Being able to influence the way we feel is key to resilience. Being able to “Cheer yourself up” is important and most people have things they can tell you that they do to make themselves feel better, such as listening to music, going for a run, going shopping or visiting a place of worship.
In this technological age, some people need to deliberately create time where they switch everything off.
The positive psychology movement and the work of Seligman around ‘learned optimism’ demonstrated that telling ourselves positive and constructive things can affect many aspects of our lives, not just our mood [1].
In CBT clients learn to monitor their thoughts to identify what makes them feel bad and what makes them feel better. Conversely, repeatedly arriving at a negative interpretation of events can result in a downward spiral of increasing distress and painful emotions which in turn may make it difficult for us to think clearly or make good decisions.
There is a large and accumulating body of evidence that poor impulse control is associated with bad decision making. Poor impulse control is when we do something because we feel like it, without thinking through the consequences. It seems that we have a reflective system and an impulsive system and these systems need to be balanced for good decision making[2] .
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[1] Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your life. Seligman, M. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011
[2] Nature Neuroscience 8, 1458 – 1463 (2005) Published online: 26 October 2005 | doi:10.1038/nn1584