Emotions vs Feelings

There's a number of perspectives on the feelings vs emotions conversation. Are they synonyms or are they describing something different? I will endeavor to explain how I think of them and how understanding each as a distinct and complementary definition is useful to be able to describe our human experience.

How I define each term, personally:

Emotion: Mental. Internal. A thought that signals neurotransmitters to produce a cascade of hormones, neural peptides, and other chemicals within the body that evoke a physical response... which then becomes a feeling.

Feeling: Physical. External. The physical sensation that correlates to the internal emotion and is the result of the cascade of hormones, neural peptides, and other chemicals within the body.

In my way of looking at things, an emotion generates a feeling. And emotion is generated through thought.

At first, thoughts are just pop in. It arrives. And when the focus remains there on that thought it allows our internal chemistry to shift. Things start percolating and our body responds to the thought. It's up to us to choose where our attention goes. In this way, we get to choose our emotions. And in choosing our emotions we are choosing how we will feel.

Before we have awareness of this cascade of events it can seem that all of these things are outside of our control. I get that. I've held that belief in the past. But there is magic to be discovered when we consider the fact that we can begin to manage our thoughts, emotions, and feelings.

It's not easy but it's simple. It begins with this awareness. It necessitates that we chose our focus as often as we can and grow that skill. Because it truly is a skill that we can each develop.

As we cultivate our internal focus, we can see how our feeling states begin to shift in concert with our internal focus. What we allow into our minds and what we choose to pass over in favor of something we'd rather have.

This is a tiny spec of a larger conversation, but if you've never considered it before or if you needed a reminder... here it is.

Choose your thoughts and watch what opens up for you.