Here's a sample from the chapter on Feelings and Emotions:
We often use these two words interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. Emotions are all about our automatic responses to triggers, like hunger, and anger, even happiness. We're not aware of them, and we don't have to be. They'll just happen upon us and will force us to act as our brains do their job of keeping us alive.
Did you know that there are 18 kinds of smiles our faces can make? Only one of these is caused by the emotion of happiness. The others are caused by our thinking about and then creating them. (Try a few; see how many different smiles you can create!)
Feelings, on the other hand, begin when we recognize our emotions and give meanings to them, like calling them love, hate and anger. We are meant to be aware of our feelings, even though they do not necessarily result in actions of any kind.
While have no control over our emotions, we do have a great deal of control over our feelings. As humans, we're so powerful that we can decide to make positive feelings our "default setting." According to Stefan Klein (stefanklein.info), one of Europe's most influential science writers, our brains would even appreciate our doing so! More on that to come....
