“Don’t allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily.” - Paulo Coelho For many of us, our behaviours are often influenced by our childhood and underpinning those behaviours can often be a feeling of needing to be loved.  The manifestation of that particular ‘feeling’ may well take the form of always striving to achieve – and by being in perpetual ‘doing’ mode - continually trying to prove yourself worthy through what you do. Something I’m sure many of us can recognise in ourselves even if we don’t always realise or acknowledge the cause. Recognising our feelings is perhaps the first stage in a three-fold process of dealing with feelings. How we deal with those feelings successfully is then second part and if we can do that whilst being mindful of the third step – the feelings of others (as well as ourselves) then we are well on the way to feeling good. The process of undoing years of engrained thinking patterns and the way we feel about ourselves, our feeling patterns, is hard, with no ‘quick fixes’ but is a path worth travelling. And one way we might assist this process is to go about setting feelings goals – goals about how we want to feel in our lives. But firstly… Why set feelings goals? We’re probably all aware of the concept of engrained thinking but we might not always think about engrained feelings. Feelings often bypass the rational mind – and we just find ourselves reacting to them – often in an habitual way –perhaps because feelings tap a more primitive part of the brain. Setting goals around how we feel then, is a practical way of putting into practice what we’ve talked about in our last two blog posts and podcasts: Recognising and owning the feeling you are having Dealing with feelings successfully Setting feelings goals So the first thing about setting feeling goals echoes the earlier comment about how ‘it’s hard to undo years of engrained thinking patterns’. These are long-term feeling goals and as such this is an incremental journey. But a rewarding journey none the less. And just because its not a quick fix, doesn’t mean it’s ‘unfixable’. Give yourself some time with your feeling goals. The first step is to identify what you want your feelings goals to be about. What aspect of your feelings do you want to think about? Different sorts of feelings goals Do you want to: Feel more, or less, or differently about certain areas of your life Be more aware of your feelings Have greater control of certain feelings Be able to acknowledge them Feel more comfortable and accepting of your feelings Express them better or more openly Tune in to your feelings more so you can use them to your advantage Use your feelings to help you set other goals and achieve more It might be advisable not to take on too many feeling goals, so it may be you initially decide on one feelings goal and aim for that. What can you do to think about and create feelings goals? Here’s 7 ideas to get you started. You don’t have to do them all at once, some you will deliberately set out to do but others will come to mind at different times and situations. 1. Feelings diary A good way to explore your feelings is to keep a ‘Feelings Diary’. In it you might jot down particular feelings you have, the strength of those feelings, what prompted you to those particular feelings, how you responded to them and indeed how you might respond to them more appropriately moving forward. Or note down at key moments in the day, what your body is telling you about how you are feeling at that moment. Through doing this you come to recognise underlying situations or themes to the way you feel on a day-to-day basis. 2. Change the way you talk about your feelings Be personal in your conversation, rather than using generalised statements based on what you think you