Feelings 101, Part 2

Feelings are explanations (short-hand labels) that your brain creates about the emotion to describe what it thinks the emotion means and its relative importance in your life. The explanations may be accurate or inaccurate because you know only what you know and your explanations are of necessity based on what you know.

The brain’s explanations, correct or incorrect, create your feelings. As soon as you recognize a feeling, it is empowering to know that you are capable of choosing whether or not you want to maintain that feeling over time or whether you want to feel a different feeling. Since feelings always follow your thoughts, if you want to change the way you feel you must change the way you think. Your behaviors tend to follow the feelings you choose to harbor and hang onto.