Feeling Good SkillsI didn't enjoy living in France at first. I didn't have many feeling good skills at the time. I love France now, but saying that I was unhappy at the beginning was an understatement!
I was very good at torturing myself!. I still am, but I just have no time for that anymore... Fortunately, I had (and still have) a low threshold for pain... It was getting really uncomfortable really fast... And since I wanted no unbearable pain in my life, I decided to try something new...like... Feeling good on purpose I had heard about a few things to try, so I tried a few of those.... And more importantly, I decided that nothing was more important than feeling good. I really made up my mind that I was going to learn how to feel good on purpose. My ultimate goal was to be able to feel good no matter what you do. But at the time, I would have been happy just to feel less miserable... I looked everywhere for ideas and techniques that might be useful... Preferably something I could do anywhere and anytime. But I wasn't being picky about it as long as it made me feel good. So I started with some stuff in books and then some stuff from CDs. And I kept doing the feeling good skills that at least got me going in the right direction. Even if it was just a little bit in the right direction... Sometimes I expected a lot of myself... Until I noticed that it didn't feel good...so I stopped doing that... Sometimes I appreciated every little improvement...and I noticed that this feels really good...so I keep doing it... Sometimes I was hard on myself...and then I noticed that didn't feel good... So I found something else to do... Sometimes I was easy on myself....and I noticed how good this feels...so you know...I do this more often... Some days it seemed harder.... Until I realized how silly it was to not feel good about not trying hard enough to feel good... Some days it seemed easier... Usually because you're being nice to yourself and noticing all the things that make you feel good... And I kept looking for any little improvement...because every little improvement made me feel really good! It's VERY encouraging and helps me to stick to whatever it is I want to do better. I started asking questions like: "How could I make this more fun?" Or "How could I enjoy doing this more?" There are people out there that absolutely love doing things I don't particularly like to do... If they can do this... Maybe I can learn to have at least a little more fun doing some of these things... And I asked questions like this for everything that I had thought was really difficult or challenging... You know...find out for yourself what's possible... I started asking myself these types of questions more and more...and I even asked myself "What would be a good question to ask myself to feel better?" Because if you don't ask....you won't get an answer... I picked out every situation where I naturally feel wonderful because I wanted to find out what I was doing that made me feel so good... I started paying attention to what I was saying to myself and other people when I was feeling great... Because I noticed that what I say to myself can really change how I feel... And you usually find what you are looking for... And the better I feel, the more interesting and wonderful things I usually find... In fact... The better you feel the more you find everything interesting and wonderful... And I still do it. Wherever I am right now, however I feel right now... I ask myself "How could I make this just a little bit more fun?" Or even better... "What's wonderful about now?" And while we're on the subject of How to Feel Good... Or just read what everyone else has said... Or you can introduce yourself to the Thought Detective community! Looking forward to hearing from you... Suzanne Go to the Thought Detective home page
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