How to Be an Emotionally Healthy Person

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rohm, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rohm.

So I gotta tell you about a situation that happened just this morning. Have you ever been working on something and you were frustrated, but you felt like you ought to know how to do it, but you couldn't figure it out, but you were making progress in trying to figure it out, but you really weren't going anywhere and you felt frustrated like you're going around in circles. Well, that's what happened to me this morning. My wife has a phone and she was trying to add to it the app, so she'd be able to make take payments at a trade show where she's going to be an exhibitor and have a booth. So she asked me if I would do it. And we have the little square device that came in the mail for her to take credit card payments on her phone. And so I thought, well, how hard can this be? So I started working on it and then it didn't work. And then I looked for a number to call somebody and found out, well, you really can't call somebody. You need to chat. You need to go on a chat with somebody, explain to them, and I don't even understand the problem. So now I'm trying to give a chat and explain to them how this doesn't work. It was very frustrating. And I started feeling my blood pressure rising. I started feeling anger inside of me. I started feeling like this isn't even my problem, why am I doing this? And all the other emotions that we have until we stop and realize we need to be emotionally well people. I want to be emotionally well. I know you want to be emotionally well. Most of us are physically well or mentally or spiritually or financially well, or okay. I have learned in my lifetime the hardest thing for any human to do is to be emotionally well, not to be reactionary. Don't act like a 2 year old. I believe it was Winston Churchill who once said, when things go wrong, don't go with them. I believe he also said, if you're going through hell, keep going well. The truth of the matter is only an emotionally well person can stop and do what is necessary. I asked myself, why? Why am I that way? Why do I feel like I ought to know how to do things? I started thinking about it years ago and I'll explain how to resolve this and how you can actually fix this kind of problem in Your life, if you're reactionary or if things upset you, I'll share with you how to know that and how to handle that in just a minute. But. But it happened for me because my mother and father were wonderful people. I love them. They both passed away. My was 42 when he married my mother. She was 21. There's 21 years difference in their age. And so I came along two years later, I'm their only son, only child, and 42 and 21 getting married is a little unusual. Two years later, he was 44. And so by the time I was 10 years old, he was in his mid-50s. So you can see that an older man raising a younger kid who was pretty active like I was, is not the easiest thing in the world to do. And I, as much as I love my dad and respected him, he was hard on me because I didn't know how to do some things and he felt like that I should know how to do them. So many times things would happen. I'll give one example to explain what I'm talking about. But things would happen and I would end up feeling like I should know how to do something because he let me have it, that I should know how to do something. So here's the story. It was Christmas, and at the particular time he had purchased, and maybe some of you will remember this, years ago, they came out with something called a Polaroid camera that would make instant pictures. It was a J66. I can still remember the J66 Polaroid camera. And you take a picture and you would pull it out and you would give it about a minute and it would dry and the picture would slowly come up so you could see it. And there it would be in living black and white. They didn't have color then, but it was a nice picture. And so my father, it was Christmas Eve. My father said to me, I think you ought to open your big present tonight. And I thought, well, I don't see. I'm a little superstitious. You're not supposed to open Christmas presents until Christmas day. And he wanted me to open this big. He said, this is your big gift, and we think your mother and I think you ought to open this one tonight because it's going to require learning how to use it a little bit. And you'll be able to use it tomorrow when the family comes. So they talked me into it. I was all excited to open it up, and there it was, the Polaroid J66 camera. You took pictures, you clicked a button, you pulled it out there. It was in living black and white. And it slowly came up. I mean, this was BIG Technology in 1959. So we opened it up, and I was excited, and I thanked my parents for such a great gift. And then we started trying to figure out how to use it. And I mashed a button, and my father said, no, no, that's not the right one. The man I bought it from showed me how to use it. He even had several pictures that I still have to this day of the salesman who took pictures of my father in the shop as he was showing him how to use it. So he tried to show us, me and my mother, how to use it, but it was evident that he did not quite remember everything exactly right because there was three or four steps. Then my mother chimed in, and she said, no, I think. I think you're supposed to hit this button and then that button and then pull this. And I said, no, no, you ought to pull this. My father said, wait a minute. I was there. He taught me how to do it. Let me show you all how to do it. But it was evident that he didn't know exactly how to do it. And then I chimed back in, well, I think you're supposed to mash that button. And my mother said, no, no, no, it looks like to me. Can you see where this is going? Pretty soon, Christmas Eve turned into a nightmare. My father was yelling at me and my mom, and we ended up in tears back in my back bedroom crying. And that was Christmas Eve. Now listen carefully. With all honor and respect to my parents, I'm not saying them to this to bash them. All of us have had challenges with our parents. All of us have had challenges being a parent. I mean, if you're a parent and you've ever had children, you know, yeah, this comes with no instructions. This is hard. And I don't know if I do it all the time like I'm supposed to. I don't know if I do this right. My father ended up apologizing to us. We all hugged, kissed, and made up, and it was okay. But my father, in many other examples, because he was so much older, communicated to me the concept of, you ought to know how to do this. You're smart. You should figure this out. It didn't matter whether it was stacking wood or cleaning the basement or washing a car.

Those things sometimes come with no instructions. His attitude was, you should know how to do that. Now listen carefully. That trait has served me well in my lifetime because I jokingly say I have More confidence than I have ability. And the truth of the matter is, sometimes I'm willing to just try to learn how to do something and figure it out. Unfortunately, it can be frustrating. And once again, this morning it happened. I'm trying to figure out now, how does this, how does this phone, let's say now, how do you pair it with Bluetooth? With the device. And the device doesn't seem to work. And I don't know if the device is even on. And nobody will get on the phone with me. I'm a real good listener and visual, auditory, visual learner. If you can talk to me and let me see it, I'll get it. I jokingly say I could do open heart surgery if I could watch it two or three times. So I couldn't get anybody on the phone. And they said, well, you'll have to chat with us. I'm thinking, I don't want to chat with somebody, I want to talk to somebody because I've got my wife's phone in my hand. I can chat with you on my phone while you walk me through this. Well, that wasn't my option. My option was to get on the chat function that I had to text back and forth. Now watch carefully. I'm going to tell you the three secrets to how to solve emotional solutions in just a minute. But I finally got somebody. They responded, they walked me through it, they told me, this is what you need to do. And I did it. What do you know? It worked. Then they said, next, you need to do this. And I did it. And it worked. And then they said, try this. And they did. And then it popped up and said, the device you have needs to be upgraded. Leave your phone with Bluetooth connected for five to 10 minutes while it upgrades and updates the device. And I did that. Then it said, process complete. And then it all worked. I felt like Albert Einstein. I felt like, I'm so smart. I did this. I didn't even know how to do this a few minutes ago. Now I could do a seminar on it now. All of us. And I hope, I hope this is being an encouragement to you because all of us feel dumb at times. All of us feel ignorant. All of us feel uneducated, all of us feel unintelligent. I don't know about you, but do you ever feel like, I really wish I knew how to do that, but I don't know how to do that? Well, I told you. I'm going to give you three steps to fix this situation. Here's three steps, three solutions. If you'll do these three things, you will grow more emotionally in one day or in one experience than you've ever grown in your life. I did these three things this morning. Number one, recognize your feelings. Recognize your feelings. Usually it's fear. Usually it's hurt. It may be abandonment. It may be some kind of issue that, that you developed. I heard a guy say this week. He said, I'm the. I. I have two older brothers. He said, they beat me up every day. He said I got to where I just. Every day my old. Two older brothers would beat me up. So he said, I just learned how to fight and I learned how to react. I didn't like to be. He said, even after I got married, I. I wasn't even real sure I wanted to hug my wife because he said, I thought about getting her in a headlock. That felt more normal to me than hugging her because I. I had two older brothers. I think it's important that we learn how to feel our feelings. I'm not talking about get some mushy weirdo. You know, I'm going to sit around and just feel my feelings all day, but neither do I think we should run from them. Usually it's fear. Now, listen, I'm going to give you one of the best tips I've ever learned in my life. Anger is always a secondary emotion. Anger is not a primary emotion. Picture this. A dog gets hit by a car. He runs over in the bushes. He is two things. He's hurt and he's afraid. And if you go over to try to help him, he'll bite you. He'll do anger, but he's not angry. Anger is a secondary emotion. He. He's hurt and he's fearful. He doesn't know what's going on, and he's in pain, and you try to help him, and he does anger. People are the same way. I have never seen this fail since. I've learned this in my own emotional health, in my own life. When I'm angry, I ask myself, what's hurting me right now? Who's hurt me? Who's hurt my feelings? Or what am I so fearful of? Or what am I afraid of? Within about five seconds, I know the answer. And you know what? You know, it's crazy, my friend. When I know who's hurting me or what's hurting me or what I'm fearful about, the anger dissipates, the anger goes away, and I'm not angry. Anger is like a red light that comes on in your car to let you Know something's wrong. You don't have the red light disconnected. You know, if the red oil light comes on, it's your friend. It's there to say you need to put some oil in your car. That'll keep your engine from burning up. So the first thing is recognize your feeling. And maybe you need to just get alone. Or like this morning, I recognize I'm starting to get angry. Wait a minute. I'm not angry. Angry. Anger is a secondary emotion. I'm fearful. What am I fearful of? I'm afraid. I don't know how to do this. And my wife's going to need this for her trade show, and I'm going to let her down, and I don't want to do that. The anger went away, and then I was able to move to step two. Step two is remain calm. It helps you. You think better, and you have less stress when you remain calm. This morning, I could feel myself going, you ought to know how to do this. You ought to be an expert. You should have. You should have designed the iPhone. You should have not. You should be an expert on Bluetooth. You should know why this device is not working. You should be able to immediately upgrade it, update it, make it get fixed. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm starting to feel anger. I'm feeling anger because I'm fearful. I'm afraid I won't get this done, and I don't know how to do it. Take a deep breath. Step one, recognize your feelings. Step two, remain calm. Take a deep breath. You can do this. You. You. You just need to think it through. Stay calm. Relax. Take a deep breath. That this is not the end of the world. You're not on the Titanic. It's not sinking. This is just a phone problem that you can solve. You're smart. Take your time. You can do it. And that leads to step three.

Remember, quick review. Step one, recognize your feelings. Step two, remain calm. And step three, refocus on reality. Refocus on reality. Now, here's. Let me explain what. Refocus. That's what I did. Refocus on reality is I don't know how to do this. That's reality. Tell yourself the truth. The truth is.

I don't know how to do this. I've never done this before. But wait a minute. I have someone in a chat box wanting to help me. I have a little experience. This is not the first cell phone I've ever touched. I do know what Bluetooth is. I have seen Bluetooth connect to devices. There may be an issue here that needs to be upgraded or updated. That's reasonable because we live in a world of technology and things change Constantly refocus your reality. Tell yourself the truth. I don't know how to do this. But there are millions of people all over the world who know how to do things like this. And even people who created this device know how to make it work because they're trying to make money having devices that work. They don't. They didn't create this so it would not work. So I was able to refocus on the reality. I don't know how to do this. Let me think it through. Let me walk through it. I'm not going to be upset. I'm going to take a deep breath. And I was able to get it done. And as I mentioned earlier, I was so proud of myself. I felt like Albert Einstein. I thought, you know what? I probably ought to open a shop where I could help people who have technical problems with their cell phones and don't know how to use their apps and all their Bluetooth devices as they. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm not going to open a shop for that. Now, if you'd like to have copy of the show notes here we get, we can send you a link, you can download the PDF version and worksheet and you can have that and it will just walk these you through these same three steps so you can find the solution to. And here's the topic for today. How to be an emotionally well person. How to be an emotionally healthy person. I'm not trying to be unkind, but many, many people act like a grown child if they don't get their way. They have a fit, they do anger, they, they yell at people, they get into fistfights, they get, they scream and holler, they, they immediately go to anger and upset when they realize, wait a minute, wait a minute. Maybe I just, maybe there's a misunderstanding here. Maybe I don't need to get even with someone. Maybe I need to have a little understanding here. Maybe I need to recognize my feelings and see if there was something that was misunderstood. Maybe I need to remain calm and take a deep breath and learn how to have less stress. Is this worth having a heart attack over? Is this worth having a stroke over by being upset and acting like a child? Or maybe I should remain calm and take a deep breath like I did this morning and think this is doable. I just need to calm down. I know, I know. I feel like I should already know how to do it. But then that led me to step three, Refocus on reality. I don't know how to do this. I've never done this before. I've done things close to it and similar to it, but I haven't done this exact functionality. But I can do it. And guess what I did. You know what I've discovered? Let me give you a great principle here as we rhyme that as we wind up this session. The more I look at what another person is doing that I don't like, the less I have to look at myself and what I'm doing that I don't like. Did you get that? See, it's real easy for me to look at you and other people and see what you're doing wrong and be upset at you for acting the way you are. That keeps me from having to look at myself and saying to myself, you know what? I don't like what I'm doing right now and I need to focus on myself and how I can be a more emotionally well person. It's easy to look at others and blame them, but it's more gen. It's more important to gently look at myself and see what I'm doing wrong and how I can correct it myself. I hope these words are encouraging to you. There's nothing that feels better than being an emotionally well person. I want you to be that kind of person as you learn the wisdom of how to do life and do it successfully and better each day. Thanks for our time together today. I look forward to our next time. Thank you.

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