10 days, if you have followed for 10 days congrats to you! A big pat on the back for myself too! It has been really tough these days to hit the 1 hour of reading and 30min to do up this post as i have been really busy with the shop and other projects as well. Time is precious, so less whining and more reading! So today we are at chapter 11 of Awaken The Giant Within by Anthony Robbins.
The story of a man name Walt. Walt is a good decent human who tries to do the right thing. He has his life down to science. Everything is in proper place. He wakes exactly at 630am, shower and shaves, drink some coffee and he is out for work at 715am and he will reach his office at 8am. Where he sits there and does the same job for 20 years.
5pm he goes home, and watch TV. An hour later the wife comes home and they will decide what leftover to eat or to throw a pizza into a mircowave. After dinner he watches the news where the wife wash up and kid and put him to sleep. Walt and his wife has been married for 3 years, he won’t describe their relationship as inflamed with passion, “it’s comfortable”
Do you know some one like walt? Maybe he is someone we know intimately. Someone who never suffers the depths of utter devastation or despondency but also never get to experience the heights of passion and joy. Many of us live a life of quiet desperation, afraid of feeling pain but quietly wanted to feel more alive, more passionate and get our heart pumping again. Often we will feel helpless and we find that we are unable to control what we feel. And many turn to external help to avoid certain emotions. They will turn to drugs, alcohol, overeating, gambling in hoping to lose those depressing feeling.
We have 4 basic ways to deal with emotions. 1 avoidance, we want to avoid painful emotions, so we avoid any situation that could lead to painful emotions. Some fear rejection and they avoid any situation that could lead to rejection. They shy away from relationship for example. They don’t apply for challenging job. And in the end they are unable to feel the very love, intimacy and connection they we most desire.
2 Denial, we often say to certain emotions that we have that, its not that bad. However on the inside they keep thinking how bad things are and how someone has taken advantage of them or how they do everything right but still turn out wrong. Experiencing a emotion and pretending its not there will only amplify it even bigger, it will amplify till its big enough for you to notice it.
3 Competition, Many of us stop fighting the emotions we had and we fully indulge in them and goes into a competition with other people and take it as some unique and begin to pride themselves on being worse off than anyone else. This is the worst way to deal of our painful emotions.
4 Learning and Using, if we want to make life work, we need to make our emotions work for us. The emotions that we once thought of as negative are actually a call to action. Every painful emotion we can call them Action Signals! Its tells us its time to move! Or you need to do something now!
6 Steps to Emotional Mastery
Step one : Identify what you’re really feeling, instead of being overwhelmed by all the pain you are feeling. Step back and ask yourself what are you really feeling? Are you really angry or are you just feeling hurt. Or are you feeling you lost out of something. Realise that feeling hurt and feeling lost out on something is not as intense as feeling angry!
Step two : Acknowledge and Appreciate your emotions, knowing they support you. Your emotions are here not to hurt you but to serve you as a warning. Even if you don’t know about your emotions now, just trust that your emotions are here to guide you and support you, appreciate all emotion you are feeling and you will find that you will calm down almost immediately.
Step three : Get curious about the message this emotion is offering you. Getting curious will help you master the emotion and it will be easier for you to deal with it if you face it again.
Step four : Get Confident, Remember a time where you have successfully handled a similar emotion and feel confident that you have handled it before.
Step Five : Get certain you can handle this not only today, but in the future as well. Simply by remembering that you handled this situation or emotion before and rehearse handling the situation where this Action Signal would come up in the future. See and hear yourself handling this situation easily.
Step Six : Get excited and take action. The best time to handle the emotion is when the Monster is still little. Get excited and deal with it.
We can feel all the different emotions inside our the good and the bad. Learn how to deal with it and do more things that will fill ourself with the good emotions. Like love, contribution, and many more. I hope you will not be restricted by your emotions and fear of failure and live a life in “comfort” Life is a adventure, you only got 1 life you can make full use of it or let it make full use of you.
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