What ingredients create the recipe for a positive emotional state for you?
When I talk about recipes, I’m not talking about baking a cake.
And when I talk about ingredients, I’m not talking about eggs, butter and flour
But it is a good example.
If you want to bake a cake, you need certain ingredients
And you need to mix those ingredients in a certain order, at a certain time, in a certain way
To give you a good end result
If you use different ingredients in a different order at different volumes, you produce something wildly different.
If you hope to bake a lovely cake and you replace the flour, eggs, and butter with chicken, rice, and broccoli, you’re not going to make a very nice cake.
Emotional States are exactly the same.
Every emotional state has a recipe.
For example, depression for me [Liam] has a certain recipe.
Which is made up of certain ingredients.
My recipe for depression is this:
- Sleeping in late
- Being inactive and not exercising
- Eating junk food
- Not drinking enough water
- Not talking to loved ones
- Watching too much TV
- Sleeping in the daytime
- Not taking in the daytime
- Not being hygienic
- Watching too much news
- Having a messy home
That is my recipe.
These are my ingredients for depression.
If I want to feel depressed, all I’ve got to do is do that stuff and I will feel it
A doctor would probably turn to me and say, you are depressed,
But I’m not actually depressed.
I’m just existing in the recipe surrounded by the ingredients which make me depressed.
However…
Because I know what ingredients make up my recipe for depression.
I know I’m aware of it.
So what I do is I completely avoid them.
I ask myself instead…
How do I want to feel?
Most of the time, I want to feel joy because I like it.
Some people say you can’t experience joy or happiness or being vibrant most of the time
But they are wrong
You can
You’ve just got to know the ingredients to the recipe of joy to experience it.
That’s all you’ve got to do
Joy for me has a certain recipe. That’s made up of certain ingredients.
My recipe for joy is:
- Sunrises and early mornings
- Eating very healthy food
- Drinking green juice on a daily basis
- Exercising
- Meditation
- Laughter
- Sunshine
- Self-development books
I love all of that, it fills me with joy.
Now the important part of this is…
Everybody’s recipes will be different.
But one thing is for certain, we ALL have recipes for emotional states.
For your own benefit, I urge you to figure out what yours are.
Think about them and pay attention to them.
Realize what your ingredients are for emotional states positive and negative, helpful states and unhelpful states
So you can do more of the positive and avoid the negative
Because at some point, you may feel yourself experiencing an emotional state that you don’t want.
Some notable examples of negative/unhelpful emotional states are:
Depression, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, worry, fear.
Now, are these states you personally?
No!
They are states that people cling on to because one person once upon a time told them that, that it’s what they suffer with.
You suffer with depression, you suffer with anxiety, you suffer with worry, fear and unfortunately, people latch on to it.
Those states are created within us due to a very specific set of ingredients that are used in a certain way to create a certain recipe.
If you notice yourself slipping into any one of those emotional states that you don’t want
Or even if you notice your loved ones going down that slippery slope,
Please change your recipe and help them change theirs too.
Let’s protect ourselves and each other from nasty recipes and the unhelpful emotional states that they create.
Is it part of being a human being to experience negative emotional states like depression, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, worry, and fear?
Yes it is
Because if it wasn’t part of being a human being they wouldn’t exist.
However,
Is it a desirable part of being a human being?
No!
So let’s change it!
Don’t just accept it
That’s the key.
Spend some time creating an emotional state that you do want.
Figure out your recipe for a positive emotional state
And bring your full awareness to your recipe for a negative emotional state
Figure it out, stop and think
Ask yourself questions like:
- Why am I feeling really depressed at the moment?
- What is contributing to that feeling?
- How am I feeling depressed?
- What am doing?
- What time am I getting up in the morning?
- What am I eating?
- Who am I speaking to?
- What am I watching?
- What am I believing?
- What am I saying to myself?
- What’s my body posture doing?
Make the effort to figure out what that recipe is, what is happening that creates that negative, emotional state.
Then figure out the ingredients and the recipe of an emotional state you DO want
And do that instead.
Even if it feels like you’re pretending,
Even if it feels like it takes a lot of time, effort and thought
Do it anyway.
And I’ll give you an insight into successful people.
And an insight into people that feel good more often than they feel shit.
Those people, figure out what steps they need to take in order to feel the way they want to feel.
And they take those steps.
Even when they don’t feel like it
That’s the key.
Even when they don’t feel like it, they take those steps, ESPECIALLY when they don’t feel like it
And they think ‘this is the time to do it because otherwise, I’m going to slip back into that negative emotional state.’
Give it a go today.
What are your recipes for your emotional states?
This was taken directly from – The Coaching Masters Podcast – If you would like to hear the full episode where we dive deeper into the topic of ‘How To Coach Yourself Through Lockdown‘ – Click here to listen now!
