No Hard Feelings - Your Emotional Friends

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company. I'm espresso sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse. You are listening to the podcast One Life. No Hard feelings. What if every feeling you experience was there to serve you? Even those feelings that are not that comfortable, I think, in Western society, well, maybe all societies, I'm not really sure. But I know when we look at these negative or bad feelings, we kind of poo poo them and we overlook the messages that they're there and forget that they're actually there to serve us. When we suppress these feelings, when we try not to feel them, something happens and it's not really good, because when you try to suppress it, they come back louder. And if they don't come back as the same feeling, they often lose the context of what you felt, what you were feeling initially. They end up coming back in some other ways, sometimes in an illness. So the point of this podcast here is to introduce you to your friends, that is your emotions, and to help you at least start to open up your awareness that maybe they're there to help you. Because once you can see that possibility now, instead of feeling an emotion and feeling angst because of it, or fear or whatever it may be, now you could dive into a deeper realizing that, yeah, this is a friend. What is it trying to tell me? And usually what it's going to tell you is a couple things. One, it's going to tell you that, you know, there's a belief system there. And two, it'll likely show you that there's some kind of distortion. And I'll go into a personal example of mine. One, that actually happened yesterday. I was driving on my way to the gym and I had to call docs because I'm going to be traveling and I needed to get a. A COVID test before I traveled. When I called the office, the woman on the other end of the line seemed like she was a little bit in like an agitated state. Actually, before I go any further, I want to leave you with the questions. This is kind of how I'm going to work through what I experienced. So this way you can use the same format in your own life. So the thing is, think of any emotional experience in your day. And when I think of emotional experience, I want you to think of one that leaves you feeling less than better. Right? It's one of those kind of like agitating experiences. Next, notice the trigger and the feeling. So for me it was calling the phone. And you know, as I just mentioned, calling the phone and hearing the agitation of voice. What are the automatic thoughts that accompany that? And then lastly, what is the distortion? Meaning what is the story you're making up in your head about that? So back to the story. So I called the phone and I hear this woman's voice on the other side and she sounds a little agitated and it was probably around 4 o'. Clock. So she literally probably worked the entire day. And here I am calling. So I called, I said, hey, hi. I want to schedule a COVID test. I am going to be traveling out of the country on Monday and I just need to know when do I need to come in, like, and how quick can I get the result? So she started asking me about the different tests. Well, which one do you need? Do you need this? Do you need that? This takes this many days. This takes that many days. Then I said, well, is there anything you can do that I can get in the same day? She goes, well, yeah, you can do. And she started going on. Then I noticed the emotion and I noticed the thoughts that I was having. The thoughts was like, that I was doing something wrong in some way, that I was kind of. Her experience was being aimed at me because of something that I did. And when I looked for the distortion, well, what is. I started. I was like, well, why would I think that? Like, one, the person doesn't know me. Two, she could have had an entire day of working with people calling up. Maybe there was someone who called right before me and was, you know, kind of stirred her up a little bit. And then, you know, there is an agitation towards me. Or three, maybe I'm just making the entire thing up in my head, which is totally possible, right? Because this has been a pattern for me. This has been like a thought pattern. Right? So that is not even out of the. It's not even out of the. Out of question. And here's what happened. So as I started to. I've been doing this for a few days now. Like, I made this chart and as I've Been doing it by questioning it, you start to look at the emotion as a messenger. Like, what is this trying to tell me? What can I learn from this? What are the reoccurring thought patterns that I have? And like I said, this was one of my reoccurring thought patterns. And then when you see that and you understand that in and of itself, just the awareness will actually slow the entire process down. So now you're creating separation between you and the emotional experiences in the sense that you don't have to get your system all worked up because now, because you're in this thing, but rather you're taking a step back and you're looking at it saying, huh, isn't that interesting? And you're looking for what there is to tell you. So you create distance. And then I looked for the distortion, and the distortion actually lessened the emotional feeling. So that was just two of the things right there that I mentioned. One is that you can create space when the emotions, when you notice, like, the frequency and the reoccurring things that you feel over and over. And secondly, when you notice the distortion, it lowers the intensity of whatever the emotion is. And then lastly, after you've identified all these, I'm not even going to get that onto this. I'm not going to go there on this podcast, because to be honest with you, I'm actually working through this part myself. And when I do work through it, you know, I will come on and I will share it. But the bottom part is. Or like, the foundation is the underlying belief. The underlying belief is like, if, all right, if I'm having this emotion, like, though they're mad at me, or I did something wrong, what is the foundation belief behind that? I mean, I could probably guess just just by, you know, just by the recurrence and what exactly the language I was using that I was doing something wrong. But what is the belief and where did it come from? That's something I will address later. But now it's just creating consciousness around the habitual emotional patterns, because emotional patterns are very habitual. If you have something, experience something over and over, your brain becomes very. It's very easy. You create those neural pathways that go there frequently and often. Even the way you hold your face, you smile, you feel a certain way, right? And if you put your face in a certain way, maybe like, I'm trying to make a face here, if you're watching, maybe if it's an angry thing, if your facial mushrooms go there, literally, that can trigger an emotion. And you weren't even angry. You were just sitting there and you made a facial expression, and it triggered an emotional response. So in closing, what I want to tell you here is that your emotions are your friends. And the last thing you want to do is you don't want to suppress your emotions, because suppressing them will literally make them come up in other ways. And often when you suppress them, when you don't feel them at that moment now you're suppressing, they may come out, and they may come out in something completely different, right? So now, like the thing that was causing the emotional response that you needed to address, now it's like coming out in some other way where it's almost like a mask, where, like, the real thing is behind it, but now there's like a cloak in front of it. And you. You think it's the thing that's in front that you're responding to, but it's really what's behind. And so let's just review those questions one more time. So this, for the sake of this podcast, let's just start with the idea that our emotions are our friends and that in some strange way, we experience these emotions in kind of patterns, right? If you do this enough and you document, and I encourage you to do so, you'll notice that your mind goes. Your emotional patterns go towards a certain behavior or a certain emotional behavior. Once you see that, then you're like, oh, wow, there I go again. And you could literally press pause and at least distance yourself. And it's not to say, like, you're not like, suppressing or anything, but you're getting curious to say, okay, well, wow, there it is again. Something is here, something that needs to be looked into. What is the underlying belief? And here those questions are. So in your day, I want you to notice your emotional responses, not something that triggers, like, an uncomfortable emotional response. Next, notice the trigger in what you are feeling. It may help if you want, you can even put a rating on what it is you're feeling. So this way, when you go back, after you go through the distortion step, which we'll go over next, you can go back and then rate the emotional intensity of the experience, and you'll notice that it'll change. So next, after, after, notice the trigger and the feeling next is what is the automatic thought like for me, in the example I just gave you was that they were mad at me. And then lastly, what is the distortion like? For me, the distortion was like, well, how do you know that? I was assuming. How did. They don't know me they didn't deal with me. They're just. If anything they're bringing into the day is literally just them. Like, they're there for the certain. So you break down the beliefs by asking yourself different questions. And you would write those questions down. You'd write those things that are counter to that belief being true. Like, well, no. Did I do anything wrong? No, of course, no, I didn't do anything wrong. I called to ask a question, which is why they're there. So there you go. And then you go back and you say, okay, well, looking at this experience, after identifying the distortion, after seeing that, all right, it doesn't really match up. How do I feel about it now? And nine out of 10 times, I mean, I would say 10 out of 10 times, if you do this correctly, you'll see that the emotional response will lessen. Like, you won't feel as strongly go back and look for more reasons and you'll lessen even more. So that is all I've got for you guys today. And why. Let me start with saying, I probably could have done this in the beginning, but why is this episode important? Because life is emotional. The emotions you feel is what is life, right? If you literally went void, like, devoid of feeling, life wouldn't really be that exciting. And it goes with that contrast saying, well, you know, you have to know what the highs to appreciate. You have to know the lows to appreciate the highs. And yeah, I understand that too. But this has been a new thing for me to like to make friends with the uncomfortable, the less comfortable emotions because I had been like, oh, you know, Mr. Happy, go lucky. And I do pride. That is part of my personality. I do smile a lot. I mean, I got most disgustingly happy in high school. One of my friends, who was also one of my former teachers, said, you used to sit in front of the class and I would look at you and wonder, what's wrong with this guy. All he does is smile. But maybe that's a reason I feel good, is because I'm constantly smiling for no reason. But there was a lot of things in my life that I kind of pushed down because I didn't make it okay to feel them. And a lot of those things had to do with self confidence. A lot of those things, yeah, really? Self confidence. A lot of things. I would push it down. I wouldn't allow myself because anger was wrong, because speaking up was wrong, because doing all of these things, I was making them wrong. And as a result, they were weighing down on me. And that is not my intent for you. I want you guys to free yourself. Because when you're free like that, when you're able to feel, it's almost like you're in the symphony of life. And when you're able to feel anything, the emotion will come in, but then you could release it. You don't have to hold onto it like a hot poker. Oh, no, that's. This Buddhist thing is like he who holds onto anger is like holding a hot poker. It ends up burning you or a hot coal. And I'm going to ruin that quote anyways. But the point is that you want to release this. This way you can get on with the great stuff, the juicy stuff of life. And that is my intention for you guys. I want you guys to live the most amazing and passionate and exciting and fulfilling life that you were made to live for. And that is my true belief. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Give it a Share subscribe if you have any questions or comments, you could send them to me via my website at www.donnierouse.com. again www. O n n y-r a u s.com and then lastly, if you like great coffee, please check out rousecoffee. Com r a u s coffee. Com. Use the discount code onelife to receive 15% off your first offer. So that is all I've got for you guys today. God bless you. Thank you so much for tuning in. And remember, you get one life. Live it.