Are you mentally stable?

With Cabau Lifestyle, my goal is to inspire women to be the best they can be and bring out their inner strength. Good mental and physical health, supported by a healthy lifestyle, provides the foundation for our inner power woman to flourish.

In fact, it is about the complete harmony between our body, soul and mind. Especially the latter is an interesting one and still wants to mess with us sometimes.

Fortunately, our mind is trainable. We can influence our thoughts to the point where we can make them work for us. Claudia is a professional mind coach. She is going to share her expertise and tools here, so that we as powerwomen can further unleash our unique strengths and potentials. Let’s bloom and shine together!

- Yolanthe -

MENTAL COACH CLAUDIA

Hi there! I am mental coach Claudia and in this blog I help powerwomen to gain more control over their lives to achieve better results. Besides being a mental coach, I am an enthusiastic athlete with an elephantine love of tasty, healthy (and plenty of!) food.

"Thoughts determine your feelings, your feelings determine your behaviour and your behaviour determines your overall functioning" 

#5 Are you mentally stable?

Life is one big process of falling, pulling yourself back up again and moving on stronger than ever. It is a growth process which involves ups and downs. Without falling, you never learn how to get up. The ultimate goal of life: Be happy, and most importantly, stay happy. Oh my goodness, how? No worries! I will help you, but first we need to know ourselves from the inside out. Let’s dig into it!

Your mental system

First things first: your mental system. Feeling mentally fit and healthy is more than waking up with a good mood. Your mental system consists of different pillars including your thoughts, your feelings, your senses, your consciousness, and your body. Proper functioning of all individual elements, but also in connection with each other, is important for your mental health. You’ll notice that when you work on your body and mind by eating healthy and exercising on a regular basis, you will experience more peace from within. Moreover, when you try to live more in the here and now, for example by practicing meditation, you’ll be able to better process and release your thoughts and feelings. So, it is important to understand and safeguard these pillars of your mental system in order to keep the system in balance.

Your mental system is a vicious circle starting with a thought. A thought determines a feeling and this feeling, in turn, determines your behavior. This behavior determines your overall functioning which has an impact on the thoughts that you will experience in a further stage. In order to positively balance this circle, it is important to focus on our thoughts. Thoughts come and go. They are formed by everything that happens around us. We ourselves have little influence on these thoughts. However, this does not count for the way we react to our thoughts. Our feelings and behavior are in our own hands. We ourselves decide to respond to a thought. Are you letting a negative thought control your feelings and behavior? For example, a negative thought could make you feel sad and as a result, you’ll probably decide to skip the gym, but rather lay down on the coach with chocolate and candy. In this situation, a downward spiral is created, and your behavior and feelings are negatively affected by your thoughts. The power lies in not reacting to negative thoughts. Let thoughts pass you by and you’ll see that the thought will fade away. The other pillars will not be impacted by that thought.

Thoughts and feelings

Oh no.. she is getting emotional again.. Emotional is a personal feature, we have been taught since childhood, to be a negative one. We don’t like to be emotional, we are embarrassed when we shed a tear during a heated discussion and we are considered to be “a strong person” when we don’t cry during a funeral. Not surprisingly, we have built up a mask during the years. A mask for the outside world that protects us against opinions of others. Behind this mask is a real person with real feelings that, unfortunately, are not being expressed. 

Our emotions have become our weaknesses and our feelings have become irrelevant. No! This is far beyond the truth. Our emotions, in fact, make us human and our feelings allow us to be sensitive and caring. When we ignore our emotions and push our feelings aside, a disbalance in our mental system is being created. We’ll notice this is one of the other pillars. For instance, we might experience physical symptoms. This, in turn, causes negative thoughts and feelings.

The key lies in our thoughts and feelings. We need to learn to let go of negative thoughts that we have no control over. Meditation is a good way to let go of thoughts that no longer serve you. Now, it’s time for our feelings. We can only let go of feelings by processing them. Talking about it could be the solution. The creative ladies around us might process their feelings by writing them down or expressing them through a drawing or painting. Every person has a different way of dealing with his or her emotions. Whatever it might be, remember to process them. Unprocessed feelings will continue to float through our heads and influence our behavior.

Assignment

Pick two friends, colleagues or family members and recall a recent situation in which, for whatever reason, you were extremely disturbed or annoyed. 

Describe the situation and mention your complaint. Example: “I can get so grumpy when I'm in a traffic jam, it is such a waste of time.”

Ask your friends to repeat your complaint but have them respond to it differently. Have them relativize it.  

For example: “You say that you get grumpy when you are in a traffic jam, but isn’t it nice to be able to drive to work in a warm and dry car with some good music on while having a moment for yourself.” Go on until there are no more new ideas. You’ll experience that by putting things in perspective, you can better let go of your thoughts. Afterwards you might think: oh well, I can also look at it in this way!

Of course, you can also do this assignment alone.

Lots of love,

Mental coach Claudia