I love talking about this stuff because it’s all just a game and you are here to learn how the game works. Imagine coming into the game without knowing the rules of the game? Imagine playing monopoly with a bunch of people and each of you are trying to figure out how to play, knowing nothing about the rules of the game. You don’t know what the money is for, you don’t know what the dice are, and you have no idea what the pieces or the actual board mean. I guarantee it would be a crap shoot.
That’s exactly what happens to us, we end up being raised by parents, teachers, and other folks who have no idea what this game is. They don’t even know they are in a game -- we are all just figuring it out as we go. If you think your parents have it figured out, let me tell you, they don’t. Nobody has it figured out, because that’s the design of the game. Although there is one way to know how you are doing in the game. It’s all about your feelings. Feelings people. How good do you feel? Are you filled with love, happiness and joy? No. Well then you have some more to learn to be able to advance in the game and I’m here to show you how to do so.
This podcast is all about your feelings. Emotions. E-motions. Energy in motion people. What do they mean? Why do we have them? The human experience is based off of emotion. We are elated when we get married or travel to a beautiful destination for a vacation. We experience grief when we lose a loved one and some of us are simply resigned about life.
In fact emotions are our #1 communication device. You think the spoken word is our way of communicating. Ha! That’s only 10% of our communication. The rest is body language and tonality – both of them determined by your emotional state. You can tell when someone is upset, can’t you? You know when people are happy. You know when people are depressed. We express our emotions throughout our entire body. Energy in motion baby.
I’ve been sitting here and thinking about why mammals evolved to have emotions. Do we really need them? After all our reptilian brain worked just fine for 250 million years. We were able to eat and reproduce pretty darn well. Although there was a need to develop into more complex beings. To develop stronger relationships. The need to be able to handle survival on a much more intricate level.
Emotions are simply a survival mechanism. If you are a kid and you touch a hot stove you feel pain. This physical pain creates a response in the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex portions of the brain. Emotional pain triggers the same area of the brain, suggesting that we are experiencing the same response when we are hurt both physically and emotionally.
Our subconscious mind is responsible for this automatic programming of behavior. If you experience physical pain your subconscious mind is going to create a program to never experience that pain again. If you touch a hot stove as a 6 year old child, you will likely stay away from that stove. Until you get older and you need to use that stove to function and survive.
You eventually learn that you can use that stove without burning yourself and your subconscious mind determines that it’s not as dangerous as once believed. You are certainly alert and aware of not touching that stove while you cook. That program is still running. Anxiety filling your body in an attempt to keep you from the dangers of the infamous stove.
You experience another arena of pain that is strictly associated with emotions. These emotions range from anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt, shame, grief and the list goes on and on. What are the purpose of these? Oddly enough we evolved into having a limbic system that has these emotional filters as another form of protection and survival. Maybe it was just too boring eating and reproducing. What if we could develop a dominant species and emotions were the evolutionary component to be able to do that.
How do emotions make us more dominant than the rest? Emotions are a form of intelligence and this intelligence is responsible for our relationships. Emotions were the only way we could evolve into tribes and communities. Emotions allow us to work in packs and to be able to create a skyscraper you need to be able to use hundreds to thousands of different people to be able to make that happen. We would not be able to do that without emotions or language for that matter. Both of them work together uniquely for human beings to be able to work collectively.
What is one of the worst things that triggers these negative emotions? Have you ever been cheated on by your partner? You will likely get filled with a whole gambit of emotions like sadness, anger, shame, embarrassment, even resentment. What are those emotions telling you? Well if you are a woman your basic biological instinct is to raise strong and dominant children. When I say dominant I mean someone that is the fittest to survive this hectic and crazy world we live in. Research has proven that the best way to do that is within a nuclear family dynamic.
When a child has both parents that are displaying healthy relational habits between each other, it’s the perfect environment to nurture a child into becoming a successful and productive adult. So to have a man cheat on his woman flairs up this engrained instinctual component inside the woman that is sending red flags around her partner. The anger, sadness and whatever other emotions she is experiencing are screaming there is danger here!! So what do you do? It’s not a simple response, but there are a variety of options you can take.
First of all if you are cheated on the first emotional reaction is to end the relationship. Obviously this guy doesn’t have what it takes to be part of a nuclear family dynamic, so let’s just kick him to the curb. Secondly through analysis based off of fear, you may believe you can’t do better on the hierarchal ladder of possibility, so you decide to stay with that person, putting yourself at risk of experiencing that again.
Lastly, maybe that man realizes the error in his ways and chooses not to do that moving forward in the future. Overtime trust is earned and the relationship can develop into something beautiful once again. Bottom line you have to use your emotions to discover what is necessary to learn in any given situation. Emotions are our teachers. They are there for us to learn.
For instance, as someone who experiences the symptoms of avoidant personality disorder, when I’m around strangers or I’m in a room filled with people I don’t know, my subconscious mind goes on high alert. I’m hyper aware of my environment. My senses are paying attention to everything around me all the time. It’s constantly telling me there is danger present. Even though there is no real danger.
Public speaking causes the same affect in people. Imagine the fear and anxiety speaking in front of a group of people. Dun. Dun. Dun. It’s just like going into battle right? No! Do you get how absurd it is that we are afraid to speak in front of other people? To simply say words that come out of our mouth. It’s insane.
If you actually knew our emotions determine our movements. Do you ever wake up in the morning full of dread because you don’t want to go to work in the morning? Because work sucks and it’s painful to drag your butt and slave for a company where the owner makes ridiculous amounts of money. You may think this is the day I’m going to say F this, I’m going to quit. Then another emotion of fear sets into your body around not having money and losing your home or your family. The fear outweighs the dread and you end up getting out of bed and head to work. We are constantly being dictated and controlled by our emotions.
What do these emotions tell us though? Why do we allow situations like this to happen in our life? The answer is simple, because of our programming. I’m just going to give you a big secret here. Our schooling system is designed to develop limiting programs in children. I’ll talk about this in greater detail in the another podcast. If you think about it the #1 fear is public speaking in this country. How did that happen? The embarrassment that occurs in front of a group of your peers and a teacher when you get the wrong answer. You think you are going to be able to develop yourself as a leader with a fear of public speaking? Good luck.
We are constantly being reminded with grades and hierarchy where we are on the totem pole. Oh I got 75 and the rest of the class got A’s and B’s. What emotions will you experience knowing this? What are you going to tell yourself in those moments? No wonder we grow up with these limiting programs of not being good enough, being unworthy, not smart enough, being a failure.
You think you will ever be able to rise up the ladder at your company and up against these limiting programs? Or start your own business for that matter? It’s nearly impossible. Willpower is the hardest way to create change in your life. You are up against a beast called the subconscious mind, more importantly what I’m speaking about is your past.
These programs are strong and they fill you up with powerful emotions and instead of fighting through them it’s much easier just to succumb to a life we settle for. A life that is unfulfilling. A life we pretend to enjoy. We seek pleasure through other means. Food, sex, drugs and other unhealthy habits. We become prisoners to these programs, to our own mind, and a prisoner to our circumstances.
You need to start using your emotions as a honing mechanism. When you experience negative emotions it’s time to find the source of it. Here is the thing, your emotions are from the past. The emotions you experience on a day to day basis are connected to a program from your past and it simply goes on a feedback loop. You experience similar situations like public speaking and every time you face that situation you are consumed with fear and anxiety.
Here is how you overcome all of that. First bring awareness to your emotions. Second ask yourself what is the cause of this emotion. Start questioning what this pattern is and get a better understanding of it. You can now do something about it. Have a conversation with yourself in front of the mirror. Acknowledge what the pattern is and let your subconscious mind know that this program is no longer serving you and that it’s time to do something new. Having a tough conversation with your subconscious mind is an effective tool to be able to overcome these programs. Although there is a much simpler way to do it.
Hire a coach that is trained in finding and rewriting these programs. That’s what I do. I am constantly looking for the root cause of these programs. Once we find the root cause we go back to that event and disappear the emotions associated with that past event. It’s so fast and effective. Immediately when you clear these programs, 100’s to thousands of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, emotions, actions and behaviors immediately shift. It’s powerful.
Your goal while you are here is to discover and rewrite as many of these limiting programs as you possibly can. This frees you up from your past. Next you want to create big massive goals for yourself, because now the only willpower you will need is taking the actions in order to achieve your goals.
If you have a program running in the background that you are a loser I can assure you it will be nearly impossible to be able to achieve a big goal. I had that program. Being a loser has impacted me in so many negative ways. It’s taken me out of action. It’s caused me to set small goals. I ended up floating in life doing a job I hated, living in a place I hated, and ended up in a relationship I never truly wanted to be in.
If you are constantly feeling positive emotions, then you are doing something right. You are on the right path. You likely are fulfilling on your purpose here. Although if you have negative emotions and those dominant your feeling states throughout the day, there is some work to be done. Realize every negative emotion is simply a past version of yourself coming out. It’s the 6 year old boy or girl that never got over this program. Literally when these programs show up they are just a younger version of ourselves. We are just adults acting like kids when an event happens that stimulates the emotions from our past.
Our truest nature and what we are capable of -- we are limitless! You can fulfill on your wildest dreams as long as you are freed up from the programs from your past. Instead of believing you are a loser, what if you believed you were a successful, powerful leader? What if you believed that you were a person that can achieve your goals, someone that could say something and it would happen? To become a masterful creator of your own life. This is your access to freedom. This is your access to happiness. That’s what I do and that’s what I love to do. You deserve it too, you just have to do the work. Alright start working on those emotions people and let me know how it turns out!!
