Rich Bello (YouTube talk) argues that emotional mastery is essential because the quality of our consistent emotions determines the quality of our lives. He distinguishes three ways people handle emotions: (1) unaware and impulsive action, (2) aware but passive (accepting emotions as fixed), and (3) aware and choosing to master emotions — the desirable state. Bello claims our goals are ultimately emotional (we seek feelings like freedom or love), not material ends; he cites Helen Keller to emphasize that the most beautiful things are felt, not seen. The talk frames emotional mastery as a practical route to attract and sustain positive emotions and manage negative ones.
Chapters
There are three different ways that people deal with their emotions. Number one, there are those that aren't even aware of their emotions. They get an emotion and they just blindly act on the impulse. They're only stopped from fully acting out on the emotions by some outside force, such as a social norm or perhaps even the law. Then there are those who are aware of the emotion they're feeling and accept the emotions because they don't realize they can influence them. They do little to change their behavior, and often their emotions get the best of them. And finally, there are those who are aware of their emotions and choose to master them because they understand that emotions are important. That is, of course, what we should be striving for. That's what we're here for today. Emotional mastery is a crucial skill to acquire. Why? Well, as we'll see, the quality of our emotions is literally equivalent to the quality of our lives. It's that important. We'll also see that the true purpose behind our goals is not what we acquire from the goal itself, but the way that the achievement makes us feel. We'll also acquire an understanding of the importance that emotional mastery has in the degree of success in our lives. It's even more important than the standard measure of our innate intelligence, otherwise known as our iq. Finally, we'll understand that of all the resources that we have available to us, all are emotions of the highest value. So we better figure out how to use them wisely to get the highest return on these resources. The quality of your life is equal to the quality of your consistent emotions. I'll say it again because while it's simple to understand, most people don't place enough importance on it. The quality of your life is equal to the quality of your consistent emotions. That's really the bottom line. I mean, if you're in a great mood all the time, is it really possible to say you've got a low quality of life? And conversely, if you're in a lousy mood most of the time, can you really say that you have a high quality of life no matter how many material possessions you might have? I love this quote by Helen Keller. The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt. Most of you are probably goal oriented, myself included, right? Mostly probably achievers. What are the real goals in life, though, that we're after? I'll tell you, we're really after positive emotions, not material possessions. Think about it. When we're seeking a goal, the actual goal that we're seeking is an emotion. Or in other words, a feeling. We want to feel good, which means a positive emotion. You may say that your goal is to make a lot of money. That's not really your ultimate goal. The money is what's known as a means goal. So what do you really want? What's your end goal? Not some green paper with pictures of dead people on them. You want the feeling that money will give you the positive emotion. For most people, that's usually the feeling of freedom. Your goal as a relationship, what do you really want? You want the feeling of love. By the way, I believe that all goals can probably be traced back to the feeling of love. If you dig deep enough. Which ties in neatly to our previous discussions about the prime purpose of life, survival of the species. And then you can see how desiring love is our number one emotional goal, accomplishes that purpose. So since emotions are the real goals we're after, we might as well see if we can skip the in between means goals and go right after the ends goals. How do we attract and keep positive emotions in our lives? And how do we deal with the inevitable so called negative emotions? That's what we're talking about, emotional mastery.
