Welcome to the last chapter in this course. By this point you've learned over 30 skills that
you can use to process through your emotions. But remember, the goal of this course isn't
just to feel better; it's also to get better at feeling - to get good at having emotions,
working through them, and making choices that lead to a rich and fulfilling life.
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy provider.
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your therapist anytime from anywhere. Therapy starts at about $65 a week. So check out the link
in the description for 10% off your first month. When we take a step back and look at the process
of resolving emotions, we start with identifying the emotion, then we move into slowing it down and
accepting the emotion and exploring it. And all of these steps are important, but the whole purpose
of emotional regulation is to help us take helpful action. Action often helps us free up that stored
movement inside of us. Look at the word emotion. E-motion. The mote comes from Latin, and it means
"to move." It's the same root that's in words like motivation and motor. It's something that inspires
movement. Our emotions, even the ones that can be considered negative or uncomfortable, as I prefer,
can be powerful motivating forces to help us move and change. Viktor Frankl was a Jewish doctor who
spent years imprisoned in a concentration camp. His family was killed, but he survived the horror
of it. And he said, "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the
huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number,
but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last
of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose
one's own way." When I read this, I don't think he was saying you can just choose to be happy
all the time. Right? Dr. Frankl experienced fear, anguish, sadness, discouragement. What I think he
means by this is that you can choose how you're going to respond to a situation; you can choose
how you're going to think about a situation; you can choose how you're going to act in a situation.
And learning the skills to process emotions can give us the ability to do that.
My hope is that through this course you've learned how to honor your emotions, how to honor
your deepest sense of what is right. I hope that you've learned that the painful and uncomfortable
emotions are sometimes messages to us motivating us to take action or to to fix something,
and other times emotions can get twisted or distorted and we just need to breathe through
them and let them pass. Working through emotions frees you to make intentional instead of reactive
choices. When your emotions aren't jerking you around, you can choose to live a life that you
value. In my opinion, peace comes from closing the gaps between our deepest sense of what is
right and our actions. Taking actions, even small action, often frees us from many of our emotions.
To do that we need to clarify what our emotion is saying. We need to let go of justification or
rationalization, and we need to take intentional, not reactive, action to move in the direction we
value. With every emotion comes the choice whether to act to change something, to accept things as
they are, or to avoid our emotions or justify our actions. When we blame our circumstances or other
people for how we act, we're being reactive. If we allow our emotions to dictate our choices, we're
being reactive. When we let drives and desires and impulses and bad habits take over, we usually
begin to stray from our values. We get further and further from being the kind of person that
we want to be and from living the life that we want to live. The ability to acknowledge, accept,
and regulate emotions gives us the power to have integrity in our life. Initially this takes a lot
of effort and work to bring our life into line with our values, but over time the intentional
and chosen actions become habitual. They take less energy and less effort to maintain. And eventually
these become a natural response that comes more easily to us. We still choose our action,
but that action seems to flow from us. There are also certain situations where the best action
is active acceptance. Again, this is not passively giving in to hopelessness or anger or despair of a
situation, but it's willingly accepting that the best course is non-action. So here's a
few situations where we're better off not taking action, right? When we're obsessing over the past,
when we're trying to change other people, trying to control the future or control anything outside
of our locus of control. I've heard the Serenity Prayer also said "Grant me the serenity to accept
the people I cannot change, courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
It's an easy distraction to waste energy trying to change other people and ignoring change in
ourselves. I often ask myself the question, "Is there something I can do about it, even
a small change?" And then when I take that step, I can feel empowered. Remember, the journey of a
thousand miles begins with just one step. It's one step at a time. Never allow yourself to believe
that because you can't do it all it's not worth doing anything. Now, sometimes the solution or
the action doesn't present itself right away or I don't have the ability to take action right away.
And in this case, it's difficult, but it's important to try to stay open. Don't just,
you know, shut down and say, "Well, this will never happen." Try try sticking with a more open
stance, like, "Oh, you know, not yet, or perhaps in the future I'll be able to make this better."
Don't expect yourself to be able to change everything at once. An all-or-nothing approach
to change usually sets people up for failure. In my opinion, you know, usually change is a
process of increasing the length of recovery and decreasing the frequency and severity of relapse.
So you're having longer and longer times where you're living the way you want to live and shorter
and shorter times where you're being reactive. This all comes down to using your values as your
compass when you're at the point of choice, the point where you need to decide, "Should I take
action? Should I let things go that are outside of my control?" You know. To answer these questions,
acceptance and commitment therapy asks the question: What do you value? What do you want
your life to look like? What are the character traits that you want to embody? Does giving a
lot of energy and attention to this problem help you live a more rich and fulfilling life? If not.
then shift your energy and your attention back to what's most important to you. And that's what it
all boils down to. That's the choice: do I take action? Do I accept the things I cannot change?
And these are the questions that can help you live a life of integrity and peace. As you get good
at processing emotions, what will your life look like? What will change? What will you improve on?
Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I'd love to hear what you think about this course.
Thanks again for watching, and take care. This video is one skill from my 30-skill course How
to Process Your Emotions, where I teach 30 of the most essential skills for resolving depression,
anxiety, and improving mental health. Emotion processing is an essential skill for working
through intense emotions, but most people have never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every
single main video lesson on YouTube for the world to access for free. You watching these videos,
sharing them, contributing to my Patreon and my sponsors make this possible.
If you would like to access the entire course in one place ad free with its workbook,
exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional short readings,
and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course is in the description below.