Word count:5083
hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about how to deal with strong negative emotions what you're about to get right here is V master key the master key to dealing with all kinds of negative nasty emotions this is the key right here what do I mean by strong negative emotions well I mean the entire spectrum everything from sadness to hurt to loss feelings that you have lost someone close to you as with a death the strong emotions and feelings that come with heartbreak when someone has betrayed you or has abandoned you or has left you fear nervousness anger so all that stuff all the stuff we hate how do we deal with these kinds of emotions effectively I'm going to show you right here and it's extremely simple the author of a book called the road less traveled Scott Peck he says the following that book quote the tendency to avoid emotional suffering is the cause of all mental illness to lead a healthy spiritual life we must face problems directly and experience the pain involved and quote so the solution to dealing with strong negative emotions is very very simple it's to allow yourself to fully feel the emotion that's it that's the solution this is a very counterintuitive solution though counterintuitive and countered is an interesting thing because to get success in almost any facet of life and to be doing effective personal development work if you do a lot of it what you're going to discover is that success comes from counterintuitive moves you have to do something counterintuitive that normally your psyche would not want to do it's like the exact opposite of what you think you should do it's kind of like instead of running away from your assailant you charge at your assailant that would be an example of a counterintuitive move and it's the same thing here now why is this counterintuitive why is it counter to if to just allow the negative emotion to wash over you and to feel it fully well because we don't want to let our guard down and we don't want to be vulnerable and we think that when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable that somehow this makes us weak and this exposes us to danger and this puts us in harm's way when in fact it's actually the opposite of that but it's hard for your ego to see this at first it's hard for your ego to accept that it should allow itself to feel the full impact of a strong negative emotion because what your ego wants to do is it wants to resist and deny and run away and it wants to feel pleasant and good that's what it want it wants to candy it doesn't want to eat the vegetables it wants to eat the candy but what we have to do here if we're going to make this move successfully and I'm going to help you to do that by giving you a little process simple but powerful process is we have to start to become okay with allowing ourselves to be vulnerable this doesn't make you small or weak or effeminate it's actually the opposite of all those now you might wonder well why should I allow myself to be vulnerable if I'm vulnerable want to get hurt isn't that what's happened in the past and you're right in a sense because actually what your psychology consists of especially if you have neurotic psychology if you have problems in your life in relationships and work with finances all these different areas if you have problems they're actually the reason you have those problems is because early on in your childhood you received wounds and you did open yourself up and you were vulnerable and what happened is that you got hurt and so what you did is you have to close yourself down because the hurt was so painful the vulnerability was so painful that what you do what you did is that you you started erecting defenses in various shields to protect yourself and you adopted certain vows and you told yourself I will never again allow myself to be vulnerable with people or in an intimate relationship or with my career with my finances or with some other situation and you made all sorts of vows like this and these were all defenses that you erected and now what you do is you spend a lot of your mental energy maintaining these defenses but these offenses are all a sham it seems like they protect you but actually part of becoming a mature emotional emotionally healthy adult is to dismantle all the defenses that you erected in your childhood and in your teenage years because you start to see that they weigh you down and you start to see that they prevent you from being aligned with the truth the truth is really our Savior here when it comes to emotions and it comes to understanding vulnerability and if you're wondering well Leah why should I allow myself to be vulnerable don't I need these defenses well here's the fact here's the truth the real truth that you haven't been admitting to yourself is that you actually are vulnerable you are doesn't matter how many defenses you've put up you're still vulnerable here's an example I like to think about when I think about vulnerability imagine one of those macho tough guys that you see at the gym the guy who does steroids and he's all buffed up and he's got these beautiful muscles and he's in there every to everyday you know you see him working out real hard and he can bench like 400 pounds this Arnold Schwarzenegger looking guy all right so this is like the macho guy the in vulnerable guy this guy surely is not vulnerable so there I am at the gym and he's there he's he's pumping his uh four hundred pounds on the bench press well as he's doing that and he looks so macho and and vulnerable and he also has that kind of way that he carries himself also you know that kind of like macho alpha male kind of thing okay well he's got that going for him but as he's lifting up his four hundred pounds on the bench press if I walk up to him with a gun and pointed at his head and click the trigger that's it lights out for him all the muscles in the world and all the macho acting and posing in the world and all the macho talk in the world is not going to change that I don't care who you are you are vulnerable I don't care if you're the richest person in the world the strongest person in the world a military dictator surrounding himself by thousands of bodyguards it doesn't matter you're still vulnerable and in fact the more you try to defend yourself the more vulnerable you are it's just a lie assault it's just a sham you see how this works so let's not kid ourselves let's actually admit and be adults here admit that we are vulnerable and that we can get hurt and that we can even get killed those are the stakes of life now what do we do about this your job is not to play defense your job is to become a superconductor they have wires wires regular household wires conduct current now current is connected through metallic material and then this material has a conductive property to it and also have something called resistance resistance is the inherent nature of the material the metal which resists the flow of current through it and it heats up and after a certain point it can start to melt the wire so the reason I talk about this because this is a really good analogy for what you want to do with your negative emotions instead of resisting them which is what you typically do this is the standard automatic ego reaction is to resist every negative emotion we all do it what we want to do is we want to open ourselves up and develop ourselves emotionally to the point where we become superconductors and a superconductor is a material that allows current to pass through it with zero resistance this is actually not science fiction it's actually possible they do this in the laboratory there are materials at certain temperatures where you can create a wire and pass current through it through very long distances and not a single drop of that electricity is ever lost to resistance and no heat is generated it's quite amazing now what's possible analogously is to become a human being that way a superconducting human being takes work though take some real inner work but this is what's up ash as people are is they become better and better super conductors of negative emotions and all emotions in general this is what developing emotional maturity means so let me talk a little bit about your automatic ego reaction what is this this is what happens to you when you first get a little tingle or a little stab of that negative emotion whatever it is here's what your ego automatically does it doesn't want to just open up and feel it what it wants to do is it wants to act stoic and cool or it wants to deny that this is even happening the third thing it does is it wants to distract with entertainment with drugs with food with sex or some other distraction the other thing that likes to do is it likes to hide it likes to suppress the fact that this is happening sweep it under the rug somehow the other thing you like to do is it likes to suck it up you tense up all the muscles in your stomach and in your body unconsciously and you suck it up and you just hold it in you take that pain and the last thing I'd like to do is I like to control and manipulate so rather than feel it you start to come up with some kind of scheme for how to change it or how to get your way out of it how to weasel your way out these are all typical ego reactions this is all this stuff we're going to be fighting against so to speak by opening ourselves up and allowing and not doing anyone of these these things here they kill your ability to super conduct what happens is they create resistance and then from that resistance gets created most of your suffering see one thing you have to realize here which is very counterintuitive is that when you open yourself up and you actually become vulnerable and you let down your guard you think like oh that's going to hurt me it's going to damage me but actually no when you suffer and get damaged emotionally it's because you resist it's because you hold back not because you allow yourself to fully open up and that's the counterintuitive thing and we need to train your mind for that so let me give you a process here that you can use for any negative emotion that you encounter in your life that you want to work through so go ahead right now and if you have a strong negative emotion with you right now that you're kind of holding or carrying around great if you don't think you can just kind of pretend we'll quickly go through the process it's really simple go ahead and sit upright in your seat and be alert and I'll take you through some of the steps in this process conjure up whatever emotion you're trying to work with here so let's say as an example we're going to use an emotion of betrayal let's say that your girlfriend or boyfriend or your spouse has cheated on you and you feel betrayed and you feel sadness and you feel like you've really been hurt you've really been hurt so that we're going to deal with that one so the first thing I want you to do is I want you to relax your body relax your body second thing I want you to do is to get into the present moment present time right now not into your fantasy fairytale land of where you're thinking about oh he did this to me and she did that and I'm going to get them back in all this no right now in the present moment that means you're in touch with your senses you're hearing my voice you're seeing me if you're watching this on video you're seeing the things around you and you're feeling things in your body that's what's happening right now everything else is thought stories forget about those the next step is connect with your body right now feel into your body and feel where that hurt or whatever emotional dealing with feel where that negative emotion is where is it it's right there in your body it's nowhere else feel how it feels is there a tingling sensation in your forehead is there a pain is there an ache is there a warm sensation a cold sensation are you expanding are you contracting is it in your chest is it in your lower abdomen is it in your hands and your shoulders and your back where is it what's the quality of it is it big as it smalls it tight is it loose is it like a void and a vacuum do you feel hollow and sad or do you feel tight and angry don't judge anything that's there just notice literally what's there the next step is to fully feel what is there open yourself to it and fully feel it let it in the next step is to allow allow is a little bit different than just fully feeling allowing saying to yourself oh it's okay I can allow this I don't need to resist it it's like giving yourself permission to fully feel so you're taking that initial fully feeling of it and you're allowing it and you're kind of expanding it the way I like to think of it is if you have water flowing through a channel and you have a gate like in an irrigation canal you can open the gate water flows and you can shut the gate real quick so to allow means you open the gate and you keep it open and you let the flow those emotions flow right through you the next step is to observe with curiosity what's actually flowing through you through your body you don't want to judge it or label it or get into any kind of thoughts or concepts about it just observe and be curious about what's there why is it there why is it this way not some other way what is an emotion anyways these are all interesting questions get curious about it what does hurt feel like why do I feel hurt but don't go into stories about why you feel hurt just kind of be curious and notice what's flowing through you the next step is I want you to allow again because what's going to happen is that you're so unused to this you're so used to resisting that this gate your even if you open it consciously for a few seconds or minutes it's going to close right back down as you're observing these emotions flowing through you you're going to feel like it's so painful and you're going to be so afraid of being vulnerable that you're going to just close it right down so again allow yourself by opening this thing up just allow give yourself permission to feel it feel the hurt don't judge it don't resist it and then the final step which is simply do nothing don't do anything just feel what's there just sit on your ass and don't do anything don't distract yourself don't go order a pizza don't go get some ice cream don't go have sex don't go starting plans for how you're going to find your next boyfriend or girlfriend or how you're going to get back at that person or how you're gonna let's say you got screwed over in a business deal it's like well he screwed me over so I'm gonna do this with my business - no don't do any of that just sit there and allow your job is to be a superconductor and nothing else a superconductor is not some fancy role you know the ego has difficulty being a suit conductor because the ego likes to like you know it likes to be front and center it likes to get all the attention but to be a good conductor you just need to be there and not do anything the wire it's not wiggling around it's not doing anything fancy it's just lying there and current is passing through it so it's a very passive role that's the role I want you to play here all right so that's the whole process very simple challenging but simple now what's going to happen with you is that when you get hit by a strong emotion usually it comes in waves it's like you really get hurt and you feel it real bad like when you first let's say hear the news you really feel it and then it lasts for 15-20 minutes and then it kind of subsides and then you remember it again an hour later and it hurts you again and another hour later hurts you again it comes in waves so what will happen is that every time you get hit by any wave I want you to run this process I want you to open yourself up allow it feel it do nothing and just keep doing that throughout the day throughout the week however long these negative emotional spells last for you okay also what I want you to do is I want you to notice the tension and tightness in your body it's certainly there because this is how resistance happens if you're suffering a negative emotions because you're resisting it it's not because the emotion is negative and you resist with your body so what I want you to do is I want you to relax all the major areas of your body the belly and stomach area make sure you let that stick out completely and don't tighten any of those muscles let it all out don't suck in your belly your shoulders relax your shoulders make them loose relax your hands and your arms instead of holding tight fists just let your hands just flop down wherever you're placing them your jaw let your jaw go loose and of course very importantly remember to breathe deep breathe your chest and breathe all the way down into your belly it's very important you're going to lose consciousness right now as I'm telling you these things you're developing more awareness and consciousness this is what consciousness is just awareness but then what happens is that later in the day you'll probably forget and then you'll forget you'll forget will forget and you'll tighten up and tense up and you'll resist and this will create problems so just notice that this is a practice this is a skill you have to develop over time so just keep practicing this technique and that's it that's it you don't need to get rid of negative emotions emotions will go through you and then they will disappear and they might come again and then they'll disappear that's how emotions are there's no need to do anything about them other than to fully feel them and this is the behavior of a self actualized highly emotionally mature individual the opposite of a neurotic individual what's a neurotic individual someone who holds back and resists reality again noticed that what we're doing here is we're actually facing reality to resist reality what you have to do is you have to deny the present moment and the only way you can deny the present moment of course the president moment includes all the emotions in your body is to dissociate from your body by going into your mind into fairytale land that's where you go that's the only place you can go if you don't go into your mind in fairytale land they you're in reality and if you don't tense up your your body and your muscles then you let the emotion flow unrestricted and that's reality that's what is that's what it is before I let you go I want to tackle a couple of limiting beliefs you might have about emotions one thing we got to challenge this belief that negative emotions are bad quote-unquote negative emotions are bad there actually is no such thing as a negative emotion or a bad emotion and emotion is just a sensation coursing through some part of your body and usually also there's some mental phenomenon that comes with it some mental imagery or some mental verbal labels nothing is bad here this is a judgment if you feel hurt notice that the heart itself is not bad that's just the ego saying that that's just a judgment it's not even negative not if you're very honest you have a habit of resisting that's been developed over the last however many decades of life you've been living from basically the very very beginning you've been resisting emotions this is a habit that's very strongly ingrained in you and the labeling habit is also strongly ingrained any time you feel something you don't like even just a little bit you automatically label it as bad or evil or negative and you immediately say know one thing you have to start doing if you want to develop real emotional maturity is you want to stop labeling things as bad or negative or evil because as soon as you do that automatically what happens is that you create a separation between that thing and yourself and automatically you have to resist that thing you have to fight that thing and I'm not telling you this just as some positive thinking technique like oh you're just gonna you're just going to do something in your mind to make yourself feel a little bit better about the situation and you're not going to be living in truth no this goes a lot deeper than that what I'm telling you is actually to live in truth you might think I'm telling you to live in falsehood if you've never practiced this before but actually no I'm telling you to live in truth falsehood is when you call things bad that's falsehood that's created only in the fairy tales of your mind what's here in reality is not bad it just is so the labeling habit you have to stop this the resisting habit you've to stop this too don't be afraid if you can't do it immediately it takes lots of practice lots and lots of practice meditation is very good habit to teach you this mindfulness is a very good habit to teach you this I have videos on all those you can go look those up if you want to learn more it'll take time to retrain yourself but it'll be very worth it I want you to notice is the profound insight is that the feeling of hurt does not actually hurt you have you noticed this the feeling of being hurt does not actually hurt you you might think that allowing negative emotions to just come in there unrestricted like this could be damaging Leo isn't that dangerous couldn't I caused myself some kind of psychological damage no just the opposite what causes psychological damage is resistance a superconductor is never damaged by electricity even if it's very strong you could have a lightning rod on top of a building it gets hit by lightning which has mega or gigawatts of power in it the lightning rod is just fine strike after strike after strike why because it has low resistance doesn't damage the rod electricity just goes right into the ground perfectly fine and emotion only damages you when you resist it an emotion only causes suffering to you when you resist it if you think that suffering is inherent to hurt or to loss or to loneliness or to sadness then this just shows you how emotionally underdeveloped you are how immature you are because the suffering is not inherent there the suffering is only there because you resist so if you feel an emotion that's causing lots of suffering remember oh [ __ ] that means I must be resisting because if I wasn't resisting on some level and there's many sneaky levels at which you could there's many sneaky ways and many levels of depth at which you could resist these things so just remember that that the two are connected and there's nothing inherent there about negative emotions causing you suffering now I want to give you a couple last pointers here now I know you came in here with strong negative emotion you're probably looking for a magic pill the definition of a magic pill is avoiding of emotional labor what you were looking for is a technique where you could not have to feel anything because that's what ego wants it wants to resist and deny and disown and disconnect from reality the approach I gave you here is the exact opposite of what you really wanted but the nice thing is that I gave you a real solution not a fake solution they solutions they sweep dirt under the rug until finally it starts to stink and fester and this creates a lot of problems in your life a real solution cleans away that smelly dirt and leads to real freedom but it takes courage to go in there and really look under the rug especially if you haven't looked under the rug for a decade or two takes real courage to implement this solution you have to grow up you have to grow the [ __ ] up it's time to stop being a child and stop being emotionally immature and it's time to align yourself with what's true not with what's false it's time to educate yourself about how emotions actually work and not how you've been taught that they work or how you suspect or think they work but how they actually work emotions work in a very counterintuitive way requires study to know this so commit yourself to study commit yourself to mastery this is a process do it not just because you want to get over this you know this one boyfriend or girlfriend who cheated on you and betrayed you or this one business partner who screwed you over don't do it because you just want to get over this one emotional hiccup that you have right now in your life that will pass anyways see the bigger picture here do it for the vision you have of your dream life do it because you want to be emotionally mature do it because you understand that to live your life purpose and to be self actualized and to live a happy life you need to master your emotions can you imagine what your life would look like what every facet of your life would look like if you became an emotional superconductor what would your relationships look like what would your career look like and your business how much more money could you earn how much more competitive could you be what would your friendships look like how much self confidence would you have how much more self-esteem would you have how would you relate differently to your family and to your children how much more resourceful would you be how much more effective would you be in the world how much of a stronger leader would you be how much more impact could you have on the world how much more could you contribute to the world that's why you want to pursue emotional mastery that's why you want to become a superconductor because if you can become an emotional superconductor you can then get extraordinary results across the board in all these different facets and that's what constitutes your dream life that's why you're here following my material if you are so here's your chance to step it up and summon that courage stop being a child right this is Leo I'm signing off please like this video click like button post your comments down below share it with a friend and finally come check out my website it's called actualize org I release new videos about self actualization topics every single week I have a free newsletter on there sign up stay tuned a schlosser drug is here designed to keep you on track with developing yourself emotionally spiritually financially with relationships with building a passionate life building a passionate career with following your life purpose it's hard to just get on board with this and never fall off track what happens if people fall off track often if you stick around you watch the weekly episodes then puts you back on track inspires you gives you tips and ideas and advanced concepts and I spend a lot of time researching so this is really worth your while I hope you really buy into this larger vision that I have for you because that's a larger vision for me and your life can become extraordinary if you start to take action on this just every single week little baby steps you start taking action and then with a few years everything starts to change for you all right go check that out sign up and I'll see you soon you