I'm gonna start this episode off with an old legend. One evening an elderly Cherokee brave
told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said "My son, there are two
wolves inside of my heart. They fight each other terribly. Each is trying to destroy the other.
One wolf is evil, it's anger, it's envy, hatred, self-pity, arrogance, greed, selfishness,
resentment, lies, superiority, inferiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. It's joy, peace,
love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth,
compassion, and faith. The young grandson looked nervous. He thought about it for a minute,
and then he asked his grandfather "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied "The one
that I feed." I wanted to start this course off with some things you could act upon right away,
so in the previous episodes we talked about how to soothe the body, how to identify unhelpful
thinking, how to practice willingness with emotions, and so much more. So if you're new to my
channel, make sure to go check out the playlist that starts this course from the beginning.
But now it's time to step back and look at the big picture. Now, you want to feel happy,
you want to feel in control of your destiny, and you want to know how to resolve painful emotions.
In this section we're going to talk about how to create the life that you want.
But before we do that, let's talk about the big picture of how to create change.
I get asked all the time if I can take new clients, and I wish I could. I love doing
therapy. But the truth is I really can't add any new clients to my caseload at this time.
And even if I could, the way that the law works is that the therapist has to be licensed in the
state where the client lives. So unless you live in Utah, I probably couldn't be your therapist
anyway. But that's where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp is an online therapy provider. They
connect you with a therapist who is licensed in your state. They can help you through messaging
or voice calls or video calls. And i really like BetterHelp because they make it easy to
start working with an individualized provider right away. So if you've been thinking about
therapy and you don't know where to start, this is a super easy way to give it a try.
Plans start at $65 a week. You can go to betterhelp.com/therapyinanutshell to get 10% off.
Okay, back to the video. In case you didn't know, this video is number 24 in my 30-skill course
How to Process Your Emotions. The full course is available to purchase, ad-free, with a workbook,
downloads, extra videos, and resources. So check out the link in the description to buy
How to Process Your Emotions. Okay, so welcome to section four. So here are the two main ideas from
this 30-part course: number one, we create our happiness in a gradual, choice-based approach;
and number two, we create power to choose through careful emotion processing. When we process our
emotions, we're no longer reactive to them. So let's talk about number one, right. We create
a good life through many small choices. We get more of what we feed. The tiny choices we make
over and over create our character, they influence our mood, and they determine our quality of life.
When these choices involve emotion processing and values-based action, they lead to an overall
change in our emotions, usually by how we respond to them. This is a process that takes a little bit
of time. It takes consistent effort. And in the long run, it's easier and it works better than
an endless struggle with emotions. Thich Nhat Hanh said "In our consciousness, there are many
negative seeds and also many positive seeds. The practice is to avoid watering the negative seeds
and to water the positive seeds every day." You can create real huge change in your life
by changing one percent every day. Now I once read a story, and I can't remember where;
I wish I could credit the author for this. But I once read a story of a man whose doctor sent
him to therapy because his health was at risk, but he didn't seem willing to change anything.
This man was discouraged about life. He was in his 40s, he was overweight, he had developed diabetes
from a poor diet, he hated his job, he was single, and to make things worse, his diabetes was
affecting his vision. He was losing the ability to see even with glasses. So he starts seeing a
therapist, and he tells her all his problems. And as she listens, she realizes that he really does
have an overwhelming situation. He doesn't really have any social support, he is poor, his mother
had recently passed away, and for him the prospect of changing just didn't seem worth it. The only
thing that relieved his pain a little bit was the momentary joy of a hamburger, fries, and a coke.
The thought of exercising or changing his diet just seemed too hard. Trying to get a new job
seemed too overwhelming because he'd have to go back to school to get new training. And so as the
therapist gently tried to convince him to change, he would just say "Why bother? It'll never work."
So she decided to just let him come in every week and listen to him and care about him and just
encourage him to make one tiny change. The one thing she suggested he do was to just switch out
his coke for a diet coke. Now he didn't like this idea. He didn't think diet coke tastes as good.
He figured that with all the other crap he ate, it wouldn't make much of a difference to drink
diet coke instead. And so he would complain to her about this every week. But eventually he did it;
he started to buy diet coke instead of coke. And he did this for a few weeks, and then he
got used to it and it wasn't such a big deal. A few months later the therapist was driving and
saw an exercise bike on the side of the road and it was free. And so she picked it up,
and she found that it worked. And um you know, it wasn't the fanciest exercise bike, but it worked,
right? So she brought it with her to work. And the next time she saw this client she gave it to him,
and she encouraged him to ride the bike for two minutes each day while he watched tv.
Now he griped and he complained, but he put the bike in his car and he went home.
And the next week he had told her that he had set it up where he watches tv and that he'd tried it a
few times. Now at this point he'd been in therapy for months. He had talked about his grief and his
frustrations at work and his hopes and his dreams and his sadness, and in that environment, in that
therapeutic environment, he was working through his emotions slowly and he was getting a little
bit of support. And after months of this, he was starting to feel just a tiny bit better. Like,
his emotions didn't drag him down so much. He was still depressed, but it wasn't so bad, and he
had a little bit longer moments of happiness. Now one week he came back to therapy, and he told his
therapist that something exciting had happened. He confessed that he was actually riding his exercise
bike for a whole 30 minutes while he watched a show. And as he did this, he realized his
vision was improving, his blood sugar levels were going down, and his eyesight was getting better.
This meant that his diabetes was improving. And for the first time, he actually felt a glimmer of
hope that his life really could get better. So now he was ready to start making a few more changes.
So he would just try to change one small thing per month, like, you know, just eat a few more veggies
or get out of the house a little bit more or reach out to an old friend or take a class to learn
something new. And so little by little he started getting healthier, he started feeling a little bit
more energy, he had something to look forward to, he was excited about an upcoming outing with some
friends, and he was getting ready to apply for a new job. Now, this took over a year of tiny
changes, but his life really was turning around. And this was all because he started with just one
small thing: switching from coke to diet coke. Now in the previous sections, you've learned at least
22 skills to change your life. Now you don't have to do them all. Don't don't allow yourself
to get overwhelmed. Making one small change can make a huge difference to your life over time.
In this section we're going to talk even more about how to put your life on the path that goes
in the direction of happiness. Happiness is most likely to be achieved through focusing on values,
focusing on character and integrity rather than focusing on changing your emotions to feel happy.
Now most of us do want to be kind, we want to be successful, we want to have close friends and a
happy family. But most of us do dump stuff when we get emotional. We blow up in anger or we get
overwhelmed with despair or we get burned out by stress. So in the workbook or down below in the
comments write about a time you acted contrary to your values because you felt flustered,
rushed, or really emotional. In order to really choose the path we want to be on, to create that
ability to choose, we have to slow things down and be intentional. So this is principle number two,
right. We develop the ability to make better choices through careful emotional processing.
Viktor Frankl was a Jewish doctor who survived Auschwitz during world war II. He came out of
that experience believing that between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
In order to have more choice over our actions and more influence over our emotions,
we need to slow down our emotion processing. Lengthening that space gives you more and more
power to choose by by expanding your awareness and opening yourself up to more options.
Slowing things down gives you more options to be flexible and creative in your problem-solving,
and this can help you develop emotional strength and resilience. This this is the difference
between being reactive and intentional. So let me give you an example. I was once working with the
father of a 14-year-old girl. She was acting out in dangerous ways. She was staying up until, you
know, three in the morning with friends, and she was using illegal drugs and vaping at school, and
she was failing her classes, and she was pretty manipulative with her parents. So they tried to
talk to her and convince her to stop, but she didn't really listen to them, and she just kept
doing whatever she wanted. Now the dad thought that he should set better boundaries with her, but
whenever he tried she would argue and get really upset, and then he would back off. Now he knew in
his heart that he should be stricter with her to to help her, but every time he tried to give her
a consequence for her behaviors she would just get really upset, and then he wouldn't follow through.
So when I asked him about it, I asked him why he wouldn't hold boundaries with her,
he said he just didn't want the contention, he didn't want to fight. Now when we dove
deeper in therapy, he explained that he had a very contentious mother who would scream
and yell and argue with his dad about the kids. And as he was telling me about this,
I could see his body tightening and, you know, his leg starts jiggling, right. He was getting anxious
just remembering the fighting in his home growing up. Now he didn't realize it, but in order to
avoid that unprocessed feeling of fear and anxiety he was avoiding setting boundaries in his home.
When we worked through those feelings, when we processed through those feelings of fear, he
became better at managing contention and allowing his daughter to be mad if he held a boundary.
Because he wasn't automatically avoiding that emotion, he was able to be a better parent.
Now on a side note, we later found out that one of the reasons the daughter was acting out so much
is that she had been sexually assaulted, but it happened one night when she had snuck out
so she didn't tell her parents about it. And she thought that it was her fault;
she she felt like she was a bad person. And so she started hanging out with the wrong crowd
and doing drugs because that was how she avoided her feelings of shame and trauma.
Both the father and the daughter's behaviors were due to reactively avoiding suppressed emotions.
For us to choose the life we want, we need to learn how to be less reactive to our emotions.
In this course we've talked about many ways to slow things down. Uh dropping the struggle with
emotions, mindful acceptance of emotions, how to calm your body, and how to use a bottom-up
approach to soothing the nervous system. We've talked about resolving destructive thinking
patterns and learning to notice our thoughts and how to separate yourself from your thoughts
and how to challenge your thinking and choose which thoughts to act on.
So each of these emotion processing tools can help you slow things down and breathe and stretch out
that space between stimulus and response. That's why emotion processing is such a powerful tool
in helping you live the life you want. Now the next seven videos in this section are all about
how to create the life you want; how to know what you value the most; how to create lasting
and sustainable change; how to let go of yourself, labels; how to develop a growth mindset; and how
trying to feel happy actually backfires and what you can do instead. So stay tuned to this channel.
Make sure you're subscribed and have notifications on if you'd like to see the next video in this
series. Thank you 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.