Emotional thinking is part of everyday life, whether it be related to work, family, finances, school or sport. Yet often people feel like it is working against them. Negatives seem to affect us effortlessly, whilst it can be difficult to counteract them even for resourceful, confident people.

There are 4 things to remember about emotional thinking.

1.     Negatives get stuck more powerfully than positives because they are related to fear and survival. (see Mental Strength  in the Healthy Habits Blog on this website).

2.     Negatives inhibit and turn down the effect of positive emotions. This means that when you are stressed, things that should make you happy, confident and resourceful, seem weak and ineffective.

3.     You can’t influence emotional thinking with logical, analytical thinking. Phrases like snap out of it, there’s nothing to worry about, just get on with it and pull yourself together don’t have much impact.

4.     Simple Pavlovian Conditioning techniques ( see Healthy Habits Blog article  Pavlov’s Dogs) allow us to anchor and enhance positive emotional thinking to counterbalance negative fearful emotional thinking.