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There is lots of evidence in psychology around how cognitive distortions correlate to symptoms of depression and anxiety. The renowned psychiatrist, researcher and best selling author David Burns goes one step further. He says:

"I suspect you will find that a great many of your negative feelings are in fact based on such thinking errors."

So negative emotions, including depression and anxiety, go hand in hand with distorted thinking. If we are frequently suffering from negative emotions, it would be very useful to look at our thinking patterns and see if we can recognize the link between particular thoughts and emotions and then work to change them.

When distorted thoughts show up in relationships, they have a huge potential to cause harm. Imagine your spouse suggests that you go out for dinner. If you have a habit of negatively...

1)   Intention.

2)   Learn about distorted thought patterns

3)   Recognize distorted thinking

4)   Replace with helpful thinking

...

Negative thoughts are perfectly normal and according to many psychologists, may be the default position of our mind.

This is because negative thoughts exist to keep us safe. Really.

Our ancestors survived by constantly being on the lookout for threats, fixing problems as they arose, and then learning from their mistakes. If they were optimists and stopped to admire the sunrise and smell the roses, they may not have survived to give birth to their children and we may not have been here.

They used their imagination to consider potential threats and problems, enabling them to solve the problems before they got into trouble and were attacked by predators.

So thankfully they were able to watch for and deal with trouble before it attacked them and that...

If we get used to examining our thoughts however, we begin to recognize that our thoughts can be unstable and often arbitrary, shifting depending on context and contradicting our better instincts. If we are upset at someone for something, for example, we may begin to develop "tunnel vision", and our thoughts focus only on their negative aspects and ignore the positive ones.

The problem does not lie in the fact that we have thoughts, but in the fact that we sometimes begin to form our personal identities around the things we think. We begin to believe every thought that we have. If I think that someone is mean, for example, they must be mean.

One of the key aspects of self growth, of emotional intelligence and of mental health is to recognize thoughts as passing phenomena of the mind without attaching ourselves to every thought that we have and...

Did you know that the average person thinks between 50,000-70,000 thoughts per day? The thoughts that pass through our brain last only split seconds and range from the mundane -- I need to do groceries, to the significant – My family really matters to me, to the self-destructive -- I'm not good enough.

And did you know that most of these thoughts are the same thoughts we think every day? Our thoughts seem to be on autopilot most of the time and appear to come from nowhere.

AND did you know that the majority of these automatic thoughts are negative. (The reason for this is rather interesting and something that we will deal with on another day)

Psychologists have coined a phrase for these thoughts: ANTs – Automatic Negative Thoughts.

I like to think of them as ANTs eating the positive side of my brain. A yucky but powerful image, wouldn’t you say?

How many ANTs can...

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?

Remember how nervous you were? How unprepared you felt? 

So how did you become better in these areas of your life?

You prepared yourself by learning, studying, passing a test . . .

And then you practiced.

A lot.

If you had waited till you had the confidence to do any of these things you would not have taken the car out of the garage, cooked your first meal or spoken a word of another language.

The confidence came from two things: preparing and practicing.

How about applying the same formula to areas of your life where you currently lack confidence?

You already know how, right?

Fear is one emotion ALL of us have experienced. Whether real or imagined, personal or professional, our hearts have trembled with the prospect of coming face to face with what we fear. 

What is fear, anyways? 

Here is how the dictionary describes it: 
Fear noun "an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm."

Given that all of us do and will feel fear, it may be helpful to recognize that we can still act as we must, despite the feeling of fear. Courage, as it is often said, is NOT the absence of fear but rather taking action DESPITE the fear. 

The idea of taking action is embedded in the very definition of courage:
Courage noun "the ability to do something that frightens one".

To put it very simply:

So can one turn fear into courage by reading, listening, intellectualizing or philosophizing? 

Sadly, no. 

The only way to foster courage is to practice acting despite the feeling of fear. 

And each...

However, science now suggests that smiling can trick your brain into happiness — and boost your health.

The strange thing is that for the most part, the brain cannot detect whether it is a genuine smile or not. It is the...

When we are sad, we tend to look down and frown, when anxious we might tap our feet, fidget or shift our eyes and when we are happy we often smile.

But how we position our bodies doesn’t just reflect how we feel, it can also change how we feel.

For example, if we act confident even when we are not feeling confident, we may increase our feelings of confidence.

According to recent research: "Posture has a bigger impact on body and mind than anyone believed. Striking a powerful, expansive pose actually changes a person’s hormones and behavior, and even have an impact on how you are perceived in the working world," saysWall Street Journal columnist Sue Shellenbarger.

And we don’t have to change your posture or pose for long. A few minutes seems to be all you need to have an impact on our feelings.

In her research with Dana Carney at UC-Berkeley, Amy J.C. Cuddy has focused on...