Learning to Use Emotion
As I sit and write this, I can feel everything that attempts to change the way that I think and act. My emotions sway me. I feel anxious; hesitant.
I’ve got so much to feel great about. When I think about what I’ve changed and about my trajectory, I’ve got a lot to be grateful for. It’s a perfectly temperatured summer night, I’ve got fully charged headphones pumping the heart awakening music I need to create, I’m surrounded by a busy yet drowned out human space, and it’s all in an effort to make my mark on the world. Yet…I can feel my mind racing. I can feel myself worrying about how I’m going to make it next month, where I’m going to be next year, and if I’ll love again. I worry about being a better man than I was, about being more in control than I was, and to love better than I did before. I sense my brain searching for logical explanation about things that keep me completely tied to my future and my past.
The emotional brain is a strong one. It can control our retraction backward or our trajectory forward. It affects our thoughts and actions as if it’s a joystick that changes our decisions and forces our speech. Because of this, we actually become even more EMOTIONALLY DISTRAUGHT by what we’re not in control of. We’re upset that we let that pesky amygdala get the best of us, and it feels like we can’t do anything about it. But, what if we can…?
The beautiful thing about the emotional brain though is that it does exactly what it’s meant to do…giving us the ability to predict it and take advantage of it. For the most basic primal reasons, it keeps us safe…and in conjunction with the most modern and logical piece of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, we find that advantage to not only keep us safe, but to dominate today’s world. Now that we are far from survival issues like losing our lives or becoming extinct out in the wild, we can now learn to make our brains as a whole work for us, instead of against us. We can now work with it to sense and listen to our intuitions, but also fuel it to create mastery of our lives…to direct our imaginations, our missions, and our lifestyles.
The problem is that most of us are still being controlled by our emotional brain. It’s one of the oldest and most basic parts of our brain, and it hasn’t changed in how it works to keep us alive…but now the things we fear are much more complex and in a lot of ways useless. We allow our most basic piece of us to cause misery in such a world full of massive potential.
Now, instead of fearing the predator seeing us and taking our life, we fear our own peers seeing us and laughing at us. Instead of our anger giving us the power to win dominance of procreation and the power to protect our tribe, we use our anger to diminish and destroy what hurts us. Instead of sadness being what gave others awareness that we need comfort, sadness is now what we are ashamed to show for fear of looking weak. Instead of happiness being a part of what connects us and creates feelings of inclusion and unity, we fake it, seeking the same connection…yet we dissolve inside because we have a sense that we are being untrue to ourselves.
Well, fuck…that got depressing really quick. But there’s a brighter side.
All of this was set up for you reader, to understand that there are levels and directions in which you can use your emotions to create a euphoric, blissful, intentional world for you to live in. Fear, anger, sadness, and happiness…the most basic and oldest of our emotions are there for a reason. They may be what kept us alive then, but we’ve pretty much taken away their most prioritized use: avoid extinction and thrive. So, what do we do with them now?
We use them. To direct the world as we know it. As the dominant species we have more purpose than to just avoid extinction. Our biggest priority now it to live intentionally and bring authentic mind-blowing experience to the few years that we are to exist.
How do we START?
You have to first know your emotions. And to know them, you must feel them, NO MATTER WHAT. It will be uncomfortable, it can hurt, and it may get you to realize that you’re doing it to yourself; that you’re to blame. However, if you’re to blame, you’re always the one to remedy!
Once you INTIMATELY know your emotions, you can then start to pay attention to their patterns. Those patterns will usually be tied to a habit or a condition. For example: I used to become very sad; reluctant and retract when I was praised and embraced. Why? Because my adolescent conditioning convinced me that I wasn’t good enough…so I fear danger. I fear that I’m being tricked. It’s crazy what our minds create, right?
I’m not gonna lie. Intimately knowing our emotions super sucks sometimes. But here is where it gets good.
When you know them…when you understand where they come from…you are becoming emotionally intelligent. And that intelligence gives you awareness. That awareness gives you the power to dissuade you brain from going down the common path of destruction you usually would. You bring in the logic. You can say, “wait, this isn’t healthy or productive or fair to me. I’m not going that way.” You can then start to change the bad habit or conditioning. You can foresee what you’ve done before, and redirect. You can stall your emotions, and keep yourself from the same old pattern you usually would, and when you do, you’ll feel POWERFUL.
The basic idea of emotional intelligence? Become aware of emotion, stop it from taking inconsiderate action, and respond with your logical brain. DON’T LET YOUR EMOTIONS CONTROL YOU.
As hard of a practice and conditioning as this is, this is where the best of us (the best of you) find out how to become truly fulfilled, happy and successful. Our awareness is the greatest mountain to overcome, and the world will start to change as you start making your emotions work FOR you.
You see, we can never get rid of these emotions. They’re built in. The idea is to embrace all of our emotions in order to create our greatest experiences, and make them work to our advantage.
Use fear to keep you from wasting time, avoiding self destruction, and to love like a mad man.
Use anger to overcome challenge, to become disciplined, and to create focus.
Use sadness to embrace understanding and compassion, to be empathetic, and create humility.
Use happiness to stay present, to create stronger bonds, to find true belief, and create amazing memories.
To sum it up…if you feel like your world is out of control, then you’re probably right. The world we live in is intimidating and distracting and suppressive….but it’s also full of opportunity, freedom and pure fulfillment. And the ONLY thing that can ever stop you from the latter is you; you and how you decide to control how you respond to the world.
Every emotion you feel is legitimate. Trust them, but don’t let yourself be controlled by them. Use them to amplify your life experiences and fill this fucking lifetime with everything you’ve got.
Our emotions don’t have to be feared and be our life dictators. They can be our allies and our leaders.
Stay rebel minded my beautifully emotional friends. I see you.
Kreedsoldier out…
Originally published at https://www.khaoskreed.com on September 2, 2020.
