Once there was a farmer whose horse ran away, now he could not plow. His neighbors came to him, and
said "How horrible for you, this is terrible, this is awful, you lost your horse!" the farmer replied
"I don't know, we'll see", and he went back to work on his farm. The next day, the farmer's son went to
find the horse. Not only did he find the horse, but two additional stray horses followed them home. The
neighbors came over, and said "Oh this is wonderful for you, this is so good, you found your horse, and
got two new ones!" The farmer replied "I don't know, we'll see", and he went back to work on his farm.
The next day the farmer's son decided to break in one of the new horses, a few days in, he got thrown
off of the horse, and he broke his leg. He had to get a cast, and stay off the leg, so he couldn't
help work on the farm, and once again all the neighbors come over, and they say "Oh my gosh this
is horrible, this is so bad!", and the farmer replied "I don't know, we'll see", and tried to get back to
work on his farm. Now one of the neighbors insisted "How can you be so relaxed about this? Without your
son's help, you'll have to work long into the night to get all the work done, you don't seem
to understand that this is a catastrophe!", and the farmer calmly replied "We'll see", and
went back to work. The next day, the emperor decided to implement a draft for a war that was starting,
all of the eligible men in the whole village were dragged off to war, because of his broken leg the
farmer's son was spared from the draft. All the neighbors came over, and told the farmer "Oh my
goodness you're so lucky, you're so fortunate, this is so good for you!", and the farmer just replied
"I don't know, we'll see", and went back to work. Now no one likes to think of themselves as judgmental
right, you probably don't think that you are, but let me ask you a question. Do you label emotions as
good, or bad emotions? Do you often tell yourself 'I shouldn't be feeling this way', or 'suck it up
buttercup', or do you apologize if you're sad, or if you're crying? You know, many boys have been taught
to never cry, and girls have been taught to never feel angry. A lot of us have been taught to "just
be positive" all the time, and never make anyone else feel bad either. In this video, you're going
to learn how to get better at feeling by learning to describe, instead of judge, your emotions.
This video was sponsored by Better Help, where you can get professional, affordable, licensed
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other forms of messaging, to get personalized, and customized support, to learn how to work through,
and process these intense emotions. So if you'd like to learn more about Better Help, please check
out the link in the description below for 10% off your first month. One of the main reasons why most
people aren't good at processing their emotions is because of how our culture has trained us to
think. In western society, we've been trained to think of "positive", and "negative" emotions. I got a
chart in the mail the other day, and it's got these so-called "positive" emotions on one side, and these
"negative" emotions on the other, and this is a super common approach to thinking about emotions. This
way of thinking partly stems from the ideas of a popular theorist Paul Ekman, and he was one of the
first to label the "six primary emotions", and what he thought they were was: anger, happiness, surprise,
disgust, sadness, and fear, and then people took it a step further, and divided them into groups
you've got your "bad" emotions, like: anger, sadness, fear, and disgust, and your "good" emotions:
happiness. Now out of the six primary emotions, five of them would traditionally be considered
negative. The only emotion that we are "supposed" to approve of is happiness.
This is a setup for failure, it's just not helpful to think this way. When we label
the majority of our emotions as "bad", we end up putting tons of energy into trying to shut down
the other 90% of emotions, and this usually leads to people feeling miserable, and it's a waste of
energy. This is the first real obstacle to working through emotions, to processing them. If we judge
emotions as "bad", just because they're uncomfortable, this limits our options for how we can respond.
It's not that we want to feel bad, it's not that I'm encouraging you to feel sad all the time,
but what I'm saying is that judging your emotions just isn't helpful, it generally makes you feel
worse. Generally when people think of "negative" emotions, or "bad" feelings, then their automatic
response is trying not to feel them, it's you know, trying to suppress them, and I call this
the suppress-react habit. You can push down your tender feelings, the ones that make you hurt, or
the ones that feel vulnerable. You can try to not feel sad, or to not feel disappointed, but the more
we suppress, the more pressure there is to explode. The more we explode, the more pressure
there is to suppress, and then we get trapped, we think that if we just had more willpower,
or more mental strength, that we could somehow balance between denying our emotions, and acting
on them. Unfortunately, this this reaction, this way of thinking, just doesn't work very well. I'm going
to ask you to step off of this teeter-totter of suppress-explode, of fighting your emotions, and
to instead focus on acknowledging them, developing emotional muscles to experience them more fully,
and more deeply, and then to make a conscious choice about what to do about them. Right? So what
I just described there, this is the beginnings of how to process your emotions. When you get better
at feeling, you're going to be more likely to feel peace, and calm, and happiness, more of the time.
One of the ways that we do this is by developing a non-judgmental attitude about emotions.
So instead of labeling emotions as "good", or "bad", or "should", or "should not" emotions, we're going to
instead just focus our energy on acknowledging them for what they are, and noticing them as
they exist, and letting go of that battle with them. In order to put all of that energy we were
putting into suppression, we're going to take that energy, and we're going to put it towards
living the life that you want to live. In the next section, we're going to talk more about how
so-called "negative" emotions can actually be really helpful, but let me give you a quick example of how
"negative" emotions could have been helpful by sharing with you a story from Humans of New York.
If you're not familiar with this blog, check it out Brandon, uh what's his name?.. Brandon Sanderson?
Brandon Stanton. There you go, right, okay, "I smoked dope every day for 20 years I thought I was pretty
slick. I could smoke while working. I could get high, and still run my company. I could pour concrete. I
could roof a building. I felt like I could do anything, but it ruined my marriage. I didn't
even realize it until years after my wife left me, but the dope ruined my marriage, because it made me
content. Nothing could bother me. Her feelings didn't bother me. Her needs didn't bother me.
The dope put an emotional cover over what should have been obvious. I told myself that if I didn't
see the problem, then it didn't qualify as a problem. All I ever did was give her advice, I never
asked for it. I never once felt the inspiration to say "Darling, I know there's something wrong. What
can I do differently?" In this story, because the man suppressed his uncomfortable emotions with drugs,
the man felt great all the time, nothing bothered him. He didn't feel sad, or stressed, or upset, when
his wife was bothered, because he didn't feel worried about her, or worried with her,
or he just felt great all the time, and this ruined his marriage, which he obviously feels bad
about now. The more we suppress emotions, the more likely it is that our life is gonna not line up
with the kind of life we want, and it's gonna lead to us not feeling as good.
Instead of judging emotions, describe them. Uncomfortable emotions like worry, disappointment,
guilt, or fear, they can serve a really important function, and labeling them as "bad", or "negative",
really limits our ability to live a full, and productive life. So, I personally do not believe
that there are "good", and "bad" emotions. There are comfortable emotions, and uncomfortable emotions.
There are exaggerated emotions, there are distorted emotions, there are emotions built on falsehoods,
but there aren't fundamentally "bad" core emotions. So instead of saying 'This is bad, or this is
negative', be a little bit more descriptive, say 'This is uncomfortable, this is painful,
this is difficult." While this may seem like just a technicality, it really matters,
because when we label or judge something as "bad", then we again, we're limiting our options for how
to respond to it to just a few tools like: avoid, cope, and distract. Which you're gonna learn later,
make things worse in the long run. If instead we describe a feeling as uncomfortable, or difficult,
it opens up space to do something with it. You could ask yourself- 'Is there something that needs
to change?', or 'How can I build my resilience to hard things?', 'How can I, you know, get better at
feeling?' It makes room to develop your emotional capacity, and it gives you time to breathe, and
calm yourself, and make a conscious choice, instead of, you know, reactively suppressing those emotions.
And instead of suppressing emotions, be curious about them. Sometimes it helps to slow down, and to
imagine yourself as a curious scientist describing a new species that no one has ever seen before.
What does anger feel like? Where do you feel it in your body? What do you notice about it?
The more you can describe your feelings, the more you can notice what's going on with them,
the more power you'll have to act, and you may be surprised to find that many intense emotions
are really just asking to be noticed, and acknowledged, and then they dissipate on their own.
So this is a crucial step of processing emotions.
People who focus their lives on avoiding sadness, and feeling happy, tend to be miserable.
People who focus their lives on purposeful action, tend to be happy. Research shows over,
and over again, that people who judge their emotions as "bad" make themselves feel worse.
So this does not mean that you let your emotions control your behaviors. It doesn't mean that I'm
saying it's okay to fly off the handle with anger, or to act out, now obviously that's not
going to make your life better. In this course we're also going to work through the process of,
you know, having overall happier, more peaceful emotions, and less intense, less painful emotions
in the big picture, but the process of getting there is a paradox. People who struggle to suppress
their negative emotions usually feel worse in the long run, and people who learn to process
through painful emotions tend to feel more relaxed, and more joyful day-to-day, and people
who learn to work through their emotions are generally better at controlling their behaviors
than people who focus on controlling those emotions. So instead of fighting our emotions, we're
going to increase our ability to say 'This is what I'm experiencing, and that's okay, because this is
what I'm going to do about it.' Noticing, and naming emotions is the first step to resolving them. We
often interfere with this process by reacting to, judging, or suppressing our emotions. In this course
you're going to learn to develop the emotional muscles to sit with your emotions long enough
to choose purposeful, and peaceful action. You're not going to just learn to feel better, you're also
going to learn how to get better at feeling. Your homework for today is to write in your workbook
about which emotions you tend to believe are "good", and which emotions you tend to believe are "bad".
Where, or when, were you taught that you need to be positive all the time, or that
anger is unacceptable to feel? Which emotions were you not allowed to feel?
When you do your emotion check-in today, take a moment to carefully describe an emotion;
What does it feel like to feel this way? Where do you feel it in your body? What thoughts come with
this emotion? Pretend like you're the first person in humanity to feel this way, and you
want to describe it to someone who has never felt like this. How would you tell them what it is like?
In the next couple of videos you're going to learn about how to stop struggling with your
emotions, and what to do instead. You'll learn some practical exercises for calming yourself down,
and going through a pause, and calm down step of the emotion process. So, thank you for
joining me, and we will see you soon. Check out this video from Star Trek with Data. Data is an android,
he's a robot, he doesn't have feelings, but he developed his own emotion chip. He puts it in, and
for the first time in his life he feels an intense emotion. MOVIE: (Guinan) Gentlemen, something new from Frocus 3?
(Geordi) What? (Data) I believe this beverage has produced an emotional response. (Geordi) Really? What are you feeling?
(Data) I am uncertain, because I have had little experience with emotion, I am unable to
articulate the sensation. (Guinan) Emotion? (Geordi) I'll explain later. (Data) Oh (Guinan) Well, it looks like he hates it.
(Data) Yes, that is it. I hate this. (Geordi) Data, I think the chip is working.
(Data) Oh yes, I hate this, it is revolting. (Guinan) More? (Data) Please.