and my not-so-clever portmanteau…
Our thoughts and feelings come and go and are situationally dependent; we have little control over them in the moment. That said, they tend to stabilize into a more enduring mental and emotional state we call disposition or attitude, and it’s easy to allow a frequented attitude to become our default way of being – for it to become a habit. We absolutely have the ability to step back and look at our disposition and name the specific traits and attributes, whether positive or negative, and decide if we wish to keep those or change them out for something different.
In this article I challenge the traditional Cognitive Triangle idea that our thoughts and feelings manifest directly as behavior, positing instead that our thoughts and feelings coalesce into a more stable and enduring attitude, which becomes the primary driver of behavior. I offer three simple exercises which, if practiced diligently and daily, create a deeply habituated disposition of positive, healthy and life-serving energy – an attitude of calm and controlled gratitude we can rely on when life get’s tough.
If you’re caught in a negative spiral and it’s stabilized into a persistent negative attitude, stop and interrupt the process by 1) practicing intentional gratitude, 2) slowing and controlling your breathing to invoke a sense of calm, and 3) deliberately widening your vision to pull yourself out of focal stress. Read the PDF below for more details into Habitudes and the daily practices needed to cement a more desirable and useful attitude.
