For years doctors have been using biofeedback as a reactive tool. A touch of the sniffles? High temperature? Stomach not sitting right? Good doctors are those who learn all about symptoms.. about how to read body language. It’s about time we started doing so as well, but in a proactive way. Your body sends out signals every day. This is a powerful mechanism that needs to be paid attention to more often. A conscious being has the power to transform it’s life, why let a biofeedback machine do it for you?

A lot of the things I’m going to talk about may be fairly obvious but first hand experience tells me that this is not always the case. When you’re hungry, your stomach grumbles; when you’re tired your eyes are heavy; when you’re cold you start to shiver.. this is biofeedback. This is the intelligence of the body telling the mind that something needs to be done here to re-balance the system.. your system. “Yep, i knew that already” I hear you say. But have you ever ignored the system? Thinking about it, I’ve done so on many occasions. When I was backpacking around Europe I ignored my system frequently, mostly for fear of not knowing the language or trying to conserve money. And I can’t remember how many times I’ve ignored the fact that I’m cold purely because I’m too lazy to grab a jersey(pullover) or close a door.

While something as simple as this might sound negligible.. in my humble opinion, the healthiest people in the world are those who listen to their bodies and react accordingly immediately. This kind of discipline will lend itself to other areas of your life. You know (or at least you should stop sometimes just for a moment to listen) when your body is telling you to stop eating or to stop drinking or in fact that you haven’t put on enough clothing (replace these with more relevant situations in your life). Now, considering that your body is a system of systems and that this concept more than likely applies on other levels, lets apply this to the mind. 

Surely our emotions can be used as tools as well?
Here’s a list of negative emotions I can think of:

• Sadness
• Anger
• Fear
• Anxiety
• Loneliness
• Embarrasment
• Guilt
• Cynicism

…and a set of positive ones:

• Happiness
• Joy
• Elation
• Enlightenment
• Love
• Ambition
• Compassion
• Optimism

Emotional intelligence is the ability to self manage your emotions. As human beings we oscillate between both sets of emotions.. but should we accept that negative emotions are normal? Surely they are feedback mechanisms hinting that we aren’t on the right track and that some action is required to change our present state. It’s generally accepted that it’s ok to feel negatively for periods of time.. but I’m not sure I agree with that philosophy. A mind that searches for hope, joy, love and understanding will find those things.. even in the darkest of circumstances.

Sometimes physical action is required for change but more often than not, emotional action is. If you look for the meaning of events in your life you’ll find the reasons behind why they occur. Have you ever had something “bad” happen in your life only to find out the day/week/month after that the current “good” in your life would not have been possible without that “bad” thing? If you haven’t then I’d strongly urge you to explore this phenomena. As with anything in life, it takes time, patience and practise to understand this. It’s all about a change in perspective, and a change in perspective is possible instantaneously if you train your mind to do so.

As a caveat, I’d like to mention that my focus in the second half of this article was using your emotions as a feedback tool to develop personal growth. Please don’t substitute emotions with thought! What your mind tells you is not always correct. Let me give you a personal example. When an (ex-)girlfriend of mine broke up with me I felt aweful and immediately felt a need to replace her with another. I felt sad, lonely and angry. To counterbalance those feelings I needed to aim for happiness, companionship and tranquility. I’d like to say it was as simple as pie, but I put myself through a lot of anguish and pain figuring it all out. The answer in the end led back to me and not (as incorrectly thought by my mind) to another/the same woman.  So always take a step back when you’re receiving biofeedback (I wonder if bio can refer to the mind as well though?) and make a conscious decision, because your emotions are only indicators and not the tools to instigate change.