Thoughts, Emotions, and Your Self Concept

Controlling Thoughts and Emotions

Thoughts & Emotions and Your Self-Concept

Law of Assumption

Your self-concept is created by the beliefs you have about yourself. 

The beliefs you hold and your self concept produce your overall state of being (the thoughts and emotions you experience most often).

The more you experience a thought or an emotion, the more you see yourself as that type of person.

“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live.”

— Neville Goddard

You self concept is based on the thoughts and emotions you experience the most often.

• I’m overwhelmed

• I’m confident

• I’m an anxious person

• I’m uptight

• I’m an angry person.

• I’m abundant

As you identify and embody certain thoughts and emotions, it eventually becomes your self concept.

The mind will always work to keep you within your self concept.

As you identify and embody certain thoughts and emotions, it eventually becomes your self concept.

The mind will always work to keep you within your self concept.

This is why it’s difficult for some people to experience joy. It’s outside of their current self concept.

Even though you desire to embody a different state of being, you’ll subconsciously work to get back to the self concept you've established.

Mastering your thoughts and emotions transforms your self concept.

Learning to create thoughts and emotions on purpose is the secret to creating your dream life. 

For many of us, our self concept is overwhelm, sadness, or scarcity. 

The more we experience these thoughts and emotions, the more evidence we collect to magnify them.

Instead, we begin making peace with old thoughts and emotions, while simultaneously creating powerful ones, such as courage, confidence, calm, abundance, and excitement.

As you experience these thoughts and emotions deeply and for longer periods of time, you develop a new self concept and collect a pile of evidence that proves to yourself that this is who you are. 

The world constantly reflects your self concept back to you from the results you create, to what people say to you and about you. 

The mind will always seek harmony with how you see yourself.

But when you master your thoughts and emotions, you don’t run from discomfort. 

You reframe it. 

And, in the process you transform your self concept and how you see yourself.

What is an Emotion?

Many of us believe that emotions are caused by what’s happening outside of us. 

However, emotions are created by the thoughts we think.

The emotion that is produced in the brain travels to the body and is a physical sensation.

The sensations can range from mild tingling to gripping tension.

An emotion is a vibration running through your body created by a thought in your mind.

Emotions are often one word: happy, sad, mad, bored, elated, hesitant, or grateful, for example.

These emotions will produce physical sensations — some pleasant, some not.

To master emotions we allow them to pass instead of blindly chasing some and resisting others.

Once you’re in a certain state, you’ll continue to reflect thoughts that match your state of being.

Those thoughts will continue to feed the feeling state and reinforce your state of being.

Have you noticed that when you’re in a depressed mood, you focus on the things that are going wrong, how you’re not enough, how you’ll never get there, how life isn’t fair?

Equally, when you’re excited about life, you find yourself thinking about what’s possible, how wonderful life is, how you can’t wait to create something.

The thinking-emotional cycle can spiral into a beautiful direction that manifests what you do want, or spiral out of control in a direction that manifests what you don’t want.

Feeling Your Emotions

Most people are so afraid of feeling an emotion that they spend a lifetime resisting and denying them.

We overeat, procrastinate, people please, or give in to impulses to avoid feeling an emotion. 

The actions only fuel the unwanted emotional state.

Resisting or denying them is what causes the most suffering.

Many of us don’t go after the life we want because we’re afraid of feeling an emotion.

However, emotions are one of your greatest teachers.

Emotions reveal:

• Where you’re limiting yourself

• Boundaries that you need to establish

• Events that need to be processed

• What you want 

• What you don’t want

01. Name the Emotion

This will likely be one word: calm, fear, worry, angry, bored, determined, and love.

02. Describe the Emotion 

Describe the sensations of the emotion. 

• Where do you feel it in your body? 

• Is it heavy or light? 

• Is it fast or slow? 

• If it had a color, what would it be

• If it were an animal, what would it be?

• What else do I notice?

When you witness yourself experiencing an emotion, you put space between yourself and what you’re feeling. 

This space is where awareness occurs, and with attention, change happens.

03. Breathe in the Emotion

Allow it to be there. Don’t react to it. Don’t push it away. Breathe it in and breathe it out. 

When you’re tempted to go to the fridge because you’re bored, notice the sensations and then breathe it in and breathe it out.

04. Identify the Cause 

All emotions are created from a thought.

Once you’ve allowed the feeling, described it, breathed it in and out, you’re ready to understand the cause. 

If you’re in a hurry to get to this point, slow yourself down. You’re still afraid of the feeling. Go back to step 1. 

Break the cycle of being afraid of emotion. 

However, when you’ve relaxed into your worry, fear, anxiety or whatever negative emotion you’re experiencing, you’ll notice that it starts to let go of its grip. 

Then, you can identify the thought causing it. 

Name the thought.

05. Creating an Emotion 

What feeling do you want to experience?

• What feeling will drive me to take the action you want to take?

• How will you feel on the other side of this (when I’m encountering an obstacle)?

• What feeling do you think this thing will give you?

• What thoughts do you need to feel this? 

• What actions do you need to take to create those thoughts and feelings? 

You get good at what you practice.

You get good at what you practice, so practice thoughts and feelings that manifest what you want.