Summary
A Q&A episode where Joe and Brett tackle listener questions spanning ambition, using emotions at people, dealing with narcissistic parents, addiction to stress and dysfunction, helping kids move anger, feeling emotions all the way through, holding perspectives while in VIEW, and common pitfalls of emotional fluidity.
The throughlines are identity and emotional honesty. Ambition becomes stress when tied to identity (“I’m no good if I don’t succeed”). Using emotions “at” people means you’re not actually feeling them — you want someone else to feel them for you. Narcissism exists on a spectrum we’re all on. Stress addiction reproduces childhood emotional environments. And feeling emotions fully requires letting them restructure your psyche — which means letting go of who you were before.
A key meta-insight: every thought you have about not being able to feel an emotion is itself an emotion you get to feel. The question “how do I feel feelings all the way through?” is itself a thought that may be getting in the way.
Key Concepts
- Ambition without identity attachment is relief, not pressure
- Doing emotions at people means you’re not actually feeling them
- Narcissism is a spectrum we are all on
- Boundaries, not VIEW, are the tool for narcissists
- Stress addiction reproduces your childhood emotional environment
- Model emotions for children rather than managing them into feeling
- Feeling an emotion fully requires letting your identity restructure
- Pretend you’re an actor to access stuck emotions
- VIEW cannot be used as a tool to get somewhere
- Identifying with emotions slows their transformation
- Every thought about not feeling is an emotion to feel
Key Quotes
“The ambition itself is almost the relief of the pressure.”
“If you’re doing it at somebody, it’s not love. Maybe it’s actually the case for all emotions.”
“The idea that there’s somebody who’s a narcissist and we’re not is ridiculous. All of us have some way in which we are narcissistic.”
“When you’re really fully feeling an emotion it’s like an earthquake and it reorganizes your psyche from the ground up.”
“Every thought that you have about not being able to feel an emotion all the way through is an emotion that you get to feel.”
“Pretend you’re an actor and your job is to give the most convincing performance of sadness — but you’re just an actor.”
Transcript
the idea that there’s somebody who’s a narcissist and we’re not is ridiculous like all of us have some way in which we are narcissistic and it might just be there’s something deep within me that wants to be felt and if it’s cycling like an addiction it’s probably a sign that I’m not actually getting it every thought that you have about not being able to feel an emotion all the way through is an emotion that you get to feel prior to things getting wired together and to patterns and ways that we learn to get love underneath all of it is what view points to the Natural State we’ve had a lot of questions coming in we have a survey up on Spotify if you’re listening to this on Spotify you might see when you finish an episode that there’s a way to ask us a question or suggest another topic and others have been asking via Twitter X and other formats so we’ve got a whole bunch of questions and I’d love to see how many of those we could make it through and make this a Q&A episode how’s that sound cool I love it that makes it easy yeah awesome maybe we’ll only get through one let’s find out yeah great yeah any one of these questions could be a full episode most likely all right well let’s start with dimma dimma asks uh about ambition where does ambition come from and how do you deal with the pressure it creates this a great so where does ambition come from I I don’t know I mean I know that we’re all born with some level of ambition I suspect that neurologically speaking that that level of ambition is different based on some neurochemical genetic brain construct that is you know unique in all of us um but I I’ve never met anybody with zero ambition right they would just be what just like not even eat and then die so I think we’re born with it is the short answer to where where does ambition come from I I don’t know uh like it almost doesn’t make sense in my brain when somebody asked the second part of that question which is like why is it pre why is why does it create pressure is that that was that how it was it was how do you deal with the pressure it creates how you deal with the pressure it creates so I would say that ambition doesn’t create pressure I mean yeah needing to be a value like you know thinking that you’re who you are is tied to your success and your ambition that would all create a lot of pressure but just the raw ambition it’s like I want to get up and walk out of bed that’s what ambition is and then it you know can go as I want to create this huge company or I want to you know uh let the whole world know that they’re loved there’s a thousand things that that ambition can express in and and it’s just the impetus to move and do something it feels like the pressure of ambition comes when you start attaching stories to it such as you know I’m no good if I don’t my identity requires that I um you know if I don’t the whole world is going to collapse you know the the if I don’t live to my ambition around climate then you know the atmosphere will burn and all the children will die like that all that stuff I think is what creates the pressure the ambition itself is almost the relief of the pressure and and I I’m reminded of something I heard recently and I can’t remember exactly where I heard it but it was a definition of stress and the definition was beautiful in the fact that it wasn’t overwhelm and stress based on everything you have to do is it was based on not doing it and I find that to be very much the case that if I am not acting on the thing that I that I want to be acting on that there’s a lot of stress that shows up in my system and I noticed that with other people as well that often times the stress is the thinking about doing it and it’s relieved by the doing of it itself and so to me that would be the ambition is that the impetus to move so I don’t see that as the stress I think it’s the stories that we tell ourselves or the ways that we convince ourselves that we’re stuck that causes the stress yeah it seems that there’s a a distinction between different kinds of of ambition there’s the there’s the ambition that’s just the natural thing that’s happening that you don’t need to manage and then there’s ambition that is a trying and there’s there’s the kind of ambition that’s like overriding in Natural Evolution or impulse in order to and that’s where the stories come in like I have to be of value I have to be a certain way I need to be successful so I’m going to strive rather than unfold it seems like that’s a distinction here yeah between the ambition that’s stress and the ambition that’s not yeah it’s funny um you know somebody that we hired recently has been working and and just hasn’t been happy hasn’t been doing the stuff that’s needed to be done and I was talking to her the other day and I said and it became clear that it was really important that she she she wanted to do things right and I said oh God please don’t like just like like don’t ask yourself you have a task don’t ask yourself how do I do this right please ask yourself how do I enjoy doing the task and then do the task the way that you enjoy doing the task and for whatever reason it clicked and and boom like two days later everything that I would want to work with was there just because of that flip of the switch the ambition was wanting to like be a part of the team and contribute and and and and be and live this purpose that she gets to live by working with us but the the thing that was getting in the way was the trying to get something perfect and as soon as it went to like oh how do I enjoy this it was like like the productivity quadrupled it was just amazing to see what happened so that’s another I say that’s another thing is when you if your ambition is getting in your way move to that metric and say okay how do I get things done in a way that I enjoy them and see how much more productive you become how much more your ambition feels like it’s getting fulfilled yeah yeah and then then that point it doesn’t matter where it comes from it matters there’s there’s a exactly there’s a way you’ll notice where it comes from and it won’t the question will fall away yeah absolutely yeah thank you um so Beth asks uh using emotion at people what does that look like for emotions like sadness anxiety Etc is love an emotion that gets used at people in parenthesis that’s a great one it’s a great question love bombing yeah yeah yeah um yeah absolutely uh all all of the above so I think you can constantly watch people who want other people to hold their fear and they’ll come into a conversation and oh I’m really really worried about it and they’re hoping that somebody else will also be really worried about it so that they’re not alone in the worry and it’s so it’s literally using your emotion to manage somebody else and so that’s like an example of it you see this in offices all the time somebody’s really anxious and they like need to everybody else to be anxious or they don’t feel safe um so that’s one I think getting sad at people I mean anybody who’s guilt tripped anybody else that like sad sad at somebody is like a prime Guilt Trip like like movement I’m going to be sad so that you manage or change the way you are whether it’s subconscious or conscious you know oftentimes like when someone gets angry at somebody they don’t know that they’re manipulating their emotional Behavior they just feel out of control I think sometimes that’s the case with sadness sometimes that’s the case often with the fear yeah but when you’re when if you look in your like oh if that person doesn’t change their behavior at all am I still okay then and if the answer is no then you know you’re in that place of doing it at somebody so absolutely all of them can be done love at somebody yes I mean I If It’s Love at somebody it’s not love so there’s that but there’s this thing that looks like love at somebody that is definitely like I’m going to love you up so that you love me back or I’m going to love you up so that you know I can feel feel like a sense of connection that you don’t particularly want to give me or you know there’s all that things that like I’m going to endear myself with you I’m gonna all that stuff that you can use love for but then it’s not really love but it looks like love and it and it you know might feel like love a little bit but not It Isn’t Love yeah and that that illuminates something interesting here because if I if I think to apply that across what makes it special about love that if you’re doing it at somebody it’s not love maybe it’s actually the case for all emotions if you’re sad at somebody it’s not really sadness that you’re feeling you’re there you’re projecting the sadness you’re using the sadness to manipulate which is a way of avoiding feeling it so it seems like that might be true for any of these emotions where if you are using them to manipulate you are essentially self-manipulating your experience of the emotion which is one reason why it might just continue showing up in your life in the same way without really moving and transforming that’s a beautiful point right someone’s guilty you with sadness they’re not actually feeling their sadness so they want you to feel it for them yeah they exactly that’s right yeah yeah that’s an interesting right they want you to feel the fear for them you want yeah but it also means that they’re not fully feeling it because if they were fully feeling it they wouldn’t be trying to get it out of their system onto you so yeah that’s a that’s a that’s a great reframe of it so yeah I love that yeah thank you Beth yeah uh we have a question from a just the letter a hello a how do how do you apply the view principles when interacting with a narcissistic parent o wow that’s a question yeah um yeah okay so let’s let’s defining terms I think is really important on this one there’s a narcissist and that’s like a personality disorder um sounds like that’s what they’re talking about before we go into that like we all have a narcissism to us so the idea that there’s somebody who’s a narcissist and we’re not is ridiculous are narcissistic um the thing about narcissism in general there’s a couple things about narcissism in us even and even more if somebody has that personality disorder is that um narcissism is an inability to feel like emotions to feel emotions like it this the best definition I’ve ever heard of it I think it was Lowen who said it and he said like narcissism is the incapacity to feel emotions on an emotional level mentally what I see is it’s the uh the part that thinks you’re better and worse than somebody else so people who are like the narcissists that I’ve run into and since I like work with CEOs of big companies like you you run into them um what you notice is that they very much think they’re smarter than everybody or most people but they also feel like there’s something really wrong and broken with them and so both of those two things are happening simultaneously one maybe is more subconscious one is more extroverted um and so so that’s that’s another thing that’s really important to know about the narcissism and then the the other thing that’s I think really important to know about narcissism is that they they don’t feel contained so they often when I mean containment I mean that their trip isn’t going to work like if they if their trip if their thing that they’re going to do I’m going to yell at you and get angry at you if that works they don’t feel contained if they are more of a malignant or what I would call a passive narcissist and so it’s passive aggression um and then and if their passive aggression doesn’t work then they can feel contained and so VIEW really doesn’t have much of a place with somebody who’s like very far out there on the narcissistic scale it’s like you can do it for your benefit and for your love and joy but if you’re really really far out there then boundaries are really the tool that you want to be able to use and you want to make sure that you can contain the person that you’re in love with your own anger enough that their anger doesn’t affect you that you’re in love with your own passive aggression enough that their passive aggressiveness doesn’t affect you and so that you can actually contain them because without that containment they can never feel safe also it’s absolutely 100% totally wonderful and acceptable to just separate yourself from a narcissist even if it’s their even if it’s your parent like there’s there’s nothing that says that we have to interact with narcissists to be good people or something like that it’s totally okay to say that relationship is toxic and I’m going to limit it whether that’s all the way or just to limit it in such a way that works so boundaries I think are absolutely 100% critical yeah I notice I’m a little bit thrown by the way that like you you said something about how like VIEW may not be the tool here but boundaries are the tool what what would make those mutually exclusive they wouldn’t be mutually exclusive but what I notice is that when people are using VIEW they drop like using VIEW in itself is dropping the is becoming partial so if you’re using VIEW as a way to get somewhere with the parent then you’re not actually in VIEW because VIEW can’t be used particularly and so throw the tool out drop I see so what you’re saying what you’re saying there is if you’re using VIEW as a tool to get somewhere with your parents yes it’s not a failure of the tool it’s that you’re actually using it as a tool which has pulled you out of VIEW which would actually be impartial which might be impartial to the reality that I don’t want to be engaging in the way that we’re engaging right now impartial to the reality that I want to draw a boundary yes uh perhaps a loving boundary perhaps a somewhat messy boundary yes to take care of myself and being impartial to the results of that in the world and in trust that taking care of myself is taking care of them on some level yeah I think that the the issue also is that you know vulnerability impartiality empathy and wonder is something that will bring most people into connection if you are that way you will most people will be brought into connection with you and and so you can start thinking of it as a tool it that doesn’t happen with about 5% of people if you’re if you’re chemicals are off or you you have a mental illness or there’s you know neurologically potentially atypical those things may not work to bring into connection but so using VIEW is a way to keep yourself in connection that’s fantastic and so great do that but if you’re using it to get them somewhere to improve the relationship it’s not going to work not only because you’re using it and and being partial but also because it’s like someone who’s really narcissistic your vulnerability is is something they’ll exploit yeah and I’d also watch here for the projection too like we could have described all of this not in the third person but in a first person describing that aspect of ourselves and when when you have a model that there are 5% of people who are a certain way and somehow different it can be really easy and convenient to avoid your own feeling to to apply that label to somebody correct this person’s just a narcissist so yeah that’s exactly why started yeah yeah that’s exactly why I started with the narcissism we all have narcissism inside of it like it we’re all on this narcissistic spectrum and to and to separate yourself from that is something else and the other thing is if a narcissist is triggering you like great there’s all sorts of stuff that you get to learn about yourself because you’re being triggered and there’s the projections and that’s that’s like that’s great use of of a narcissist is to see all that stuff it’s also great use of a narcissist to learn how to draw boundaries like just because they’re not capable of a human interaction that you want to have doesn’t mean that they hold no use to you it doesn’t mean you can’t love them it doesn’t mean you can’t be in connection with them even if you’re separating yourself from them right you can say oh hey Mom narcissist Mom I don’t want to hang out with you in these ways anymore I’m only going to really interact with you in this way or I’m not going to interact with you at all and still have a sense of connection for that for for for Mom and and that is all about you like your ability to connect your ability to stay openhearted towards a narcissist your ability to contain them your ability to draw boundaries that’s all great stuff for that you get to learn so if you just say they’re a narcissist you throw all that baby out with the bath water yeah yeah and taking that step back drawing that boundary may be the first step to really repairing and developing a deeper connection with them over time correct giving your yourself that space to allow that distance and have it be okay and not guilt yourself about it or yeah feel connected and tied into the dynamic that’s and play around them yeah it’s exactly right and yeah with parent it’s it’s a particularly difficult one but it’s I mean definitely definitely doable yeah awesome yeah that was a good one thank you a whoever you are so Asana asked uh can you talk about being addicted to stress and dysfunction yeah oh I could talk about that good yeah uh it’s it’s a such a broad question I don’t know where to start exactly um except for yes I I definitely see people addicted to stress or addicted to dysfunction or addicted to shame or addicted to a lot of the emotional patterns that we have um I give you an example of this you know when my mom and dad were you know in their 50s they were stressed over the fact that their son had a green Mohawk that uh you know that I was not doing well in school that I was running away from home and I would say like 40% of their time was stressed and then I became successful moved out of the house and everything and then they were still stressed 40% of the time but was over like if the shopping got done or if the roast was you know overcooked or whatever the hell it was so absolutely I noticed that people have a kind of an emotional diet that they like to keep themselves on and you can call it addiction I think that’s a fine way to call it um you can also call it identity I think that’s also a fine thing you know it also for some people stress and dysfunction is a way to stay feeling alive you know you get to see this with teenagers a lot is like they create this drama because there’s this feeling of aliveness in it it’s like like going and watching a horror show or going and uh like watching a like an action film like there’s this we do it so that we get to feel alive like we get to feel like we’re in a drama and the drama is being resolved and all that goodness and so I think that’s one thing to talk about is just that yeah it absolutely exists yeah I want to add as well that you know the framing it as an addiction might imply that the whole pattern is unhealthy and parts of the pattern may unhealthy but if you look really deeply under what’s what’s trying to occur there might be an Impulse that is actually a like a deep search for homeostasis from the body so one of my experiences with like what we might call addiction to stress would be uh a lot of some some of the motivation into extreme sports not all of it some of it was always a search for aliveness and exploration and joy and there was also some of it that was just oh There Was Fear in my nervous system that I wasn’t feeling all the time and when I put myself in a situation where that fear made sense then all of a sudden everything was unified and things made sense so it made sense for me to be in situations that were scary and that allowed me to process those feelings that I wasn’t capable of feeling or wasn’t likely to be feeling otherwise I was suppressing um kind of back to our earlier conversation about narcissism being the incapacity to feel also I think like the fear of feeling the fear of our feelings yes uh and I feel like there’s there’s a way that that actually helped me process through a lot of that in my journey and so I could have labeled it as an addiction and it might just be something that wants to be felt that I’m recreating the situation to feel it and if it’s cycling that I’m not actually getting it right it’s not necessarily a sign that I should turn the other way and not not look there and try to like completely avoid the pattern it might be that I need to go deeper enough into the pattern to really feel the thing that the pattern’s actually trying to to create the chance to feel the other the other thing to say about stress and and dysfunction is that it’s typically just what we learned as kids so like we’re reproducing the level of stress and dysfunction that we had in our house either by being the thing creating the stress or dysfunction or marrying or having friends that create like the stress or dysfunction so like I can count to like 20 friends that I had that literally that were very calm but they lived like a chaotic childhood and it’s like hey what are you doing for a living now and literally one of them became like the head of a circus Road Show just like absolute crazy chaos stress and dysfunction and and you know he he played that same role out so so as we start feeling the emotions as we start moving through the trauma oftentimes a lot of that uh the narcissism fades but also the the addiction or the propensity for dysfunction and and anxiety and all that stuff that just starts fading yeah that’s how back to the identity too if if my identity is I’m the one that is calm in the face of chaos yeah then I can’t have that identity if I’m not making sure that there’s chaos around me so I can be calm in it exactly totally totally yeah I love that that’s like that’s one of the coolest things about identity it’s like if I’m the calm one if I’m the smart one around all these stupid people like you see that with CEO identities like some of them are like very much that then like wow you hire a whole bunch of dumb people like it’s a it’s a crazy thing that disempower them in ways that make them look dumb exactly yeah exactly you make choices that don’t allow them to be successful and and so it’s just it’s a beautiful thing that identity really actually doesn’t just carve out how we look at the world but who who’s around us and so that’s the other piece to it which is that that as the identity slips away generally so does the so does the chaos so does the stress so does the dysfunction not all of it because there’s some that’s just very much tied to the trauma and to the emotions as well yeah yeah awesome yeah thank you Asana this is one from Vlada on parenting and emotional fluidity my kids are not interested in getting anger out so how do I help them move it oh I love your agenda oh my gosh and I can’t yet uh relate I don’t yet have kids but I’m just sure I’m going to be I’m gonna get it when I do uh so the first one yeah great you see the agenda which is lovely um all people want to move get like it’s natural for us to want to move emotions like it’s just it’s as natural as anything if you if nobody’s been trained by Society you know you look at little kids who aren’t trained they they want their emotions moving like that’s just our nature so so I don’t you know but at the same time I understand because kids will go through something like no I don’t want to get angry um there’s two things you can do the first one is show them what it’s like like just ask them to witness you as you’re moving your anger that one’s a really very useful thing uh this second thing that is useful is to uh draw boundaries with them if you tell them they can’t have something they will get angry and then you’re like oh great that’s anger that’s fantastic what I noticed that some parents do I can’t speak for in this case but what some parents do it’s like I want you to go move your anger but when you’re like angry because this thing isn’t you’re not getting this thing or this thing you don’t want that I want you to stifle so it’s like yeah don’t get angry at me now but hey let’s go over here and then go beat the heck out of something and which is really telling the kid it’s not okay to get angry so of course they don’t want to get angry um right or it’s okay to get angry but you can’t let it transform you and create a different situation for you because my way is still the highway right oh my way or the highway right and so so I just so with our kids like there was a big learning that when they were angry because of a boundary that was being drawn because they couldn’t do something that they wanted to do because they couldn’t have something they wanted to do that was the time to go like yeah yeah right on I love your anger that was the time to really be excited about it uh and drawing boundaries really helps them get angry um and then but once they see it and then they usually want to do it with you depending on how old they are um you might get a lot more resistance if they’re teenagers and you’ve been managing them their whole life than like they’re probably not going to go for it with you and so there’s other ways to help them get it and find other circumstances where anger is part of it like boxing or or you know a like a self-defense course or something like that those are ways to start that movement but what I notice is that even those teenagers they’re angry a lot of the time and you can say oh cool I see you’re angry this is amazing so I but the bigger part that you’re saying there that is in the question is that that there’s a management to it and that management kids resist it no matter what you’re doing with your kid the more you’re trying to manage it the more you resist it at some age like once the kids get to about 10 years old then I would be having a conversation with them that says something to the effect of hey it’s really this is what I’ve learned about getting angry it’s really important to me my job is to teach you this as a parent and so how do we explore this in a way that you get to learn and I feel like I’ve done a good job and you’ve gotten to learn everything from me like what works for you which is a very different thing than trying to manage them into an experience which they will resist yeah it’s modeling it yeah creating space for it exactly yeah beautiful thank you for that question V yeah oh but by the way on that one I just remember these times where like you know my my daughters would be like I’m not angry I’m not angry like yeah I really love your anger I’m not angry yeah you’re not angry stop saying that yeah yeah awesome yeah thanks V uh we have another one from Cheryl uh Joe often talks about the concept of feeling the feeling all the way through as the tool to find Freedom what does that look like and how do you feel a feeling all the way through yeah there’s a tweet that I recently made that I really liked about this um yeah or just a a metaphor that came up for me which is that when you’re really fully feeling an emotion it’s like an earthquake and it reorganizes your psyche from the ground up you’re not the same person afterwards as you were before and so one thing I noticed is something that stops the feeling from really moving all the way through is the any amount of subtle trying to hold myself together so that I’m still the same person after I felt the emotion I still have the same wants goals still have the same story about who’s right and who’s wrong and if I’m holding on to anything about my world then that’s going to slow down or stagnate the process of an emotion moving through yeah that’s really true when it moves it’ll restructure the way I see things yeah that’s what makes it such an efficient beautiful biological process yeah yeah yeah that’s a great thing your mind is another one just not just in that capacity of wanting to hold on to an identity but uh but just trying to figure it out like there’s clearly like you’re you’re you know so many people in our society have learned when I have a problem I go to my mind and I will find out the solution and I will work it out and then but with emotions it does just the opposite as soon as you enter your mind the emotions will will stop moving so even the question that’s being asked here in a way is getting in the way of feeling the emotions right it is a thought that I am not feeling an emotion right now it is not a reality and so the more you can put your um attention in your body the more you can follow your body not try to get somewhere not judge what’s happening in your body so so somebody like lays down breathes a little bit and starts feeling their emotions as soon as they think this isn’t how it’s supposed to be I shouldn’t feel this way or this is too subtle or anything like that then it immediately constricts the emotional process whereas if you feel the body and just follow it and be like oh well where’s this River going to go and I have no judgment then the whole thing moves a lot better so that’s another way to feel it all the way through also like it it happens as it’s supposed to happen so you trying to push it there is going to slow the whole thing down and so it’s much you know you’re there because you love the emotion like if you felt an emotion all the way through you love the emotion at the end of it and like in love with the emotion like you would with your with your kid it’s like this wonderful amazing part of you and so that’s how you know you’re there but the process it can look a lot of different ways and so it’s really just about following it the there’s a question the question is is kind of like asking how do I float down the river how do I fully float down the river you know and it’s like but I don’t know exactly how to answer that question like or it’s maybe more like how does a log float down the river it’s like that’s what it does it’s what we do if we don’t get in the way yeah and there’s an interesting kind of double bind there where like if you have the thought oh I don’t feel anything I’m not feeling anything and you trace that thought back to where it comes from how is it not fear or there’s like an assumption thoughts come from they require assumptions to operate we need to have certain axioms for which to do the logic with and so what’s the axiom there the axiom is I should be feeling something that I’m not and what is under that the fear of not feeling the fear of not being good enough and whatever that is if you look on the other side of the spine you then have the the strategy of trying to push any emotion to make it happen to try to poke to make something happen and that also is so it might be that there’s sadness and you’re like why am I not feeling sadness I should be feeling sadness I’m going to try to feel my sadness and in reality what really wants to be felt first is the fear of not feeling your sadness right yeah or the shame of not feeling the sadness followed by the fear followed by the sadness itself yeah right or it might be the anger often times with sadness for some people it’s the anger that I can’t feel it but what I like about what you’re saying is it is a really cool hack is every thought you have about every thought that you have about not being able to feel an emotion all the way through is an emotion that you get to feel that’s like such a beautiful pointer every thought yeah and sometimes the river goes around the bend then through a little gentle class two rapids then to the right and over a waterfall and then class four exactly and then into the ocean you know right exactly why isn’t it all waterfalls where’s it going next exactly exactly yeah it’s really sweet that thought process I really dig that thought process oh I should be able to cry is shame and so feel the shame uh you know oh my gosh if I cry then I’m never going to stop crying oh that’s fear so I feel the fear yeah yeah and another hack is fake it if you’re just really stuck in your head you can just use the old crowbar which I had to use which is just fake the emotion for a while until it finally flows yeah yeah I think there’s a really important subtlety there as well because there’s I think there’s a fine line between just full on faking it where on some level you know you’re faking it and like you’re trying to get yourself somewhere and so the resistance happens and then you get nowhere but there’s something there’s a subtle fine line where if you’re faking it with sincerity there’s an invitation like hey I’m if there’s hey in their muscles if there’s a tension that’s kind of like this one that wants to be felt let’s try feeling like you’re welcome to feel it if if there’s tears that want to come like I’m going to get the process started and if I’m striking a cord you can the body can follow it yeah and you kind of hit a resonance and it starts to move yeah the the way I describe it that I think works the best is pretend you’re an actor and your job is to give the most convincing performance of sadness but you’re just an actor and what it does is it does the two things that we just that you just talked about the first thing that it does is it it creates a sincerity but the second thing it does is it allows you not to believe any of your thoughts because you’re an actor yeah and so it’s like you’re outside observing it so it’s your identity is not involved right because your identity is the one observing the act and you have the sincerity or it’s not a good performance and you don’t believe any of the the thing because it’s just a story and though if you’re going to fake it that’s the most effective way I’ve seen to fake it is pretend you’re an actor playing the part of you right now and your job is to give the most sincere performance best performance of anger best performance of sadness yeah that’s that’s the old crowbar yeah the pointer of being an actor acting as you also is just like a great way to drop into the body because okay how am I going to act like me the first place I’m going to go at least maybe that’s me but the first place I’d go is into my body to be like what does what does my body want to do if it’s that yeah you know if I’m if I’m feeling that and then I’m most likely to actually take the shape that any that there that is actually what my body wants to take to move that emotion yeah so it’s tapping the the body’s wisdom there without overthinking it right yeah which would not which would be the opposite of tapping the body wisdom yeah exactly tapping the body wisdom rather than overthinking it yeah yeah this is from Asana uh what does it mean to passionately hold a perspective while being grounded curious of others perspectives especially when they spur feelings of anger and frustration what if I don’t want to be in VIEW all the time yeah yeah so we’re not making it wouldn’t be in VIEW if you’re forcing yourself to be in VIEW right that’s that’s a better answer than I have I the first thing I’d say is like let let’s not like I don’t want to VIEW doesn’t VIEW in itself just if you’re in VIEW you can’t see morality around VIEW meaning like like let’s not make this like the golden rule or something that you have to do or you know right or wrong or good or bad or VIEW is just a place you get to go if you want to go there like it’s quite lovely and it’s and it is connected and so I think that’s the first thing is no you don’t ever have to be in VIEW and and I hope that during our course we never tell anybody that you have to do this I think people I know a lot of people walk away with it and um but like it doesn’t have to be it’s like not a it’s not an imperative uh it’s hey experiment with this see how enjoyable this is see how it is to live in this see how much you want to live in this it’s great um and pretty soon you’ll just learn that like oh this is like a place that gets a lot of really good results in life and I like it and it’s enjoyable and it doesn’t always get me what I want but eventually it gets me something better than what I want and all that stuff um as far as what if you have a perspective yeah great have a perspective I think there’s there’s a there’s a kind of an interesting point of view here which is you can hold a perspective and not think you’re right and it’s an interesting nuance and you can hold a perspective and think you’re right that’s fine that and what I notice is holding a perspective and saying oh right I this is a perspective that’s dear to me and I can’t believe that it’s right I just know it’s the one that’s right for me is is a there’s a lot of freedom in that both freedom of action and freedom of not taking things personally and so the the implied part of the question that Asana asks here is especially when they spur feelings of anger and frustration that I have a perspective that is creating other people’s anger or their perspective is creating my anger I would say either one of those two things it’s like yeah then go feel the anger like or go feel the fear that somebody’s angry at you or the feeling of aloneness or the feeling of I’m different and isolated or whatever the emotions are that are there it’s like fantastic to have all that experience as well yeah something that comes up for me just pondering this is that this is this is my perspective that may be true may be not true but I sort of perceive VIEW to be a natural state for us prior to things getting wired it is what what VIEW points to the Natural State and you can’t adopt your natural state or push yourself into your natural state you can explore it right and the way you explore it is seeing what comes up in the way that seems to be in the way the stories that would have you say oh I’m getting angry therefore that’s is VIEW well is it like what is it the story or the anger right that is actually in the way of recognizing that Natural State yeah yeah that’s a lovely way to put it yeah there was one more question that I really liked in here that I wanted to um there’s a lot of really good ones I want to do this again Scott says or asks the common pitfalls of self transformation through emotional fluidity needing needing an emotion to move thinking once it moves then you’ll be lovable using tactics as a strategy to move things etc so it feels like all of those are traps about thinking about your emotional experience so it’s like those are all traps of thought when related to like emotional fluidity these are the thought patterns that get me all messed up around emotional fluidity emotional fluidity has its own pitfalls which is what the like the little pitfalls or eddies along the way one of them that I find is that um people start believing their emotions um that the emotions become very convincing like the thoughts did for a while and then the thoughts get rejected no thoughts are bad emotions are good and it’s really the integration of the two that’s important and neither of them are bad or good and both of them have value and it’s being able to have them both online together that actually creates the most clarity so that’s I think one of the things that gets in like one of the common pitfalls in emotional fluidity there’s other ones we have the the episode about the stages of emotion um and emotional fluidity and a lot of those have a trap to them like the one I fell into of I’m talking about my emotions and at one point that helped me feel them and at some point that stopped helping me feel them so that there are ways in which like the tools that get us to emotional fluidity have to be left behind and it can it just turns into an experience of emotions moving through your body but so holding on to those tools is trap things a goddess there uh that’s another trap that I think people get into with them as far as the ones that were mentioned here about thinking that you need to do it to be lovable your emotions wouldn’t fall for that in a hot second neither would your body that’s a that’s a mind thing that would that would convince you of something like that and emotional fluidity would and in fact probably require you to mourn the fact that you thought you needed to do something to be so yeah something interesting about what you said about like one of the pitfalls being that people will start believing their emotions it’s yeah like it seems to me that that’s what that what would happen is actually that they believe an interpretation of their emotions like I’m angry so that means something’s somebody did something wrong or I’m no literally that I also mean I also mean I’m angry means I’m angry like I believe that I’m angry and that it’s not something else that there’s sadness underneath it or that’s one or that the anger like it’s I that I’m angry that it’s not just something that’s moving through me they’ll define themselves by their emotions right the way they would define themselves by the thoughts yeah so it seems like we have some independent things going on here that like to the extent that you you can see through your identity and you feel your emotions you’re less likely to make the emotions about you so if you if you do the work of opening up your access to your emotions without doing the work of seeing through identity or seeing through thoughts you might sometimes find yourself in that snare yeah yes and feeling your emotions all the way through also loosens the identity right like as you start noticing like this is just something that moves through you and it has nothing to do with you it’s not personal that it’s not you getting angry it’s just that’s what’s happening then that also loosens up the identity quite a bit like often times when people have a big emotional expression their mind will be very quiet you see this in ground breakers all the time their mind will be very quiet like their their identity will be very like gone you know yeah for a little bit and so it it works both ways it’s it but what I notice is that people can identify with their emotions yeah for slows down the that’s the the interesting catch-22 here is the more you identify with your emotions the the less the emotion gets to fully move and restructure your identity and allow it to dissolve and fall away yeah and that also makes it a virtuous cycle the more the more of this work you do the more the the faster the rate of transformation yeah in that way absolutely that’s right yeah so yeah I that answers the question I don’t I don’t know if there’s anything else to add yeah that’s it that’s what I’ve got awesome yeah cool well thanks everybody for the questions uh keep sending them if you notice in Spotify there is when you finish this episode you’ll likely be asked I don’t haven’t seen the interface but you’ll be asked what kind of topic should we do for our next episode feel free to just drop something in there or hit us on Twitter X LinkedIn email any of the any of the socials or the platforms we love to hear from you and love to do more of these these are fun yeah awesome thank you very much Brett thanks everybody for the great questions yeah thank you Joe all right take care bye