Feelings, emotions, states, moods

Some psychologists find it useful like to precisely distinguish between feelings and emotions and moods. And that’s fine and no doubt important for their purposes.

However, in our everyday lives, most of us use these words much more loosely, and interchangeably, to describe how we are at any one moment:

I’m disappointed

I feel fine

She’s in a mood

He’s not in a good state

She’s just led by her emotions

And this is how we use the words on this site. Because this site is about how you can change or replace your moods. It is a site about managing yourself – your thoughts, your feelings and your physical state.

How we feel is important…

Yes, that is a bit of an understatement – because how we feel, our mood or our emotional state, is the barometer that we use to evaluate our quality of life.

Yet, our emotions so often appear to be in the hands of the gods. Or are dependent on some lottery, somewhere out there, which allocates to us a particular mood for the day; we wake up in the morning and discover which lottery ticket/mood we have been given for that day – and that’s our lot!

We don’t seem have a huge say in how we feel – especially when the going gets rough. Or when life become stressful. Or when other people wind us up or put down.

School lessons in “how to manage your feelings”

Few people had school lessons on how their thoughts and feelings – maths, geography, and grammar were considered more important and more relevant to a fulfilling life. And, in any case, self-management techniques were not scientifically proven to increase the quality of life…

So we had to make-do. And, in a very haphazard way, ‘pick up’ tips and tricks here and there for managing our moods. We did this by modelling our parents, our teachers, our friends or other mentors. We may also have picked up a few insights from the media. And some of us did it by reading books on ‘positive thinking’.

It was all pretty hit and miss – and yet one way or another, over the years, each of us has cobbled together a rough and ready way of dealing with the highly complex process of living our life.

Sometimes our “cobbled together” way of running our lives works very well and some of the time it doesn’t. When it works well we feel good. When it doesn’t work well we feel bad – and usually blame ourselves… without recognising that it’s simply a matter of missing education.

The Pegasus NLP Mind-Body Self Help website

This website aims to offer some practical ways of feeling more in charge of you – more in charge of your thinking, of your emotions, and of your physical state.

It is not

A step-by-step guide to effective living – just a collection of methods from which you can pick and choose
A list of scientifically-validated methods – instead it is a collection of mewthodsa which many people have found useful as a result of trying them out
A collection of ‘right way’ methods. We humans are very too complex and varied: no one system or method will work for everyone.

Instead it is a collection of insights and ideas and techniques that you can choose from. And try out. And accept or reject based on your personal experience of trying them in your own life. Because only you can determine if something is right from you (see our caution).

My name is Reg Connolly and I’ve been experimenting with many, many different forms of self-management and ‘positive thinking’ since I was in my teens. I worked as a psychotherapist and counsellor, seeing people on an individual basis, for about 22 years and, same time, I also ran weekly stress management classes over two decades from 1984 – classes which somethmes were held in 4 or 5 locations each week and were attended by somewhere around 7000 people.

I am the Training Director of Pegasus NLP Ltd and, in the early 2000’s when Pegasus NLP began to become very busy, I pulled back from my psychotherapy practice and stress management business to focus more on working with groups.

Since this site was first launched in 1998 I have been building up an online collection of tips and techniques that appear to work well in enabling people to manage their moods and to feel more in charge of their lives.

Site running costs are covered by Pegasus NLP so the information is free to use (although copyright is retained) and you do not have to pay a subscription fee nor endure distracting adverts.

Please feel free to use the material in your life – and do read both our caution and our disclaimer. These are necessary because, since human nature is so wonderfully complex, it is impossible to offer a particular tip or technique or piece of information that would be appropriate for absolutely everybody or which would even be effective for absolutely everybody.

Tips, techniques, and self help information

This section of the website contains tips, techniques and helpful information for managing your thoughts and feelings, focusing on what you want in life and feeling more in charge of your life.

Caffeine: use this this potent drug with care and in moderation. Caffeine can boost out alertness and get rid of drowsiness – and it can also lead to unpleasant and even serious symptoms when over-used.
Feelings: who or what causes your feelings? If you believe that your feelings are caused by other people, or by events, or by that mysterious provocateur ‘circumstances’ you’re in trouble – or, at least, you’re not in charge of you. Our feelings are the result of how we deal with life.
One day at a time: sometimes it’s all too easy overwhelm ourselves with the immensity or complexity of problems and challenges we face – back in the year the Titanic sunk Sir William Osler suggested making day a watertight compartment. This article has been updated so you will be redirected to our other site.
Leave it: what to do when people ‘press your hot buttons’ and anger or upset you – you can simmer (and, as a result, let them run your day) or you can decide to put it behind you
Daily Plan: this is one of our suggested ‘paper tips’ – ways of managing your thoughts and feelings using pen and paper (or keyboard.) The Daily Plan is a to-do list for your personal life.
Procrastination causes stress – how to better motivate yourself: Self motivation methods can be divided into two styles: carrot and stick. When using the stick style we do get results – but at a cost – we are, effectively, using stress to motivate ourselves.
Kaizen: the Brand New Start at fitness, weight, positive thinking, etc usually fizzles out – because it’s too much, too soon. The Kaizen approach of changing in small ways – ‘continuous small improvements’ – is more likely to result in enduring change.
NLP and the ageing attitude: this Newsletter article is about how age and our attitude towards it interact – for example which age do you go by: chronological age, physical age, health age, emotional age, or vitality age? This article has been updated so you will be redirected to our other site.
Seize the moment – carpe diem: Sometimes we get complacent – acting as if we have unlimited time ahead of us. And occasionally we encounter a situation which brings us up sharp – a recognition tht we need to act as if we don not have unlimited time. We need to seize the day – carpe diem! This article has been updated so you will be redirected to our other site.
Communicate clearly: “Well I told them! What more can I do??” It’s a common complaint – and a common attitude i.e. that it’s enough to mean well and communicate with people from this stance. It is not – it’s missing the point. Communication is an exchange of views.
Time to reframe things…?: Nothing absolutely means anything! We attach our own person significance to events – and the NLP Reframing process or reframing technique is about deciding what significance we want to attach to an event. This article has been updated so you will be redirected to our other site.
Free Writing …or Writing Freely, as we call it in Pegasus NLP is a great way of clearing your mind and getting to know what’s behind our negative or irritable thinking. It’s another simple ‘pen and paper’ method that can be used by anyone and without any formal training. Very effective – and it does need some persistence.
Feelings: who or what causes your feelings? If you believe that your feelings are caused by other people, or by events, or by that mysterious provocateur ‘circumstances’ you’re in trouble – or, at least, you’re not in charge of you. Our emotions are the result of how we deal with life.