Summary
Joe and Brett explore how every decision is fundamentally an emotional decision, since the emotional brain drives all decision-making. The real question isn’t how to remove emotions from decisions, but how to make great emotional decisions by not avoiding the emotions that arise in the process. When we avoid emotions in our decision-making, we narrow our options, repeat unhelpful patterns, and disconnect from ourselves and others.
Joe introduces what he calls the “golden algorithm” — the insight that we invite the exact thing we’re avoiding in the exact way that we avoid it. This is the mechanism behind repeating patterns: the emotion we refuse to feel is precisely what our avoidance behavior recreates. He illustrates this with examples ranging from his daughter’s fear of failure causing her to stop trying (which creates failure), to partners who avoid disappointment by running away (which creates more disappointment).
The episode identifies three major mechanisms through which embracing emotions transforms life: clarified decision-making, breaking repeating patterns, and deepened connection. They discuss practical approaches including emotional inquiry, the VIEW framework (Vulnerability, Impartiality, Empathy, Wonder), and the importance of understanding that welcoming emotions is an undoing — requiring less effort than resistance — rather than a doing.
Key Concepts
- The golden algorithm: we invite what we avoid in the way we avoid it
- Welcoming emotions is an undoing not a doing
- Three mechanisms of emotional transformation: decisions, patterns, connection
- The consequences we avoid are always emotional
- Increasing emotional sensitivity improves decision-making
- Habits change automatically when avoided emotions are felt
- Welcoming emotions to make them go away stops working
Key Quotes
“If you make a decision from depression it’s most likely to bring more depression. If you make a decision from happiness it’s more likely to bring more happiness.”
“We are inviting the exact thing that we’re avoiding in the exact way that we are avoiding it.”
“What’s the emotion I’m avoiding and how is the way that I’m avoiding it actually creating the problem?”
“The doing is in the resistance to the emotion — that’s what takes the energy, that’s what takes the effort. The not resisting the emotion, welcoming the emotion, that takes less effort.”
“You can make a lot better decisions if you are sensitive to the emotional experience that you’re having in the moment, and you become more sensitive the more you feel into them.”
“As soon as I started to love anger and allow anger in a whole new way… marijuana — I just lost interest.”
Transcript
foreign welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson [Music] Good morning Joe hey good morning how are you doing great it’s uh crazy out there right now economically I’m having a lot of people in my world and coaching clients facing what feels like to be facing some pretty big decisions and so this has been something that’s sort of been you know up for me lately is just sort of sitting in this uh the kind of perception that people often have that if we make emotional decisions we can’t trust them like we can’t trust our decisions when there’s emotions involved absolutely rational get emotions out of it yeah which is hilarious yeah that happened to me this morning actually I was uh speaking to um an entrepreneur in Israel who same thing said the number one problem he was having was decision making and and also if I recall correctly also you know talked about rational decision making which as we’ve talked about many times you know there is no such thing as rational decision making and there what but what’s really true is that um there if you like I would say it like this if you make a decision from depression it’s most likely to bring more depression if if you if you make a decision from um trauma it’s most likely to bring more trauma if you make a decision from happiness it’s more likely to bring more happiness or the other way to think about it is that happy people seem to make decisions that continue to make them happy and depressed people seem to make the decisions that make them more depressed so I get the idea of like oh I don’t want to make an emotional decision it’s just impossible like the the question is how do you make decisions how do you make decisions knowing that emotions are controlling the game how do you use emotions to make great decisions or something like that I think it’s a more accurate question yeah or how do you how do you make great emotional decisions given that every decision is an emotional decision right right that’s even a better way to put it yeah yeah so and this is this has been something we’ve we’ve covered in a lot of different ways and different episodes here and so I think this is just something that’s very core to our work is that you know we we kind of break up that perception that it’s the emotions in the decisions that are the problem um rather than avoiding the emotion in the decision that causes the causes the outcomes we’re afraid of yeah yeah that’s right that’s right so it’s it’s not about not making an emotional decision it’s about not avoiding emotions in your decision making it’s it I think that’s what you’re pointing at there and that that’s a far more uh useful way to take a look at it and and what’s interesting to me is that so there’s this idea of okay I’m gonna welcome and accept a certain emotions so that I can have clear decision making and how that works what’s interesting to me is that how how you welcome and accept emotions does a lot more than clarify your decision making it’s it is very much um when we talked about embracing intensity in one of the earlier episodes it’s very much kind of the mechanism behind that which is being able to embrace difficult emotions uh enjoy them welcome them that is like the biggest uh indicator leading indicator of transformation and one of the ways that that works is it helps us make great decisions but it’s definitely not the only way it works so so to be able to make great emotional decisions also changes a whole bunch of other cool things in your life yeah yeah if you can make if you can make the emotional decision of laying off somebody that you consider close and a friend then and you can welcome all of the emotions around that then you’ll be able to make a clear decision and be present throughout the whole thing is sort of the correct and and I would say that if you are able to welcome all those difficult emotions there and in other aspects of your life other things occur like you’re less judgmental you’re less defensive the emotion what you think our negative emotions start turning into positive emotions there’s all sorts of you you make better decisions you interrupt unhelpful patterns you you know you have more connection with people all sorts of things happen from that simple thing of what we’ve called embracing intensity but I’ll call here loving accepting all that all the difficult emotions and honestly positive ones or or as the as the I think I’ve said this recently but as the youth they’re saying like feel the feels that’s the yeah that’s the way my that’s why my girls are saying it feel the feels so what makes what makes feeling the feels actually work feeling the feels and loving your emotions to catch people up on this what is it what is it that makes this make better decisions makes this happen yeah there’s so so there’s so many things that I I just discussed some of them but just to go into depth a little bit so oftentimes we use judgment as a way to not feel difficult emotions as a matter of fact you’ve been you’ve you’ve seen the exercise that we’ve done where and done the exercise where you get to discover every time you’re judging somebody there’s an emotion there that you’re not feeling or every time you’re defensive there’s an emotion there that you don’t want to feel so and and we’ve talked about on the podcast how when we invite an emotion when we welcome the emotion if it feels different than if you are resisting the emotion emotions unresisted and emotions resisted feel very different from one another even though it’s the same emotion but the the three major mechanisms I would I would think out of the dozens and dozens the three major mechanisms of of that transform Our Lives because we’re embracing welcoming um emotions it are the decision making um stopping the patterns and the and the increase of connection so let’s double click on that a little bit then yeah so so let’s let’s go into just a little bit more about how how it affects decision making kind of beyond what we just discussed right so we’ve discussed on the podcast how um how we make emotional decisions neurologically and if we take the emotional center of the brain out that we stop making decisions so we’ve talked about that so then the question is if we can’t make logical decisions or if we’re using logic to determine what emotion we think we’re going to feel given a decision then the question becomes how do you clarify decision making since it you know logic isn’t going to do it and the answer there is uh not using the decision to avoid an emotion or to run towards an emotion to allow a decision to be a expression of our authenticity what we’re excited about like our joy and oftentimes what we’re doing is we’re deciding something as a way to what either seems like avoid a consequence and those consequences are emotional feelings or run towards a consequence or like hope hope for a consequence which again is a feeling and when I meet and just to be specific about that somebody might say no I’m trying to avoid losing a billion dollars that’s not a feeling yeah I’m following my joy yeah and uh getting a billion dollars and volume yeah and so what I would say to somebody like that is well look if you had a choice between like oh you got the billion dollars but you’re absolutely freaking miserable and you want to kill yourself every day and it’s just a struggle to stay alive you know what what do you make of that decision or vice versa if you lost everything but you were happier than you’ve ever been and you felt like totally comfortable and at peace and joyful how would you feel about that like that is you couldn’t be like oh crap there’s no money because you just were in so much joy you’re just like oh this is great so the the consequences that were avoiding are emotional consequences and so the question becomes how do you invite and learn that each of these emotions is this wonderful thing not to be avoided or not to be run towards that the entire spectrum is lovely just like you wouldn’t you wouldn’t like always want pizza or you wouldn’t always want the same bottle of red wine you would act it’s actually the joy is in the eclecticness the eclecticness of of or the full emotional palette and that each one of them is information and if you cut off any of them then you have information that you’re not going to get which is critical so so the the the the real thing there is how do I how does one just love and embrace all the emotions and that’s the and and as you do your decision making clarifies if you’re like oh I’m happy to do that even though I it might be something that most people like oh I might need to be sad to do the thing that’s right by me I might need to be sad to be authentic I might need to feel like a failure to actually have the success that I I’m wanting so if you can embrace all of those emotional experiences then your decision making clarifies now I think there’s also a there’s a Nuance here where a lot of people hear this and be like well okay so let’s say I’m okay with losing a billion dollars I’m okay with you know losing all my investors money I’m okay with if I make it so that I’m okay with losing my partner that I love then doesn’t that make it more likely that this happens because it’s you know the fear of those things that makes me do something alternate um and there’s something that I noticed there where it’s like how much is it the the future emotion and how much is it actually about the present fear of feeling the future emotion yeah so that’s a great one so so so this is actually leads into the second thing which is like the repeating pattern so that’s a second mechanism so the first mechanism is it you know that the the way that us embracing emotions brings us joy and and transformation first is the decision making how it affects our decision making but the second is how it it affects repeating patterns so what you’re saying there is basically the opposite of what actually occurs so this is where I’m starting to come up with this term like golden algorithm I don’t know why I want it it’s just so important and it’s and it’s and it it took me years to realize like this is kind of at the bottom of everything to some degree and I’m always hesitant to say this is always at the bottom of everything right there’s a lot of like completeness in that which is never true and it also feels like so so important and so true so often but so anyways the the way that this algorithm goes is that we invite the thing that we’re avoiding in the exact way that we are avoiding it so I’ll just say that again which is we are inviting exact way that we’re avoiding it and this is how our patterns repeat so we experience some sort of trauma that we weren’t allowed and in that trauma we weren’t allowed or didn’t feel something because it was too intense at the moment and so we keep on repeating the patterns to get back to homeostasis and feel it and it happens through this algorithm and so but like a simple example of this would be um my daughter and I are sitting there and she had a big project which she went to uh some bureaucracy like fish and game bureaucracy and some secretary there you know shied at her for trying to do something bigger than her britches so to speak and and I asked her I was like to my daughter I was like well how what happened she goes oh it sucked and I’m like what were you trying not to feel and she said I didn’t want to feel like a failure I was like oh and then what did you do to not feel like a failure and she said I stopped trying and what did stop trying what did not trying create it created me feeling like a failure that that’s how it works and there’s every every single problem that you face you can go to and say okay what’s the emotion I’m avoiding and um and how is the way that I’m avoiding it actually creating the problem so you can say I can never um make my wife happy as an example like that’s a problem no matter what I do my wife isn’t happy blah blah blah blah that kind of thing and and you can just look at it and say okay so what’s the emotion that you’re trying to avoid oh I’m trying to avoid her disappointment and how do you avoid her disappointment and oh I avoid her disappointment by it could be a number of things but running away from her whenever she’s disappointed okay so that definitely is gonna make her more disappointed yeah or it might be I tried to fix her problems and which of course makes her feel like she’s less than and not good enough which constantly will make her feel disappointed because she’s not happy with herself so like any problem that you have you can backwards engineer it using this algorithm and say oh what’s the emotion that I’m avoiding that’s creating the problem and so that’s how that’s how it works yeah that’s the pattern interesting to see the uh sort of the way you said earlier that like this seems to be at the bottom of everything and I know that that might you know that’s a very like broader like complete statement to make but I see another a parallel here with identity as well where in in that example where it’s like well if my wife is disappointed with me then them means I’m not good enough and if I have the identity of being good enough by a certain standard then if I’m not meeting that standard I’d have to feel something and so I’m both avoiding the feeling and I’m also maintaining an identity and this happens in in relationships a lot whether it’s work or personal around like for example trust I’ve had have had some sessions where people are like yeah I just I really want I want people to trust me uh and what they kind of mean by that is I want to be seen as trustworthy and what ends up showing up in their life is that they you know they they don’t share anything with people around them that might seem like mistrust because they project that other people want to be felt like they’re trustworthy rather than recognize where trust isn’t and be able to work on it and then it just ends up being this kind of subconscious lack of trust for example until something something happens and then they’re like oh no people don’t trust me right and then that emotion comes in you know yeah right so yeah beautifully seen and I I’m gonna Express that in a slightly different way which is the first first thing is yeah so this person doesn’t want to feel untrustworthy they don’t want to feel like people can’t trust them whatever emotion that brings up in them right like oh I’m not good enough or I’m not I don’t have integrity or whatever and then if you just apply that the golden algorithm to it you’d you could see oh um I want people to make me I want people to feel like I’m trustworthy which means I’m avoiding people feeling I’m avoiding the emotion that comes from people feeling like I’m not trustworthy well as it turns out if you want people to see you as trustworthy that is not trustworthy in itself right so it’s just because you don’t you know I don’t I’m not going to trust somebody who wants me to see them in a certain light as much as I’m going to trust somebody who’s just going to be with me as I am and and with them how they are and and talk to me as they are with what’s coming up with them in the moment but the algorithm will be something to the effect of oh I am avoiding feeling untrustworthy by not speaking my not speaking the truth about when I’m not trusting you because of this projection and then now I really can’t trust you because I know that there’s a problem because I can read it all over your face and you’re not telling me and so the exact way that we’re avoiding it is the way that we invite it it’s it’s so edifying when you see it when you can see that in every single problem you have it’s like such a thing yeah yeah so something that’s fascinating about this is I could imagine that this for for some people this might just be a new way to beat ourselves up we learn we learn this algorithm and then we start to blame ourselves uh and shame ourselves for everything that happens for everything that happens that results in a difficulty motion for us we’re like I must have been avoiding this emotion see I did it again uh and uh so yeah so how do we how do we address that I would I would be using the golden algorithm I’d be asking well what is the emotion that I’m trying to avoid here that’s what I would be doing I’d be looking at the and then not avoid it and so you mean the emotion inside of beating inside of beating myself up I would look for what’s the emotion I’m avoiding and I would feel it and what’s an example in sort of your your history with coaching what are some of the things that people are avoiding Feeling by beating themselves up there’s lots of things that people can avoid feeling when they when they beat themselves up oftentimes they’re uh though at least the first level of what they’re avoiding is the thing they’re beating themselves up for so let’s say I’m the shame is the way to stop the emotional experience and so whatever they’re ashamed of is what they’re preventing themselves from feeling so as an example I um I lied lie to somebody and I feel shame over line and I’m beating myself up for lying to somebody there’s usually an emotion that I have to feel for lying them maybe it’s a feeling of remorse maybe it’s a feeling of sadness maybe it’s a feeling of of uh anger that I felt something was more important than my integrity and I’m avoiding that emotional experience so on the first level I would say that’s what they’re avoiding and by feeling that then the shame moves away and and then they can get back to seeing this as a great tool that they get to use instead of beating themselves up now you mentioned that there were three main things the third one is connection so yeah let’s move on to that one well it’s a great segue uh right away like shame is one of the ways that we use to avoid emotions um and that shame disconnects us from ourselves disconnects us from the people around us if we judge people we’re avoiding emotional experience and so that’s a way that disconnects us from them and judgment is a way that we disconnect from others and we disconnect from ourselves uh defensiveness is another one that when there’s a defensiveness happening we often feel wrong and we’re avoiding it and even if we are not wrong we feel like we’re wrong uh and I would say almost every time that happens and uh and so that’s another example of it so most of the ways that we and I think it’s just very simply most simply put that when we feel disconnected from ourselves what we feel disconnected from is our emotional experience that’s the thing that we are running away from or avoiding so if all of a sudden you are making great decisions and you aren’t repeating your Pat your unhelpful patterns and you’re feeling deeply connected and moving into connection and moving from connection you can imagine how quickly your life transforms and all that’s required in all of this is just to feel the emotions that you don’t want to feel yeah and of course in alluding back to the Embrace intensity episode not creating right emotions that you think you need to feel or you know setting up a crucible for yourself or diving into shame and wallowing in it right they don’t worry there’s plenty of negative emotions just hanging out that you’re avoiding you know you don’t have to create others I I have a personal story on this one uh there was yeah so I mean I’m thinking of just like a very like an everyday example is like you know you get a parking ticket you’re like oh parking ticket stupid idiot shouldn’t have done the thing and then your parking ticket sits on the counter and every time you look at the parking ticket you’re just like oh damn and then you never pay it and then it ends up getting fees and fines and everything and then it’s even worse and you feel even more upset about it um and I’ve heard something interesting that sometimes people do with that which is uh that if you take the parking ticket and then you imagine that you’ve already lost the money but now it’s actually a check and if you go and you deposit the check and the check is made out for the amount of the penalty you’ll save by actually paying it on time and then like every time you look at it you’re like oh look free money woo let’s pay this right which is an interesting flip on it but it is a great clip on it sort of a there’s a little bit of golden algorithm there yeah that yeah that like that gut punch pushing you directly away from exactly what your you know optimal action would be that’s right yeah it right and if you’re not beating yourself up from it there’s nothing to avoid then you just send the check in and then right yeah it’s a very that’s a fascinating thought process and and yes and that flip and and what’s interesting is most of these behavioral hacks that you see like the quicker ones or the are often changing the way you think about it to change the way that you feel about it right so oh I I make this story and the story is I’m a bad person who has to be punished and be paid a penalty and I don’t want to feel that too I am somebody who’s receiving a check and therefore I’m happy to pay this thing right like it’s literally you’re changing the meaning to change the emotional reality that’s happening which is an interesting short-term hack but in the long term it’s more freeing to be able to feel the full gut punch of the regret of the you know of the whatever you’d have to feel about having received a parking ticket time whatever yeah they also go hand in hand too in the fact that um as you learn to embrace enjoy welcome these emotions they change right so backup punch won’t be the same gut Punch If you fully Embrace and enjoy it and and love it and accept it and look forward to it then all of a sudden the gut punch isn’t the same expression it doesn’t feel the same in the body so there’s that aspect of it too yeah if you’re going to try to change every single story so that you never have a negative emotion that’s going to be a long haul and it’s never going to be com it’s never going to completely work however if you can however seen through stories is great it’s very useful and what I notice is as people um feel deeply into these emotions and accept them and welcome them what happens is that their stories change naturally the head kind of catches up eventually and they and it’s and it sees that like the it I wouldn’t say it sees I would say that a lot of our stories are Guided by the emotions whether we want to admit it or not and so that would be another benefit to feeling deeply and exploring and welcoming all these emotions is that our stories change and they become far more conducive to living a great life yeah and another thing here is the the increasing sensitivity to these emotions the more you welcome them the more you’ll notice that tiny little bit of gut punch of like oh I’m probably over my parking but I don’t want to leave this conversation it’s so good I’ll just ignore that for a minute right and so this is something we mentioned in the we talked about this a little bit in the Q a episode recently where you know the more the more of this work you do the more sensitive you become and the less you know the the less you’re willing to handle certain and deal with certain things in your life so you end up feeling feeling more and it comes earlier which is really good for making great emotional decisions is really yeah well well done Brett that was great that was a great callback yes that’s right you can make a lot better decisions if you are sensitive to the emotional experience that you’re having in the moment and you become more sensitive the more you feel into them what’s also interesting is that there’s there you know we made a distinction before about choices and decisions but if you’d look at all those little choices that happen automatically that we don’t think about those are controlled even more by emotions than anything else and so as you do as you go through these big decisions and find these big emotions you don’t want to feel as you go through the judgment and find these emotions you don’t want to feel and you start feeling them and loving them and accepting them all those automatic decisions all those oh I’m going to just scroll Facebook for a bit or oh I’m gonna go take a walk or what all those little to say I’m gonna take I’m gonna hear all those little decisions change which is super cool and it it’s really hard to what I notice is it’s really hard it’s it’s not impossible but it’s really hard to say change a habit and say okay I’m going to remember every time I put on my shoes I’m gonna do it differently or every time yeah I wake up I’m gonna drink tea instead of coffee like those things can be really challenging but what I notice is that when a certain emotional stuff gets loved and unhinged and it’s not a hook anymore some habits just change automatically a lot of them change automatically and I remember um you know in my 20s I was smoking quite a bit of pot and I was beating myself up for smoking pot and as soon as I started to love anger and allow anger in a whole new way than and and and and then the beginning of sadness marijuana just I just lost interest I just lost interest in it and I found that with a lot of a lot of the habits that we have are used to help us not feel something and so if we bat what we call bad habits and so the more that you allow those emotional experiences you learn to love them and you embrace them then the habits are unnecessary yeah something you said about um about people making the decision okay every morning I’m going to drink tea instead of coffee you know these these decisions lead to something that people call decision fatigue which is yeah like you can do it for a while and then eventually you know you run out of dopamine or you run out like whatever whatever willpower they take that like because you’re constantly overriding your emotional system whereas if you just go in and you feel the emotions then you get to refactor that emotional background that creates this context for within which all of your decisions occur and I really like that piece about how many how many unconscious decisions are you making that you’re not even aware of when when you look at your life and you’re like well I can only decide between this and that should I leave my job or not leave my job should I do that like how many other decisions are you not even aware of because you won’t let yourself feel a little bit of discomfort somatically before you’re even aware that it exists that you have to feel to be like oh you know what I actually could just yeah reorg this department and right it just it would be a pain in the ass for everybody and be better off in the long run yeah that’s right that’s an option yeah exactly so right how many of the so you know we we get hung up on these three decisions and we’ll call those decisions ABC but they might not even be decisions we should be making we should be thinking completely about x y and z x y and z is what’s going to actually change our world a b and c doesn’t matter what we decide the chances of a changing our world is two percent but X Y and Z decisions and those decisions might change our world 100 percent and so you see this in marriages and you see this in in people running companies a lot of the success is built on where you’re putting your time and energy what decisions you’re actually making and which decisions you’re not making and and that is a really hard thing to control consciously and it’s far more it’s far easier to control control’s not the right word but to focus on the right stuff if you’re not avoiding the the emotional garbage because most of that happens like you said subconsciously right that’s brilliant so cool Brett yeah yeah well thank you and so now that we’ve you know we’ve talked about all this how how do we do this what are what are some practices what are some ways that this could be integrated into people’s lives after they hear this episode yeah we we have a thing called um emotional inquiry which you know I can’t go into here with its full in full depth but I can talk about the principles behind it the the first thing to see is that it’s an undoing it’s not a doing so the doing is in the resistance to the emotion that’s what takes the energy that’s what takes the effort the not resisting the emotion welcoming the emotion that takes less effort it might take a little activation energy but I I feel far more I have a lot more energy if I have just experienced an emotion unresisted than if I experience emotion resisted right and so and you I’m seeing the smile on your face you you know this experience right so the first thing is it’s an undoing and it’s far more like dropping a hot frying pan it’s like how do I drop a hot frying pan it is one of the most complicated things to explain to anybody and you just can’t do it how do you drop a hot frying pan because it’s an undoing and so similarly how to stop overriding my emotions right by telling myself what I should be feeling right what’s better the feeling yeah all of that all that [shit] takes energy and it’s the opposite it’s the the thing that requires the least energy of of an you know interacting with an emotional experience in the way that takes the least energy is what we’re looking for so that’s the first thing about it the second thing is that you’re meeting your emotions with view so you’re meeting the emotions with vulnerability you’re allowing the feeling impartiality you’re not trying to change it you’re not trying to get rid of it empathy meaning you’re having empathy with yourself you’re allowed you know you’re being with yourself and your emotional experience you’re not trying to fix it you’re not trying to solve it you’re not lost in the story of it you’re just with yourself just keeping yourself company and and you’re in Wonder and wonder is a huge piece to this one and so that’s a lot of the emotional inquiry that we do is like looking at the emotion as if it was like as if you were a little kid finding a turtle for the first time and you pick up the turtle and you’re like checking it out it’s like looking at your emotional experience like that is absolutely the the way to do it and also emotional expression is great and moving the emotions and but the most important thing is like how do I look at this with some curiosity and wonder excuse me and and vulnerability and impartiality it’s really like meeting it with you and there’s you know there’s techniques for it but that’s the the general principle yeah yeah something that I liked in there was about the just the with the amount of energy that it takes to manage our emotions there’s so much energy that becomes unlocked when we don’t oh my God so people are often looking for the solution to their problems that requires more energy what can I expend more energy on and I think that’s where just a lot of people are stuck to begin with yeah and another another throwback to our q a episode around depression it was like how much motivation does it take to beat yourself up constantly in your head right yeah and what happens when that motivation is unlocked yeah and yeah that’s that’s so it’s so right and it’s so hard to see when you’re in it like so give yourself a little compassion and gentleness and the it like it’s so hard for someone to say like I hear this all the time with people where they’re just like I can’t feel this thing and you’re like you’re like you you’re feeling it currently I don’t know your dog you just are resisting the hell out of it and and so that’s a great experiment that you can do just like right now as a for instance is you can you can take any emotional experience that you’re having at this time take the most intense one close your eyes and resist the [shit] out of it resist it like do everything you can not to feel it and then take the exact same emotional experience and do everything it’s or undo everything and just embrace it like just allow just welcome welcome it the way that you’ve always wanted to be welcomed welcome it in the way that a five-year-old looking at a turtle for the first time would welcome something and you feel that and then that tells you right away that’s the difference between resisted and unresisted emotions it’s just immediate now so to speak to some of the inner wisdom of having resistance to emotions we you know we developed this for a reason there what are some let’s talk about some pitfalls that might occur uh as we as we start down this process like what makes it that this isn’t just a natural thing that we just do yeah I can tell you some of the risks what makes it not the natural thing that we do so the the in um what makes it I would this is my theory and I’ll just you know I don’t know I don’t know how accurate this is but this is my going Theory which is animals before prefrontal cortex before meaning making before being able to like look into the future and see potential patterns they were they’re just looking at the emotional reaction to the moment and it makes total sense to oh don’t don’t do that thing that hurts do that thing that feels good and in the moment that feels really great if if you don’t have psychology but if you have psychology then don’t do that in the moment means don’t remember this thing it means don’t um you know it means meaning it’s like it’s like the stories because it’s the stories that create a tremendous amount of the emotions and so you’re dealing not you’re all of a sudden it became from two Dimensions to three dimensions and it doesn’t suit that the new three-dimensional game so that’s the reason that I think it was developed because if it’s just like eat those mushrooms don’t eat those mushrooms you do what feels good you don’t do what feels bad but when it comes to you know apologizing to somebody in the ramifications of that in your social network and the ramifications of your Social Network on your business and all of that stuff and all the meaning that you make of that then what feels good in the moment to what’s good in the long term are very different things so I think that’s where it comes from as far as the pitfalls go uh the the number one thing that can happen is and this only happens to like a really few people and it’s that’s usually super Type A and people I love working with honestly um uh super type A people who are like in it to win it and very self-reliant they’re just like they start going after every single motion all at once and they’re just there every moment they can they’re like okay I’m gonna Embrace this one I’m gonna Embrace this one and that can just create too much transformation too quickly and it can make you feel very ungrounded so what I would say is go as hard as you want but if you start feeling ungrounded slow it down just you know do it twice a day no big deal um so and and I think underneath that is just don’t like pushing yourself to get there is another avoidance of emotion so pushing yourself to get to a place is another avoidance of emotion if you do that then and it’s not wonder and it’s not Wonder that’s right yeah what that what that brings up for me is like the uh the experiments with the Learned helplessness in in mice uh where you know if they’re shocking the mouse and it can do something about it then they’ll shock the mouse and it’ll run away but if it can’t actually leave then it just numbs itself to the experience of this lies down because yeah and this is this is something also in the way that they used to train elephants for circuses all of this ethical you know there’s an ethical conundrums here but there’s there’s history so a way that they would train an elephant to stay in a ring is that as a baby elephant they would tie it to a post and then it would learn where it could go and then eventually it would become so big that it could just rip the post out of the ground but it wouldn’t actually try yeah because it had just learned where the limits were and so when you’re when you’re experiencing emotions that you’ve avoided for a long time there was a reason why they overwhelmed you at some point in time there was a reason why they weren’t safe you might have gotten attacked for having having those emotions in certain contexts and so to be in Wonder Isn’t to say let’s just welcome all of the emotions as a dogmatic fact of what I’m going to do but rather to just be in Wonder with what happens when I feel this emotion what does it bring up for me how does my life transform and what results occur yeah you know rather than just being like everything I need to feel and if I’m not then that’s an indicator of my failing and even even if it means I’m overwhelming myself all the time and then going back and forth between openness and avoidance right and and so that’s the other that’s another you’re just describing another mechanism the same mechanism for another Pitfall which is if you are loving an emotion welcoming an emotion to make it go away it won’t work like a lot of people will learn oh wow I do this and then all of a sudden I don’t you know that my feeling of fear goes away it doesn’t actually go away it it just feels different so we don’t identify it as that uncomfortable thing but um but if you’re doing it to do that then you’re still in resistance and it comes back so that’s the other Pitfall is to it is it is welcoming it at every level it is not trying to make it go away by welcoming it yeah and then what happens when you’re go ahead yeah what happens when you’re a kid and you approach your your parent and they love you in such a way as to make you go away okay oh yeah that’s a very nice painting yeah nice deer hey how does that how does that make you feel and how does that make your emotions feel if you’re doing that with them it reminds me of somebody that there’s like there’s like eight years old eight-year-old I’m with somebody I can’t remember who I was like eight years old and uh the kid was like I want to sing you guys a song and the parent says that’s wonderful and you know the most important thing about a song Don’t you and the kid’s like no it does that it ends the whole thing was just like like hey I’m not going to be able to pay attention to you forever and and and of course this kid was you know using that golden algorithm again this this kid was never satiated and so always wanted the attention because it was the parent was trying to avoid that experience and anyway um yeah so that’s another one and then I’d say the final one is that um it works for a while and then people forget about it so they have some big issue and then they feel the emotion the issue goes away and then they forget about the rule because everything feels good for a while oh now like there’s this big relief I’m no longer in this pattern I feel really relieved and then that doesn’t last forever obviously and then all of a sudden I’m in this new thing and then they forget the tool and and since this is such a powerful important tool it’s definitely a tool I recommend revisiting on a regular basis yeah I think that’s a big one for for people who have gone to a workshop or they’ve done some some kind of practice and they’re like oh wow so all it took was me being willing to feel this sadness and then on the other side of it was freedom and joy now I’m free and joyful but it’s actually it like the next time that sadness comes up you also would need to be just as willing to feel it in order to continue to have the freedom so it’s not like a one and done thing it’s a continuously becoming more and more and more open to these emotions which become as you get more and more sensitive to them they become more and more intense for the same thing to occur yes and so it is like the more sensitivity you get to these emotions and the more willing you are to feel even the subtle forms of them then your life changes and you have the freedom and the joy and it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to feel those things anymore it actually feels you’re gonna it actually means you’re gonna feel even more of them feeling yeah exactly and and for those of you who just puckered you’re just puckered hearing what Brad said and it starts feeling if you do it consistently it starts feeling better right away even though you’re becoming more sensitive which is an interesting dichotomy yeah yeah and the more that you actually genuinely start to enjoy the range of feelings the more it’ll come in you know because you’re you’re subconscious naturally filters out things that are not enjoyable yeah uh until you learn to integrate them and be like yeah I can actually enjoy feeling jealousy oh wow that delicious jealousy yeah it means there’s something I really really want you know yeah exactly can I let myself want it completely yeah yeah that’s it oh beautiful that was a long one that was great yeah really enjoyed it yeah me too all right thank you very much Brett good to talk to you as always yeah thank you all right let’s do it again soon have a good one all right thank you everybody bye thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com