Thinking Feeling Actions (TFA)

I receive a news from my friend who keep having a panic moment at night, she woke up late at night being sad and panic.  I ask her what makes her like that?  She said it is because she was thinking about her task that she promised to complete from last year – I guess she sees Deadline literally as Death.

What does panic and sad trying to tell you?  In Emotional Intelligence we learn about Thinking, Feeling and Action – TFA in short.  In any event you will have these three elements and if you change one of them the rest will change.  So, I ask her what are you thinking when you have feeling of panic she said she think of not being discipline and not being herself. She felt that this is not her identity as she keeps postponing her promise.  “What is your action?” I asked. “Nothing I would sit worrying all day long and feeling lethargic about it”, she replied.   A person feels a bit better when they worried, yet we know that being worried about something and not taking any actions would actually making things worst at the end. This vicious cycle of Thinking negatively (about life or ourselves), Feeling Sad and Panic, Actions of Inertia keep stirring on and on.  So where in TFA should we change?  Some would say just do something, distract yourself by watching movie or TV (escapist) but the vicious cycle won’t go away you will still feel bad.  Ask them to make some actions the laziness paralyze them so what to do?

Why not look at what the feeling of panic from?  Panic would come from Fear and the message of fear is that something is at Risk and if you can’t figure out what is at risk, would you be able to change what you feel instead.

If we use the Plutchik Model Circumplex we can see that the closest emotions from Fear is Trust.

I guess this is why in many Hero’s Journey story there will be time when the Hero face their ultimate challenges and they would be in fear yet they gallantly charging through and slay the dragon at the end.  Fear = Dragon, Gallantly Charging Through = Trust.

Any hero would have some sort of trust either trust in himself, trust in his skills or Trust The Higher Power.

So back again to my friend story when she decided that feeling of fear is not helping her situation she move to trusting The Higher Power that she was created with a mission if not she would not be here.  Her feeling changes the way she thinks about her and now she became a woman with a mission.  When someone has a picture so vivid of what she needs to do, actions become natural.

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