Making Great Emotional Decisions — Decisions Series #2

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. Good morning, Joe.

Hey, good morning. How are you?

Doing great. It's, uh, crazy out there right now economically. I'm having a lot of people in my world and coaching clients, uh, facing what feels like to be facing some pretty big decisions. And so this has been something that's sort of been, you know, up for me lately, is just sort of sitting in this, uh, the kind of perception that people often have that if we make emotional decisions, we can't trust them. Like, we can't trust our decisions when there's emotions involved. And so you need to be rational, get emotions out of it, which is hilarious.

Yeah, that happened to me this morning, actually. I was speaking to an entrepreneur in Israel who, same thing, said the number one problem he was having was decision making. And also, if I recall correctly, also, you know, talked about rational decision making, which, as we've talked about many times, you know, there is no such thing as rational decision making. And there, what, what's really true is that, um, there, if you like, I would say it like this: if you make a decision from depression, it's most likely to bring more depression. If, if you, if you make a decision from, um, trauma, it's most likely to bring more trauma. If you make a decision from happiness, it's more likely to bring more happiness. Or the other way to think about it is that happy people seem to make decisions that continue to make them happy, and depressed people seem to make the decisions that make them more depressed. So I get the idea of like, oh, I don't want to make an emotional decision. It's just impossible. The, the question is, how do you make decisions? How do you make decisions knowing that emotions are controlling the game? How do you use emotions to make great decisions? Or something like that. I think it's more accurate question.

Yeah, or how do you, how do you make great emotional decisions given that every decision is an emotional decision?

Right, right, right. That's even a better way to put it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and this is, this has been something we've, we've covered in a lot of different ways in different episodes here. And so I think this is just something that's very core to our work is that, you know, we, we kind of break up that perception that it's the emotions in the decisions that are the problem, um, rather than avoiding the emotion in the decision that causes the, causes the outcomes that we're afraid of.

Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. So it's, it's, it's not about not making an emotional decision, it's about not avoiding emotions in your decision-making. It's, it— I think that's what you're pointing at there, and that, that's a far more, uh, useful way to take a look at it. And, and what's interesting to me is that So there's this idea of, okay, I'm going to welcome and accept certain emotions so that I can have clear decision-making and how that works. What's interesting to me is that how you welcome and accept emotions does a lot more than clarify your decision-making. It is very much— when we talked about embracing intensity in one of the earlier episodes, it's very much kind of the mechanism behind that, which is Being able to embrace difficult emotions, enjoy them, welcome them, that is like the biggest indicator, leading indicator of transformation. And one of the ways that that works is it helps us make great decisions, but it's definitely not the only way it works. So to be able to make great emotional decisions also changes a whole bunch of other cool things in your life.

Yeah, yeah. If you can make, if you can make the emotional decision of laying off somebody that you consider close and a friend, then, and you can welcome all of the emotions around that, then you'll be able to make a clear decision and be present throughout the whole thing.

It's sort of the correct. And, and I would say that if you are able to welcome all those difficult emotions there and in other aspects of your life, other things occur like You're less judgmental, you're less defensive, what you think are negative emotions start turning into positive emotions. There's all sorts of— you make better decisions, you interrupt unhelpful patterns, you have more connection with people. All sorts of things happen from that simple thing of what we've called embracing intensity, but I'll call here loving, accepting, all the difficult emotions and honestly positive ones. Or as the— I think I've said this recently, but as the youth, they're saying like, feel the feels. That's the way my— that's why maybe my girls are saying it, feel the feels.

So what makes feeling the feels actually work? Feeling the feels and loving your emotions, to catch people up on this, what is it that makes this make better decisions? Makes this happen?

Yeah, so there's so many things. I just discussed some of them, but just to go into depth a little bit. So oftentimes we use judgment as a way to not feel difficult emotions. As a matter of fact, you've seen the exercise that we've done where, and done the exercise where you get to discover every time you're judging somebody, there's an emotion there that you're not feeling, or every time you're defensive, there's an emotion there that you don't wanna feel. And we've talked about on the podcast how when we invite an emotion, when we welcome the emotion, it feels different than if you are resisting the emotion. Emotions unresisted and emotions resisted feel very different from one another, even though it's the same emotion. But the 3 major mechanisms I would think out of the dozens and dozens, the 3 major mechanisms of of that transform our lives because we're embracing welcoming, um, emotions are the decision-making, the, um, stopping the patterns, and the, and the increase of connection.

So let's double-click on that a little bit then. Yeah, so, so let's, let's go into just a little bit more about how How it affects decision-making kind of beyond what we just discussed, right?

So we've discussed on the podcast how, um, how we make emotional decisions neurologically, and if we take the emotional center of the brain out, that we stop making decisions. So we've talked about that. So then the question is, if we can't make logical decisions, or if we're using logic to determine what emotion we think we're going to feel given a decision, then the question becomes, how do you clarify decision-making since logic isn't going to do it? And the answer there is not using a decision to avoid an emotion or to run towards an emotion, to allow a decision to be an expression of our authenticity, what we're excited about, our joy, And oftentimes what we're doing is we're deciding something as a way to what either seems like avoid a consequence, and those consequences are emotional feelings, or run towards a consequence or hope for a consequence, which again is a feeling. And just to be specific about that, somebody might say, "No, I'm trying to avoid losing a billion dollars. That's not a feeling." Yeah. And my response—

I'm following my joy.

Yeah, yeah, getting a billion dollars and volume. Yeah. And so what I would say to somebody like that is, well, look, if you had a choice between like, oh, you got the billion dollars, but you're absolutely freaking miserable, and you want to kill yourself every day, and it's just a struggle to stay alive, you know, what, what do you make of that decision? Or vice versa, if you lost everything, but you were happier than you've ever been, and you felt like totally comfortable and at peace, and joyful, how would you feel about that? You couldn't be like, "Oh crap, there's no money," because you just were in so much joy. You're just like, "Oh, this is great." So the consequences that we're avoiding are emotional consequences. And so the question becomes, how do you invite and learn that each of these emotions is this wonderful thing not to be avoided or not to be run towards? That The entire spectrum is lovely. Just like you wouldn't always want pizza or you wouldn't always want the same bottle of red wine, it's actually the joy is in the eclecticness or the full emotional palette and that each one of them is information. And, if you cut off any of them, then you have information that you're not going to get. Which is critical. So the real thing there is how does one just love and embrace all the emotions? And as you do, your decision-making clarifies. If you're like, "Oh, I'm happy to do that even though it might be something that most people like, oh, I might need to be sad to do the thing that's right by me. I might need to be sad to be authentic. I might need to feel like a failure to actually have the success that I'm wanting. So if you can embrace all of those emotional experiences, then your decision-making clarifies.

Now, I think there's also a nuance here where a lot of people will hear this and be like, well, okay, so let's say I'm okay with losing a billion dollars. I'm okay with, you know, losing all my investors' money. I'm okay with If I make it so that I'm okay with losing my partner that I love, then doesn't that make it more likely that this happens? Because it's, you know, the fear of those things that makes me do something alternate. And there's something that I noticed there where it's like, how much is it the future emotion and how much is it actually about the present fear of feeling the future emotion?

Yeah, so that's a great one. So this actually leads into the second thing, which is like the repeating pattern. So That's a second mechanism. So the first mechanism is that the way that us embracing emotions brings us joy and transformation. First is the decision-making, how it affects our decision-making. But the second is how it affects repeating patterns. So what you're saying there is basically the opposite of what actually occurs. So this is where I'm starting to come up with this term like golden algorithm. I don't know why I want to, it's just so important and it's, And it took me years to realize this is kind of at the bottom of everything to some degree. And I'm always hesitant to say this is always at the bottom of everything, right? There's a lot of completeness in that, which is never true. And it also feels so important and so true so often. But so anyways, the way that this algorithm goes is that we, invite the thing that we're avoiding in the exact way that we are avoiding it. So I'll just say that again, which is we are inviting the thing that we're avoiding in the exact way that we're avoiding it. And this is how our patterns repeat. So we experience some sort of trauma that we weren't allowed— and in that trauma, we weren't allowed or didn't feel something because it was too intense at the moment. And so, we keep on repeating the patterns to get back to homeostasis and feel it. And, it happens through this algorithm. And so, I guess simple example of this would be my daughter and I are sitting there and she had a big project which she went to some bureaucracy like fishing game bureaucracy and some secretary there you know, chided her for trying to do something bigger than her britches, so to speak. And, and I asked her, I was like, to my daughter, I was like, well, how— what happened? She goes, oh, it sucked. And I'm like, what were you trying not to feel? And she said, I didn't want to feel like a failure. I was like, oh, and then what did you do to not feel like a failure? And she said, I stopped trying. And what did stop trying— what did not trying create? It created me feeling like a failure. That's how it works. And there's every single problem that you face, you can go to and say, okay, what's the emotion I'm avoiding? And how is the way that I'm avoiding it actually creating the problem? So you can say, I can never make my wife happy as an example. Like, that's a problem. No matter what I do, my wife isn't happy, blah, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. And you can just look at it and say, okay, so what's the emotion that you're trying to avoid? Oh, I'm trying to avoid her disappointment. And how do you avoid her disappointment? And, oh, I avoid her disappointment by— it could be a number of things, but running away from her whenever she's disappointed. Okay, so that definitely is going to make her more disappointed.

Yeah.

Or it might be I try to fix her problems, which of course makes her feel like she's less than and not good enough, which constantly will make her feel disappointed because she's not happy with herself. So like any problem that you have, you can backwards engineer it using this algorithm and say, oh, what's the emotion that I'm avoiding that's creating the problem? And so that's how That's how it works. Yeah, that's the pattern.

Interesting to see the, uh, sort of the way you said earlier that like this seems to be at the bottom of everything. And I know that that might, you know, that's a very like broad or like complete statement to make, but I see another parallel here with identity as well, where in that example where it's like, well, if my wife is disappointed with me, then that means I'm not good enough. And if I have the identity of being good enough by a certain standard, then if I'm not meeting that standard, I'd have to feel something. And so I'm both avoiding the feeling and I'm also maintaining an identity. And this happens in relationships a lot, whether it's work or personal, around, like, for example, trust. I've had some sessions where people are like, yeah, I just, I really want, I want people to trust me. And what they kind of mean by that is I want to be seen as trustworthy. And what ends up showing up in their life is that they don't share anything with people around them that might seem like mistrust because they project that other people want to be felt like they're trustworthy rather than recognize where trust isn't and be able to work on it. And then it just ends up being this kind of subconscious lack of trust, for example, until something happens and then they're like, "Oh no, people don't trust me." Right. And then that emotion comes in, you know?

Yeah, right. So yeah, beautifully seen. And I'm going to express that in a slightly different way, which is the first, first thing is, yeah, so this person doesn't want to feel untrustworthy. They don't want to feel like people can't trust them, whatever emotion that brings up in them, right? Like, oh, I'm not good enough, or I'm not— I don't have integrity, or whatever. And then If you just apply that, the golden algorithm to it, you could see, oh, I want people to make me, I want people to feel like I'm trustworthy, which means I'm avoiding people feeling, I'm avoiding the emotion that comes from people feeling like I'm not trustworthy. Well, as it turns out, if you want people to see you as trustworthy, that is not trustworthy in itself, right? So it's just because, I'm not gonna trust somebody who wants me to see them in a certain light as much as I'm gonna trust somebody who's just gonna be with me as I am and with them how they are and talk to me as they are with what's coming up with them in the moment. But the algorithm will be something to the effect of, oh, I am avoiding feeling untrustworthy by not speaking the truth about when I'm not trusting you. Because of this projection. And then now I really can't trust you because I know that there's a problem because I can read it all over your face and you're not telling me. And so the exact way that we're avoiding it is the way that we invite it. It's, it's so edifying when you see it. When you can see that in every single problem you have, it's like, whoa, such a thing. Yeah.

Yeah. So something that's fascinating about this is I could imagine that this for some people, this might just be a new way to beat ourselves up. We learn this algorithm and then we start to blame ourselves and shame ourselves for everything that happens, for everything that happens that results in a difficult emotion for us. We're like, "Ah, I must have been avoiding this emotion. See, I did it again. Ah." And so, yeah, so how do we address that?

I would be using the golden algorithm. I'd be asking, well, what is the emotion that I'm trying to avoid here? That's what I'd be doing. I'd be looking at the, and then not avoid it. And so in that—

You mean the emotion?

Sorry. Inside of beating myself up, I would look for what's the emotion I'm avoiding and I would feel it.

And what's an example in sort of your history with coaching? What are some of the things that people are avoiding feeling by beating themselves up?

There's lots of things that people can avoid feeling when they beat themselves up. Oftentimes, though, at least the first level of what they're avoiding is the thing they're beating themselves up for. So let's say the shame is the way to stop the emotional experience. And so whatever they're ashamed of is what they're preventing themselves from feeling. So as an example, I lie to somebody and I feel shame over lying and I'm beating myself up for lying to somebody. There's usually an emotion that I have to feel for lying. That maybe it's a feeling of remorse, maybe it's a feeling of sadness, maybe it's a feeling of anger that I felt something was more important than my integrity, and I'm avoiding that emotional experience. So on the first level, I would say that's what they're avoiding. And by feeling that, then the shame moves away and then they can get back to seeing this as a great tool that they get to use instead of beating themselves up.

Now, you mentioned that there were 3 main things. The third one is connection. So let's move on to that one.

Well, it's a great segue. Right away, like shame is one of the ways that we use to avoid emotions and that shame disconnects us from ourselves, disconnects us from the people around us. If we judge people, we're avoiding emotional experience, and so that's a way that disconnects us from them. And judgment is a way that we disconnect from others and we disconnect from ourselves. Defensiveness is another one. When there's a defensiveness happening, we often feel wrong and we're avoiding it. And even if we are not wrong, we feel like we're wrong. And I would say almost every time that happens. And so that's another example of it. So most of the ways that we— and I think it's just very simply, most simply put, that when we feel disconnected from ourselves, what we feel disconnected from is our emotional experience. That's the thing that we are running away from or avoiding. So if all of a sudden you are making great decisions and you aren't repeating your, your unhelpful patterns and you're feeling deeply connected and moving into connection and moving from connection, you can imagine how quickly your life transforms. And all that's required in all of this is just to feel the emotions that you don't want to feel.

Yeah. And of course, in alluding back to the Embrace Intensity episode, not creating emotions that you think you need to feel, or, you know, setting up a crucible for yourself or diving into shame and wallowing in it.

Right. Don't worry, there's plenty of negative emotions just hanging out that you're avoiding. You know, you don't have to create others. I have a personal story on this one.

There was Yeah, so I mean, I'm thinking of just like a very, like, an everyday example is like, you know, you get a parking ticket, you're like, ah, parking ticket, stupid idiot, shouldn't have done the thing. And then your parking ticket sits on the counter, and every time you look at the parking ticket, you're just like, ah, damn it. And then you never pay it, and then it ends up getting fees and fines and everything, and then it's even worse, and you feel even more upset about it. And I've heard something interesting that sometimes people do with that, which is, uh, that if you take the parking ticket and then you imagine that you've already lost the money, but now it's actually a check. And if you go and you deposit the check, and the check is made out for the amount of the penalty you'll save by actually paying it on time, then like every time you look at it, you're like, oh look, free money, woo, let's pay this, right? Which is an interesting flip on it, but it is a good flip on it, sort of a there's a little bit of golden algorithm there.

Yeah, of that.

Yeah, that, like, that gut punch pushing you directly away from exactly what your, you know, optimal action would be.

That's right. Yeah, it— right. And if you're not beating yourself up from it, there's nothing to avoid, then you just send the check-in. And then— right. Yeah, it's a very— that's a fascinating thought process. And yes, and that flip. And what's interesting is most of these behavioral hacks that you see, like the quicker ones are often changing the way you think about it to change the way that you feel about it, right? So, "Oh, I make this story and the story is I'm a bad person who has to be punished and be paid a penalty and I don't want to feel that," to, "I am somebody who's receiving a check and therefore I'm happy to pay this thing," right? Like, it's literally you're changing the meaning to change the emotional reality that's happening, which is an interesting short-term hack.

But in the long term, it's more freeing to be able to feel the full gut punch of the regret, of the, you know, of the whatever you have to feel about having received a parking ticket.

I think whatever Yeah, they also go hand in hand too, in the fact that as you learn to embrace, enjoy, welcome these emotions, they change, right? So that gut punch won't be the same gut punch if you fully embrace and enjoy it and love it and accept it and look forward to it. Then all of a sudden, the gut punch isn't the same expression. It doesn't feel the same in the body. So there's that aspect of it too. Yeah, if you're going to try to change every single story so that you never have a negative emotion, that's going to be a long haul and it's never going to completely work. However, seeing through stories is great and it's very useful. And what I notice is as people feel deeply into these emotions and accept them and welcome them, what happens is that their stories change naturally. The head kind of catches up eventually and it sees that— I wouldn't say it sees, I would say that a lot of our stories are guided by the emotions whether we want to admit it or not. And so that would be another benefit to feeling deeply and exploring and welcoming all these emotions is that our stories change and they become far more conducive to living a great life. Yeah.

And another thing here is the increasing sensitivity to these emotions. The more you welcome them, the more you'll notice that tiny little bit of gut punch of like, oh, I'm probably over my parking, but I don't want to leave this conversation. It's so good. I'll just ignore that for a minute. And so this is something we mentioned in the— we talked about this a little bit in the Q&A episode recently. Where the more of this work you do, the more sensitive you become and the less you're willing to handle certain and deal with certain things in your life. So you end up feeling more and it comes earlier, which is really good for making great emotional decisions.

It's really, yeah, well done, Brett. That was great, that was a great callback. Yes, that's right. You can make a lot better decisions if you are sensitive to the emotional experience that you're having in the moment. And you become more sensitive the more you feel into them. What's also interesting is that there's— there, you know, we made a distinction before about choices and decisions, but if you'd look at all those little choices that happen automatically that we don't think about, those are controlled even more by emotions than anything else. And so as you go through these big decisions and find these big emotions you don't want to feel, as you go through the judgment and find these emotions you don't want to feel and you start feeling them and loving them and accepting them, all those automatic decisions, all those, "Oh, I'm going to just scroll Facebook for a bit," or, "Oh, I'm going to go take a walk," or all those little, "I'm going to eat here," all those little decisions change, which is super cool. It's really hard to— what I notice is it's really hard. It's not impossible, but it's really hard to say change a habit and say, "Okay, I'm going to remember every time I put on my shoes, I'm going to do it differently," or every time I wake up, I'm going to drink tea instead of coffee. Those things can be really challenging. But what I notice is that when a certain emotional stuff gets loved and unhinged and it's not a hook anymore, some habits just change automatically. A lot of them change automatically. And I remember, you know, in my 20s, I was smoking quite a bit of pot, and I was beating myself up for smoking pot. And as soon as I started to love anger and allow anger in a whole new way, then— and, and, and, and then the beginning of sadness— marijuana, just, I just lost interest. I just lost interest in it. And I found that with a lot of A lot of the habits that we have are used to help us not feel something. And so if we— bad, what we call bad habits. And so the more that you allow those emotional experiences, you learn to love them and you embrace them, then the habits are unnecessary.

Yeah, something you said about about people making the decision, okay, every morning I'm going to drink tea instead of coffee. You know, these, these decisions lead to something that people call decision fatigue, which is, yeah, like you can do it for a while and then eventually, you know, you run out of dopamine or you run out like whatever, whatever willpower they take that because you're constantly overriding your emotional system. Whereas if you just go in and you feel the emotions, then you get to refactor that emotional background that creates this context for within which all of your decisions occur. And I really like that piece about how many, how many unconscious decisions are you making that you're not even aware of? When, when you look at your life and you're like, well, I can only decide between this and that. Should I leave my job or not leave my job? Should I do that? Like, how many other decisions are you not even aware of because you won't let yourself feel a little bit of discomfort somatically before you're even aware that it exists? That you have to feel to be like, oh, you know what, I actually could just reorg this department and it would be a pain in the ass for everybody and be better off in the long run.

Yeah, that's right.

That's an option.

Yeah, exactly. So, right, how many of the— so, you know, we get hung up on these 3 decisions and we'll call those decisions A, B, C, but they might not even be decisions we should be making. We should be thinking completely about X, Y, and Z. X, Y, and Z is what's gonna actually change our world. World. A, B, and C, doesn't matter what we decide, the chances of it changing our world is 2%. But X, Y, and Z decisions, those decisions might change our world 100%. And so, you see this in marriages and you see this in people running companies that a lot of the success is built on where you're putting your time and energy, what decisions you're actually making and which decisions you're not making. And that is a really hard thing to control consciously. And it's far more— it's far easier to control— control is not the right word, but to focus on the right stuff if you're not avoiding the emotional garbage. Because most of that happens, like you said, subconsciously. Right. That's a brilliant thing.

Okay.

So Cool, Brett. Yeah, yeah.

Well, thank you. And so now that we've, you know, we've talked about all this, how, how do we do this? What are, what are some practices? What are some ways that this could be integrated into people's lives after they hear this episode?

Yeah, we, we have a thing called, um, emotional inquiry, which, you know, I can't go into here with its full, in full depth, but I can talk about the principles behind it. The, the first thing to see is that it's an undoing, it's not a doing. So the doing is in the resistance to the emotion. That's what takes the energy. That's what takes the effort. The not resisting the emotion, welcoming the emotion, that takes less effort. It might take a little activation energy, but I, I feel far more— I have a lot more energy if I have just experienced an emotion unresisted than if I experience emotion resisted, right? And so, and you, I'm seeing the smile on your face. You know this experience, right? So the first thing is it's an undoing and it's far more like dropping a hot frying pan. It's like, how do I drop a hot frying pan? It is one of the most complicated things to explain to anybody and you just can't do it. How do you drop a hot frying pan? Because it's an undoing. And so similarly, how do you—

How do I stop overriding my emotions? By telling myself what I should be feeling, right? And what's better to be feeling.

Yeah, all of that, all that shit takes energy, and it's the opposite. It's the, the, the thing that requires the least energy of, of an, you know, interacting with an emotional experience in the way that takes the least energy is what we're looking for. So that's the first thing about it. The second thing is that you're meeting your emotions with view. So you're meeting the emotions With vulnerability, you're allowing the feeling. Impartiality, you're not trying to change it, you're not trying to get rid of it. Empathy, meaning you're having empathy with yourself, you're being with yourself in your emotional experience. You're not trying to fix it, you're not trying to solve it, you're not lost in the story of it. You're just with yourself, just keeping yourself company. And you're in wonder. And wonder is a huge piece to this one. And so that's a lot of the emotional inquiry that we do is like looking at the emotion as if it was like, as if you were a little kid finding a turtle for the first time and you pick up the turtle and you're like checking it out. It's like looking at your emotional experience like that is absolutely the, the way to do it. And also emotional expression is great and moving the emotions. And but the most important thing is like, how do I look at this with some curiosity and wonder— excuse me— and, and vulnerability and impartiality. It's really like meeting it with view. And there's, you know, there's techniques for it, but that's the, the general principle.

Yeah, yeah. Something that I liked in there was about the— just the— with the amount of energy that it takes to manage our emotions, there's so much energy that becomes unlocked when we don't.

Oh my gosh.

So people are often looking for the solution to their problems that requires more energy. What can I expend more energy on? And I think that's where just a lot of people are stuck to begin with.

Yeah.

And another, another throwback to our Q&A episode around depression. It was like, how much motivation does it take to beat yourself up constantly in your head?

Right.

Yeah. And what happens when that motivation's unlocked?

Yeah. And yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's so, it's so right. And it, and And it's so hard to see when you're in it. Like, so give yourself a little compassion and gentleness. And the— like, it's so hard for someone to say— I hear this all the time with people where they're just like, I can't feel this thing. And you're like, you're like, you, you're feeling it currently. I don't know what you're talking— you just are resisting the hell out of it. And, and so that's a great experiment that you can do just like right now as a— for instance, is you can You can take any emotional experience that you're having at this time, take the most intense one, close your eyes and resist the shit out of it. Resist it. Like, do everything you can not to feel it. And then take the exact same emotional experience and do everything— or undo everything and just embrace it. Like, just allow, just Welcome, welcome it the way that you've always wanted to be welcomed. Welcome it in the way that a 5-year-old looking at a turtle for the first time would welcome something. And you feel that, and then that tells you right away, that's the difference between resisted and unresisted emotions. It's just immediate.

Now, so to speak to some of the inner wisdom of having resistance to emotions, we developed this for a reason. What are some, let's talk about some pitfalls that might occur as we start down this process. Like what makes it that this isn't just a natural thing that we just do?

Well, yeah, those are two different questions.

What are some of the risks?

Yeah, I can tell you some of the risks. What makes it not the natural thing that we do? In what makes it— I would— this is my theory, and I'll just, you know, I don't know, I don't know how accurate this is, but this is my going theory, which is animals before prefrontal cortex, before meaning-making, before being able to like look into the future and see potential patterns, they were They're just looking at the emotional reaction to the moment. And it makes total sense to, "Oh, don't do that thing that hurts, do that thing that feels good." And in the moment, that feels really great if you don't have psychology. But if you have psychology, then don't do that in the moment means don't remember this thing. It means don't, you know, it means meaning. It's like, it's like the stories, because it's the stories that create a tremendous amount of the emotions. And so you're dealing— not— you're all of a sudden, it became from 2 dimensions to 3 dimensions, and it doesn't suit that, the new 3-dimensional game. So that's the reason that I think it was developed, because if it's just like, eat those mushrooms, don't eat those mushrooms, you do what feels good, you don't do what feels bad. But when it comes to apologizing to somebody and the ramifications of that in your social network and the ramifications of your social network on your business and all of that stuff and all the meaning that you make of that, then what feels good in the moment to what's good in the long term are very different things. So I think that's where it comes from. As far as the pitfalls go, the number one thing that can happen is, and this only happens to like a really few people, and it's usually super Type A, people I love working with, honestly, um, uh, super Type A people who are like in it to win it and very self-reliant. And they're just like, they start going after every single emotion all at once, and they're just there every moment they can. They're like, okay, I'm gonna embrace this one, I'm gonna embrace this one. And that can just create too much transformation too quickly, and it can make you feel very ungrounded. So what I would say is go as hard as you want, but if you start feeling ungrounded, slow it down. Just, you know, do it twice a day, no big deal. So, and I think underneath that is just don't— like, pushing yourself to get there is another avoidance of emotion. So pushing yourself to get to a place is another avoidance of emotion. If you do that, then—

and it's not wonder.

And it's not wonder. That's right.

Yeah. What that brings up for me is like the experiments with the learned helplessness in mice. Where, you know, if they're shocking the mouse and it can do something about it, then they'll shock the mouse and it'll run away. But if it can't actually leave, then it just numbs itself to the experience. Just lies down. Yeah. And this is something also in the way that they used to train elephants for circuses. All of this ethical, you know, there's some ethical conundrums here, but there's history. So a way that they would train an elephant to stay in a ring is that as a baby elephant, they would tie it to a post and then it would learn where it could go. And then eventually it would become so big that it could just rip the post out of the ground, but it wouldn't actually try because it had just learned where the limits were. And so when you're experiencing emotions that you've avoided for a long time, there was a reason why they overwhelmed you at some point in time. There was a reason why they weren't safe. You might've gotten attacked for having those emotions in certain contexts. And so to be in wonder isn't to say, let's just welcome all of the emotions as a dogmatic fact of what I'm going to do, but rather to just be in wonder with what happens when I feel this emotion. What does it bring up for me? How does my life transform? And what results occur? You know, rather than just being like, everything I need to feel, and if I'm not, then that's an indicator of my failing. And even, even if it means I'm overwhelming myself all the time and then going back and forth between openness and avoidance, right?

And, and so that's the other— that's another— you're just describing another mechanism, the same mechanism for another pitfall, which is if you are loving an emotion, welcoming an emotion to make it go away, it won't work. A lot of people will learn, "Oh, wow, I do this and then all of a sudden, my feeling of fear goes away." It doesn't actually go away, it just feels different, so we don't identify it as that uncomfortable thing. But if you're doing it to do that, then you're still in resistance and it comes back. So that's the other pitfall, is welcoming it at every level. It is not trying to make it go away by welcoming it.

Yeah, and then what happens when you're—

go ahead.

Yeah, what happens when you're a kid and you approach your, your parent and they love you in such a way as to make you go away?

Right.

Oh yeah, that's a very nice painting. Yeah, nice deer. How does that, how does that make you feel? And how does that make your emotions feel if you're doing that with them?

It reminds me of somebody that— there's like this like 8-year-old, 8-year-old, I'm with somebody, I can't remember who, and it was like 8 years old and, uh, the kid was like, "I want to sing you guys a song." And the parent says, "That's wonderful. And you know the most important thing about a song, don't you?" And the kid's like, "No, it's that it ends." And the whole thing was just like, "Hey, I'm not going to be able to pay attention to you forever." And And of course, this kid was using that golden algorithm again. This kid was never satiated and so always wanted the attention because the parent was trying to avoid that experience. And anyway, yeah, so that's another one. And then I'd say the final one is that it works for a while and then people forget about it. So they have some big issue and then they feel the emotion, the issue goes away, and then they forget about the rule because everything feels good for a while. Oh, now, like, there's this big relief. I'm no longer in this pattern. I feel really relieved. And then that doesn't last forever, obviously. And then all of a sudden I'm in this new thing, and then they forget the tool. And, and since this is such a powerful, important tool, it's definitely a tool I recommend revisiting on a regular basis.

Yeah, I think that's a big one for, for people who have gone to a workshop or they've done some, some kind of practice and they're like, oh wow, so all it took was me being willing to feel the sadness and then on the other side of it was freedom and joy. Now I'm free and joyful. But it's actually like the next time that sadness comes up, you also would need to be just as willing to feel it in order to continue to have the freedom. So it's not like a one and done thing. It's a continuously becoming more and more and more open to these emotions, which become— as you get more and more sensitive to them, they become more and more intense for the same thing to occur.

Yes.

And so it is like the more sensitivity you get to these emotions and the more willing you are to feel even the subtle forms of them, then your life changes and you have the freedom and the joy. And it doesn't mean that you're not going to feel those things anymore. It actually feels— you're gonna— it actually means you're gonna feel even more of them.

Feeling, yeah, exactly. And, and for those of you who just puckered, who just puckered hearing what Brett said, and it starts feeling, if you do it consistently, it starts feeling better right away, even though you're becoming more sensitive, which is an interesting dichotomy.

Yeah, yeah. And the more that you actually genuinely start to enjoy the range of feelings, the more it'll come in. 'Cause your subconscious naturally filters out things that are not enjoyable.

Yeah.

Until you learn to integrate them and be like, yeah, I can actually enjoy feeling jealousy. Oh wow, that delicious jealousy. It means there's something I really, really want, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Can I let myself want it completely? Yeah, that's it. Wow, beautiful. That was a long one. That was great.

Yeah.

Really enjoyed it.

Yeah, me too.

All right. Thank you very much, Brett. Good to talk to you as always.

Yeah, thank you.

All right. Let's do it again soon.

Have a good one.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

Bye.

Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com. Com.