The 4 Ways We Deal With Emotions

One of the most profound lessons missing in K-12 education is where our emotions come from and how to experience them in a healthy and empowering way.

Our emotions are vibrations within our body - they're movements of energy within us. Emotions are the dashboard indicators of what’s happening in our minds, and they result from our interpretations of what we perceive with our senses.

All our emotions do is point to our interpretation of our circumstances - our emotions are not pointing to our circumstances.

There are 4 ways we deal with emotions, and only one of them is reliably healthy for us, the people we care about, and the things we're committed to.

Reacting

Reacting is going from stimulus to response, without choice or self involved. Reacting is, well, reactive. When we react to the emotion of anger, we express the anger and direct it at what we think is causing it. When we react to the emotion of anxiety, we shut down, ruminate, and worry. When we react to the emotion of excitement, we smile, we move more, we might talk a lot.

Resisting

Resisting is actively forcing an emotion away - like holding an inflatable ball beneath water.* For years, my response to anxiety was to resist it. "Nope nope nope - you’re not allowed here! Don't rain on my parade!" I had the sense of pushing it away and holding it back, trying to prevent it from coming in.

Avoiding

We have moved beyond the information age - we now live in the age of distraction and indulgence. In other words, we live in the age of avoidance. Netflix, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Alcohol, sugar, THC, and professional sports. Avoiding our emotions is our favorite pastime. As Blaise Pascal wrote in the 1600s: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

Allowing

By far the healthiest response to our emotions, allowing them means feeling them and letting them move through. It means bringing curiosity to them, feeling them as they are, not judging, reacting, or resisting them. Allowing does not mean indulging in them, like we might indulge in anger or anxiety. Allowing might mean sitting quietly and observing them within. Allowing might also mean using a mantra (like "I'm safe to feel all emotions") to welcome it in so that we can experience it.

Our emotions are simply energy vibrating, moving, and making itself felt in our body. Becoming familiar with our emotions, letting them move through us, and not attaching additional meaning to them is a powerful and freeing experience.

Which of the 4 ways of dealing with emotions do you gravitate towards? How might allowing emotions positively impact your life?

Thank you so much for reading. ❤️

P.S. If you're ready to level-up your capacity to respond to life with ease, enjoyment, creativity, and effectiveness, schedule a call and let's see if working together is a good fit.

* Many thanks to The Life Coach School for the insight on the four ways we deal with emotions and the inflatable ball analogy.

We All Suffer From Entitlement

“These students suffer from entitlement.”

I remember the first time I heard a colleague say that our students are entitled, and I immediately understood what they meant. I’ve heard many educators, including myself, refer to students as entitled over my 17 years of teaching.

Our students think they deserve special treatment. Our students think they have the right to special allowances. Our students think they should receive without having worked, that they should get rewards without having earned them.

From one perspective, teachers are right! Kids these days…they’re so entitled.

But here’s the thing: we teachers suffer from entitlement too.

We think we deserve respect. We think we deserve higher pay. We think we deserve our students’ attention, interest, and effort. We think we deserve our administrator’s admiration and acknowledgment.

That’s just how it should be, right?

We all suffer from entitlement.

• As a driver, I’m entitled to a ride where no one drives slower or faster than I think they should drive.

• As a dad, I’m entitled to kids who hug me and love me unbidden, and who do as they’re told without complaint.

• As a husband, I’m entitled to a wife who loves me adoringly and unconditionally, all the time, no matter how her day has been.

• As a friend, I’m entitled to getting a text back when I reach out.

And when life doesn’t show up the way I’m entitled to it showing up, I have a right to complain.

All of that’s fine. All of that’s normal. It’s part of the way we're built as humans. However, it's valuable for us to recognize that our entitlement is a source of suffering, and we don't have to live that way.

When we live a life of entitlement, we miss out on what we’re actually entitled to:

Living our “one wild and precious life” in a creative, inspired, and empowered way.

‣ Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

‣ Satisfaction, fulfillment, gratitude, and enjoyment.

‣ Love, compassion, connection, and camaraderie.

We’re not entitled to any of those things automatically. However, we all have a spark of agency, divine wisdom, and creativity within us to create all of it.

But we first have to get that we’re not entitled to any of it. We’re simply entitled to go for it.

In what specific ways is your own sense of entitlement getting in the way of your ability to get what you’re actually looking for?

Thank you so much for reading. ❤️

Doing Our Best, and Better Is Possible

We revisited The Lorax as a family this weekend. It’s one of my all-time favorite stories.

The Once-ler:

“I meant no harm. I most truly did not.

But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got.”

Paradise. Beauty. Eden. Perfection. The Once-ler was responsible for the destruction of the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. He was warned by the Lorax, and he ignored the evidence of his destructive ways.

And maybe he was doing his best. Maybe we all are.

Maybe we're doing our best with our diet, our weight, our substance use, our arguments, our settling, our relationships, our being stuck.

I think we’re all always doing our best. We’re doing the best we can given the way life looks to us. We’re doing our best given the way we think about ourselves, others, and the world. Our thinking and interpretations and conditioning all look so real to us.

There's something quite freeing in acknowledging that we're doing our best and that others are doing their best too. It gives us a little room to relax.

So we’re not to blame. We’re not to blame for any of it.

But we are responsible.

Next week I’m offering a free, 1-hour, online workshop on How to Resolve Any Complaint. It’s going to be inspiring, impactful, and immensely practical. But there’s a catch:

Becoming aware of our ability to own ALL of it in our lives means we become responsible for ALL of it no matter what. Owning it all - our judgments, our complaints, our values, our dreams - it’s a super-power, and ALL of us have this super-power built into us.

Another of my all-time favorite stories is the Matrix.

Morpheus:

“After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

Join me next week in the Complaints workshop and take the red pill.

The rabbit-hole: our ability to thrive, create, and live intentionally and responsibly. To be unstoppable. To be courageous. To live inspired. To be at peace. And to fall in love with being alive.

We may be doing our best, but better is still possible. Take the lid off.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️