Feelings are at the front of the line when it comes to our minds. People ask “How are you feeling today?”
Has anyone ever asked you, “How are you thinking today?”
Watching the news after a terrorist attack brings an unfortunate lesson in this focus on how one feels. Newscasters ask “experts” these kind of questions:
Why do you think the terrorists feel the way they do? What is causing them to feel that way about Western countries? What more can we do to understand why they feel the way they do?
No one asks the obvious.
What kind of thinking is the source of such diabolical actions? What are the ideas and images the terrorists use as their sources that fuel this type of response?
Feelings are absolutely necessary because they make us come alive and they drive our activities. We accept we have feelings and we learn to channel them in the right places and in the right way. Dallas says,
“Feelings can be good servants but they are a horrible master.”
So how do we work on a vision to transform our mind’s feelings? Next chapter, we start with what doesn’t work.
Think of an example when you started with feelings rather than thinking.