Emotion

Nick's Journal

The topic this week was one that took me a long time to learn.  I’m definitely still learning it, and always will be, but I’m light years ahead of where I was even five years ago.  I thought I would touch this week on Emotion.

For an exceedingly long time in my life, Emotion was in control of me, not the other way around.  I think this is true of nearly everyone for a time but it certainly was true in my case.  In fact, it was even a point of pride for me I think.  Emotions felt pure and authentic, while rational logic felt calculated and contrived.  It took a long series of unfortunate outcomes for me to start to distance myself from its importance on my decisions and understand that challenging your emotions was not a sign of weakness but rather one of thoughtfulness and maturity.

Emotions are intoxicating.  Surrendering to them feels natural, combating them feels like fighting yourself – and who wants to fight themselves?  Yet fighting yourself is normally a great instinct to nurture.  Questioning yourself, whether you are in the right, whether you have the correct interpretation of a situation (or at least questioning that you don’t have the ONLY interpretation, allowing for different views), these are qualities that will greatly improve your judgment over time and will strengthen all of your relationships.  Doing the opposite will just prevent growth and keep you stuck in poor patterns.

The stronger the Emotion, the more difficult it is to keep from overwhelming you in the moment.  And when you are overwhelmed by emotions is when you are making your least logical choices.  They might (they WILL) feel good in the moment, but they rarely will stand the test of time, they won't make the list of choices that you are proud of from your past.  This is not by accident – emotions are short-circuiting your normal decision-making, the years of carefully learned and observed behavior that you have cultivated to inform yourself and navigate through the world with increased aptitude.  In the throes of emotion all of that goes out the window and you might as well be a five year old child again in terms of development and choices.

Who among us hasn’t been overcome by Emotion though?  Overcome by rage, sadness, love, lust, panic, or fear?  The strongest of these come like a tidal wave and overwhelm our defenses.  And in seconds we can go from a thoughtful, kind, respectful individual to one who is capable of any number of behaviors that otherwise would be completely abhorrent to our sensibilities.

For me, anger has been my biggest Achille’s heel.  That isn’t to say the other emotions have not had their own parts to play in my life but anger was the one that always stood out as causing me my largest headaches and regrets.

I had a number of mentors over the years who would occasionally, ever so rarely, try to impart advice onto me.  I never had someone quite so prone to writing as myself, so it was far more sporadic than what I try to provide, for better or worse.  Yet despite the limited frequency of these moments there were a few recurring themes that do stand out.  One of these themes, the one most relevant to today’s topic, was the concept of ‘Waiting a day to hit send on an email written when angry’.

I do not exaggerate in the slightest when I say that I think it took me more than 35 years of my life before I actually did not hit send within at most an hour of writing out some long winded diatribe on how I had been wronged, or why such and such was an object of abject revulsion, without any hope of redemption or positive qualities to speak of.  In the moment, it felt so satisfying. I felt a sense of righteous vindication.  And inevitably, as the days passed, it would become something I regretted doing almost every time.

Most things are not nearly as urgent as they feel in the moment.  Nothing prevented me from taking the same action that I chose to take in the heat of the moment, but a day later, if I still felt that it was appropriate.  An email sent a day later would not lose its potency or purpose.  A day later though, I would have thought through the consequences for a full day.  I would have had time to consider my own actions and whether they had led to some of what had transpired.  I would have had time to decide what my intended objective was and whether hitting send would really further that objective - which is really the thing you should always consider above all.  What would you like the end result to be, and is this going to help you achieve that?  And, now that I am much older, I now realize that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I end up hitting delete on that email and never send it at all.

In life, actions almost always have consequences.  And consequences can sometimes last for a very long time indeed.  Starting a conflict can have lasting repercussions that span years.  Making someone else feel threatened or offended can be the slow poison that eventually prevents outcomes that otherwise would have been possible.  And what do you really gain when you act completely in the moment?  The momentary head rush, the dopamine hit, the brief feeling that your ‘animal’ self has had its desires met?  Is that really worth the negatives?  Of course it isn’t.

These days, I still can find myself erupting in the moment.  It’s less and less often but no one can perfectly control these things and some days you are not at your best.  Now though I almost always catch myself.  And I walk it back in the moment as well, I don’t wait.  I own up to my nonsense, I apologize when it’s warranted and I put it to bed.  I have not sent a lengthy angry email in a very long time now.  And I do not regret it at all.

Should you avoid all Emotion or conflict?  I don't think that is the lesson.  Emotion is fuel, its energy, its passion to get you through the hurdles that life puts in your way.  Point me at an obstacle when I'm calm and collected and it just feels like a lot of work which I'll probably find a way to put off (I have some discipline so I'll have a fighting chance still at least).  Now point me at it when I'm pissed off or charged with some other emotion and I'm going to burst through that shit like paper.  Rage, love, fear - these things will give you 4 more gears than you thought you had.  You NEED to channel these to get what you want in life, but you also need to keep them away from the steering wheel.  They can be the engine but they shouldn't be the map.

So, if you haven’t heard this advice yet in life, let me be the first one to provide it.  Emotional decisions are not good decisions.  And if they are, they will still be good once you let the Emotion settle, they will still stand up to scrutiny and challenge in the cold light of day.  Trust yourself enough to let yourself make a decision without the cloud of Emotion.  And if you are coming to the same conclusions a day or weeks later, don’t let others tell you it’s because of Emotion – you’ve let clarity come and you can move forward knowing you have chosen it with intention. Let others make their own decisions, not yours.

Hopefully you folks can take this one to heart without another ten to fifteen years of emotional decisions and the inevitable mess that they cause, but I won’t judge you if you don’t.  That would be pure hypocrisy – and I like to let everyone experience their own journey the same way I was allowed to experience mine, with grace and understanding.  Make sure you learn it eventually though, your life will be better for it.

Much love as always,

Nick