What is a feeling?

It’s an important question. So much of what we do in applying NLP, either on ourselves or with others, relies on our ability to work effectively with emotions and affect states.

A feeling like love, joy or anger is an interpretation ... an interpretation of a matrix of sensations in our body - which we have learned to describe with a label. Some feelings we like, and classify as ‘good’, while others we describe as ‘bad’.

In NLP, many people believe it’s about learning to control or suppress our emotions, but it’s not.

It’s about having the freedom to run our own neurology more intelligently so we can choose (and in time, train ourselves) to respond more resourcefully when we want to.

To have greater CHOICE.

Every outcome humans desire, from getting motivated to following through to living one’s life feeling empowered and confident, comes down to learning to manage our state and emotions.

When you learn how to affect your state, you don’t need to be held hostage to emotions, or wait for ‘inspiration’ before you take action.

You can simply train yourself to think, act and enjoy the experience of creating the outcomes you want, without needing to brow beat yourself into action, or imagine a huge picture of yourself in order to evoke the motivation to act.

With emotional mastery, life gets easier. The more you catch yourself in the act of doing (or not doing) the things you want - the greater the freedom you have to reinforce what is working and prune those reactions and responses which are not.

Remapping your emotional patterns, enabling you to disrupt yourself and access more of your personal genius.

It all begins by realising that your emotions (especially those that hold you back) are not a destiny you have to repeat and endure, but like everything else…

...YOU have the freedom to change them.

Thankfully, none of this requires you to ignore what you are feeling but rather to consciously choose to retrain unhelpful responses.

The idea that our emotions are the product of our brains and there is nothing we can do to change them is just one myth worth debunking in yourself.

Here's a great video with several others and an excellent way to change your habitual responses, if you want to know the Biggest Myths About Emotions, Debunked.

You can learn more about how to master your emotion here.

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