Kelly is braced. She has a wonderful marriage, three healthy kids, and a thriving career, and she’s “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” certain she doesn’t deserve it. Joe identifies the mechanism as the intellectual brain telling us we can’t be excited because the other foot is going to fall.
“Our intellectual brains will tell us we can’t be excited because the other foot’s going to fall. It tells us we can’t be sad cuz it’s going to last forever. You can’t get angry cuz you’ll destroy what you love. You can’t be scared because you’ll be less capable.”
Each of these stories is a fiction the intellect uses to keep an emotion at bay, and each is wrong. Crying actually relieves and doesn’t last forever; anger provides clarity rather than destruction; feeling fear makes you more capable, not less. Joe notes that Navy SEALs under attack breathe deep and stay present with the fear precisely because it sharpens them.
The “other shoe” story is the version that specifically blocks excitement and gratitude. Joe is blunt that bad things will happen—there’s no life without them—and bracing won’t make them hurt less. So the cost of the story is pure: it steals the goodness of now without buying any protection.
Related Concepts
- Foreboding joy—fear of the other shoe dropping—blocks gratitude
- ‘Calm down’ trains us out of excitement in childhood
- Anxiety is often repressed excitement
- Saying ‘I’m excited’ while feeling it can unkink anxiety
- Anxiety is a road sign that shows you where you’re abandoning yourself
- The pressure-resist cycle is a game to avoid feeling sadness