Breaking Down Experiences

I know many people who do not like to analyze much.  They go through their experiences as they come.  They are often able to savor the positive experiences and lament over the negative experiences.  For the most part, this is a good habit, as it enables us to enjoy our experiences as they are.  Living the total experience of our day to day lives certainly enables us to savor every moment and live life to the full. 

There are times, however, when a situation calls for us to understand our experiences more deeply.  We might have caught ourselves behaving in an uncharacteristic manner, such as, displaying our temper more extremely than usual or being rather melancholic.  We might also observe ourselves being more enthusiastic and even impulsive over our decisions.  In both extremes of either negative or positive experiences, we often find ourselves dwelling into some details, causing us to linger on the why’s and how’s of these incidents.  Somehow, this kind of pensive reflection can often help us understand the situation better. 

Although we do this thinking and reflecting rather intuitively, one way of understanding them is by breaking them down into their components.  When we are able to look at parts of a whole, we are better able to scrutinize details that are easier to manage.  In so doing, we are better able to see the components of our experiences that are made up of choices that we have made earlier.  We are also able to decipher which ones are more like reactions to these choices.  This knowledge then enables us to make reasonable evaluations of our experiences, offering us a reflection of ourselves. 

The three basic components of our experiences are our feelings, thoughts, and our actions.  They are the result of the physical events in our bodies.  Although I am dividing them here as if they are separate from each other.  When we experience something, all these three often come together.  They interact with each other in a very dynamic manner.  

Oftentimes, our feelings are reactions to what we sense and the meaning we place on what we witness.  Our thoughts, therefore, often have a huge impact on our feelings.  If we see a child crying, for instance, we can feel pity for the young lad or feel irritated and angry depending on the way we perceive the context of the crying.  So, our evaluation of the situation will dictate our emotional reactions.  Both our thoughts and feelings necessarily affect how we will behave.  So, our actions are then influenced. 

What we often do not realize in this system of feeling, thinking and doing is that they influence each other in all directions.  So, if I am feeling sad about something and behave in a way that makes me feel happier, then I will eventually feel happy.  My actions would influence the way I feel.  Similarly, my thoughts can also influence both my actions and my feelings.  This is why realistic optimism (see my post on 24 September 2010) is so influential in the way we feel about ourselves and the world around us.  In the same way, our actions are influenced by what we think. 

And so, there is really some truth in the power of thinking positively about something in order to keep happy.  Concurrently, doing something different from how we feel can also change our emotional experiences as well.