that you are doing the right thing. So continue to do it and not let thoughts of doubt or insecurity deter you from doing it. Focus on your intent and do not take action until you feel positive emotion within you. In that moment you will know what to do. When you take action it will be the right thing at the right time. Allow your positive feelings to lead you to doing the right things at the right time.
When you think about the decision that you plan to make, does it make you feel happy, excited, hopeful, relieved? Or does it make you feel depressed, unhappy or otherwise negative? Use your emotions to guide you, and see if you get a yes or no answer through your emotional response. Positive feelings would be a yes answer and negative feelings would be a no answer.
What you can do about
it to control your emotionss:
1. Recognize that all your emotions/feelings have a
source.
2. Identify source of negative feelings/emotions.
3. Identify source of (a) positive feeling for comparison.
4. Try and determine why source (stimuli) caused
negative/positive emotion.
5. Recognize that your negative emotion/feelings caused specific
negative thoughts which may in turn cause further negative
emotion.
6. Identify the specific negative thought (if
you can do this during the strongest part of your negative thought
you will be most capable to combat it through creating the highest
contrast- as in, become as clear thinking and logical as possible
during the moment of high emotion to best remove yourself from the
emotional moment) It is important to do this during the strongest
parts of the negative thought/emotion/feeling (this can be applied
for long term depressions, or short anger tantrums, or short
feelings of sadness, or short or long feelings of any negative
emotion you don’t want) In order to do that that means you have to
closely follow your emotions so you can identify which parts are
the worst, if you follow them even more closely you will recognize
that sometimes there are sharp spikes upwards of negative thought,
and if you could use this method during those times it would be
best.
(Through this pattern one stops and thinks
about ones emotions/feelings in a logical/abstracted manner thereby
removing oneself from the feelings themselves. Therefore logical
reasoning becomes a theurapuetic action by which the person starts
to feel calm even in the action of analyzing his/her own emotions.
This has the potential to combat depression in two ways:1) by first
removing the person from their own emotional torment for the moment
of analyzation 2) once in this state the person is in a better
position to come to conclusions as to why they have developed
negative thoughts/emotions 3) once certain conclusions have been
discovered as to why the person has developed negative
feelings/emotions/thoughts, in combination with the greater state
of calm induced by logical reasoning, the person then has a greater
capacity to find ways to prevent and/or lessen current negative
thoughts/emotions/feelings.)
7. Try and determine why the emotion caused a positive or
negative thought
8. Ask yourself: (are you certain your depression is justified
i.e. are you reacting appropriately to the outside world i.e. do
you need to be depressed? i.e. can you be responding positively
instead of negatively? Do the negative feelings/emotions/thoughts
need to be negative? Are you giving too much attention to your
negative emotions (or the stimuli that caused them); are they this
important? Thinking about positive emotions enhances positive
emotions…)
}..very confused...regarding everything..
