The following is a summary of the main points: Emotions are contagious. Positive emotions can replace negative or neutral emotions. We can only hold one emotion at a time. Emotions can cycle quickly through a series like desire or baiting, cannot have, deprivation, to resolution, control, power, and this is a learned skill. Some people learn how to manipulate ourselves by manipulating our own emotions naturally, often without even realizing we have done that. Others of us must make an effort in learning this skill. Emotions can be managed.
Our behavior and those around us can influence our emotions. The arts can have a similar impact, or so I understand. Most of the "arts" do not impact me much, so I will take that at their word. What do I know. People around me influence the way I feel to some extent. Positively or negatively. When we know we do so much better with positive emotions, it is difficult to be around a negative person. All this I take as proof that emotions are contagious, and therefore we can infect ourselves with positive emotions, and should at every opportunity, without getting silly.
Positive psychology starts with positive emotion and grows from there. It needs the positive seed. Once the positive seed takes hold, it can grow through interest, engagement, commitment, meaning and bloom into achievement. We get the positive seed through seeing and feeling some success.
How does this relate to overeating? When someone offers chocolate to me, I can decline it without any problem, as I recognize it for what it is to me, a good tasting poison, that one bite has the power to blow me up a hundred pounds in a few months, to where I become so uncomfortable that I question the purpose of life and of continuing to live. I am addicted to chocolate, and cannot take even one bite without starting the slide down into hell that I have experienced. I am also addicted to sugar, junk food, wheat products, potatoes, nuts, bananas, and the like.
It is difficult to be around those who do not have issues with these as I can feel deprived if I allow myself to remember the taste, or how it felt at the first bite. If I remember how I felt at he last bite, I feel pity for those who are still addicted to those poisons, and that give me a feeling of power and control which are positive emotions. That removes or displaces the feeling of deprivation and replaces it with a ego burst of power. One emotion displaces the previous; hence, in a general way, we can only have one emotion at a time. We can learn to do this, to return to an satisfied emotion where joy and tranquility can flourish.
But then what do I know?
No comments:
Post a Comment