Week 3: What Makes Something a Pleasant Experience
Most of our experiences are a compound of different elements, which we often lump together as the same:
Thoughts – Emotions – Sensations
To keep it simple, for this model thoughts are experienced either as words or as images.
Emotions are our feelings as they manifest in the body.
Sensations are what we experience through our 5 senses.
Emotions and sensations share the same medium, the body, so sometimes it can be confusing trying to discern what is what. For example, if you run up the stairs and your heart is beating fast, that is a sensation. If you feel anxious or excited and you heart is beating fast, that is an emotion.
Looking at our experience from this perspective can be very helpful. We can see that the thought that we have about a situation is not the same as the feeling that we have about it. And we come to see more clearly that thoughts and emotions, in particular, influence each other a lot. Like when we think, “If it feels this way, it must mean that the thought is true.” This makes the feeling stronger, which in turn reinforces the thought.
You can either view the information here on line, or download the Week 3 lesson pages