Self Awareness: The First Step Toward Psychological Health

In modern psychology, one of the first things that you will benefit from knowing is the CBT triangle. This is what we call self-awareness. When you understand your self you classify the major mental aspects of your life into three categories:

• Feelings
• Behaviors
• Thoughts

 If you want to improve your mental health, learn how to recognize and differentiate these aspects of your self. Understand that each influences each other. How you think influences how you feel. How you feel influences how you think and act.

Many of the problems of this world and your own suffering come not from feeling, but from what you do with those feelings. When we experience intense emotions, we are often compelled to act. We can be wise by realizing that feelings won't kill us. Learning to recognize and sit with your feelings is an important part of your emotional development.

The same can be said if you are raising children. If you have children you can help them learn  to differentiate these aspects of their self. Keep in mind that children below the age of 3 have virtually no ability to regulate their feelings, but you can at least help them be more aware by communicating to them what they seem to be feeling and teaching them not to be afraid of negative feelings.

Two Levels of Happiness

There are two levels of happiness:

• Temporary Happiness
• Lasting Happiness

Temporary Happiness

Much of what we experience is temporary happiness. We all try to make decisions to make our lives better. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. When we do succeed we experience some pleasure. Unfortunately these feelings often fade and we are left with nothing but a memory. In many cases not only do the feelings wane but they are replaced with pain.

A major motivation for making poor decisions is that we want to avoid rather than deal with our deep negative feelings. We don't like being sad, empty, lonely, insecure, or lacking of a purpose.

Lasting Happiness

Our true goal is to maximize our happiness--happiness that lasts and is deep. To do that start here.

1. Learn to recognize what you feel.
2. Do not run from or try to change negative feelings.
3. Learn to sit with and tolerate the storm of your negative feelings. Feelings won't kill you. To sit with and directly face the negative feelings of life is scary. When you feel lonely, insecure, empty, a lack of purpose, or boredom, face these feelings head on rather than trying to find a way to eliminate them. Have a sort of "bring it on" attitude.

Subtle Mind

All of these leads to the real path to happiness--the subtle mind. When you can sit with your negative feelings and rest comfortably in the world of your feelings you will begin to recognize little glimpses of the deepest happiness inside yourself. Learn to recognize these and support them.