We choose our thoughts and our emotions

I read a great insight in the Virgin Airlines Voyeur magazine on a flight yesterday from performance psychologist Dr. Phil Jauncey:
“There is a big misconception in sport and the corporate arena in which people think you need to get your mind right to perform, but that’s not true.

Mental toughness isn’t the ability to get your mind right before an event, it’s being able to execute when your mind is saying you can’t.”

In the article Jauncey is also quoted as saying that there are four reasons we fail under presssure:
“we don’t know what to do
we don’t know how to do it
we don’t have the ability to do it
we choose not to do it”

I agree with all of these.  We choose not to do it was the one that got me really thinking yesterday.  In my reflections I contrasted Jauncey’s insights with some great thinking in the book resilience which I referred to in my last blog.

“For most of us, emotions are things that happen to us.” Zolli and Healy say in their book.  They go on to say “Researchers who study mindfulness and attention often conceive of our emotions differently. In their view, emotions are not things that happen to us.”  My take from reading the book is that we choose our emotions just as we choose our thoughts.

What are you choosing to feel and think today?

If you don’t know what to do or how to do something you can learn.
We also need to be candid with ourselves if we simply do not have the ability to learn how to do something.

What we choose is what really matters.

What are you choosing to feel and think today?
And could you change what’s normal in your life and make better choices for your well-being and growth?

Be the difference you want to see in the world.

Ian

I work with leaders to conceive and achieve highly successful change initiatives.