“EQ” is how I affectionately refer to Emotional Intelligence.
So much is being said these says about the movie, The Secret. It’s about the Law of Attraction, with the primary message that thoughts create our reality and that positive thinking can make us happier.
This isn’t a new message. At my massage therapist’s office the other day, I saw this quote on the waiting room wall:
Your beliefs become your thoughts.
Your thoughts become your words.
Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your values.
Your values become your destiny.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Yes, even Gandhi knew about this. No surprise.
The message is everywhere. I’ve been teaching the same principles in my work since 1993. The words I use are slightly different, but have the same implication.
The Reality Creation Cycle
I call it the “Reality Creation Cycle.” The cycle can begin with either thoughts, feelings or actions. And then the other two are affected. This is a fundamental principle.
Your thoughts affect your feelings and your actions, which reinforce your thoughts.
Your feelings affect your thoughts and your actions, which reinforce your feelings.
Your actions affect your thoughts and your feelings, which reinforce your actions.
This cycle determines how you act, respond and behave.
It determines how you project yourself into your life.
It determines your reality.
If you want to change your reality, you have to break the cycle.
Thinking the change often isn’t enough.
Emotionally wanting the change often isn’t enough.
When we want to change a behavior, response or attitude and it isn’t happening, we’re not in what I call an “internal state of integrity” — the thinking, feeling and acting centers are out of alignment with each other.
Change, especially emotional change, is often difficult.
When change is difficult, a step is missing. The Missing Step is working with the body.
There are ways to train the body that can initiate the change.
That is what EPI does. It trains different thinking and feeling patterns by training new neuron pathways. Once new pathways are trained, it becomes easier to access a greater variety of inner (thinking and feeling) states, and it becomes easier to initiate change.
I’ll illustrate with examples in a future blog.
From the perspective of the soul or consciousness the pespective is that the thoughts, feelings, and sensations are all structuring the soul which influences it’s perception of reality. When the consciousness becomes indentified with a particular patterning of structure, then it perpetuates it’s view reality.
One of the reasons affirmations don’t work. Repetitive conscious thought (mechanized thinking or chanting) doesn’t impact the unconscious, where the core beliefs are. The gateway, as you point out, is through the body and emotional content, not thought.
I love the previous post – and agree 100%. In case readers missed the point, I’m going to reiterate that the gateway for change is through the body. (Ineffective) core beliefs are the hardest to change. Core beliefs have the strongest, most well-developed neuron pathways due to frequent use, and like well-developed muscles, jump into action at the least opportunity. Rather than the pathway being thin, and twig-like and something that can snap or break easily, the pathway, through repetitive action, much like training a muscle, has mylenated, or gotten thicker and thicker, becoming more like a tree trunk which does not snap or break with any ease at all.
These pathways are great if they represent things like confidence, patience and understanding. But when they represent inappropriate feelings, behaviors and actions like getting angry unnecessarily, not speaking up for yourself, it’s a pathway that one might want to change.
The Missing Step is approaching change through the gateway of the body. By developing neuron pathways that represent alternative responses, the brain, the thinking mind, the heart mind, and the body are all trained in an alternative response. Initially, this will feel weird, strange, foreign, maybe even a bit creepy. It’s just a hint of a pathway. With repetition and training, it becomes a more established pathway, becomes more familiar and easier to access. When this new pathway is engaged, because of previous training and through intention, it will impact thoughts, feelings and behavior.
With the training of an alternative pathway, the over-developed pathways that represent core beliefs, and I’m referring to the pathways that have become ineffective, will become subdued. This brings on a sense of emotional and physiological balance.