I thought to myself, “I want to coach others on how to have a better life, and yet here I am feeling like shit for months on end. What would I coach myself to do in this situation?”
Then it hit me…
One big mission in my life is empowerment. It’s to help transform the lives of others.
While I had my fair share of challenges in life, and this wasn’t my first time feeling totally apathetic and depressed, I had never really gone through the experience of getting myself stuck, feeling totally lost and confused, and then pulling myself out of it in a conscious manner.
I thought… “What if I’m stuck so that I can understand how I got stuck and how to pull myself out of it in order to teach others my lessons?”
Instantly I felt a surge of energy that I hadn’t felt for months.
My situation wasn’t “bad,” it was exactly what I needed to go through to take my next step.
What was my next step?
I didn’t know it at the moment, but very quickly I got the idea to write the book “Why You’re Stuck,” which outlines the ways we get ourselves stuck and how to overcome them.
How could I write a book on the topic if I didn’t actually go through the experience myself?
Do you want to take advice about depression from a person who either hasn’t experienced it or doesn’t understand it? All they’ll say is some nonsense like, “Just cheer up!” The only thing this will accomplish is perhaps getting the depressed person to punch this insensitive a-hole in the face.
Consider this…
What if your setback is really just a setup for your next breakthrough? What would happen if you turned what is holding you back into your greatest ally by giving it love and appreciation rather than rejection?
I didn’t appreciate my “stuckness,” negative thinking, confusion, apathy, and other “bad” emotions as being exactly what I needed to move me forward. Looking back though, if I want to empower and lead others through dark times in their life, wouldn’t it pretty much necessitate that I go through something similar myself to have true empathy?
What if, on some level, your BS is a good thing? What if it’s there to empower you like shackles that you can break through, and in the process, you become far stronger for it? Wouldn’t that make it a gift rather than a curse?
What if not being OK is perfectly OK right now? What if the greatest challenges you go through are really just a part of your “before and after” story that will inspire others to greatness when they see what you’ve been able to overcome?
Feeling good and being happy are like breathing – generally good practices, but you may find yourself underwater and better holding off on them for a bit. I had to hold off on happiness, clarity, and positive thinking in order to explore the darker side of life. I had to take some time to ponder why people do evil things, why we hurt ourselves, and my own dark thoughts.
Here’s a newsflash: you don’t want to eliminate negative thinking. You don’t want to eliminate anger, sadness, frustration, confusion, and other emotions. You want to cultivate what brings those things into balance.
Getting rid of fear altogether would be potentially dangerous. If I only had courage and not fear, I could become foolhardy and make stupid decisions feeling like I was indestructible. Fear without courage on the other hand keeps one either paralyzed in terror or running from what they fear, which may ultimately be far more dangerous than facing it.
If you encountered a bear, the safest thing to do is to courageously face the bear instead of run from it. You can courageously face a bear even if you’re feeling fearful if you appreciate that running away means it’s going to chase you down. When you’re more scared of running than standing your ground, you’ll choose to face what you fear – even though you’re still probably shitting yourself.
Do you appreciate both fear and courage because you need them both at times? Do you appreciate how neither is good or bad until it’s put into a bigger picture? Do you appreciate how you don’t have to pick between one or the other, but you can have both working together?
Act only in fear or only in courage and you’ll eventually make the wrong choice. Appreciate both, and you can choose which serves you the most in the moment. Fear and courage are simply one set of emotions we choose from. You’ll come to see how there are many ranges of emotions that are each working to create harmony. Anything taken in isolation can become harmful.
You may intellectually know that negative emotions serve a useful role at times, yet intellectual knowledge of this still won’t fix an emotional issue. Appreciation is about your emotions – your heart, so to speak. You can’t just think it to be true, you must feel it to be true. Otherwise you go, “Yeah, I know this, but I’m still paralyzed by fear.” You’d be trying to fight an emotional battle with pure intellect.
Have you ever felt bad… and then felt bad for feeling bad?
“I feel bad for feeling bad.”
“Now I feel bad that I feel bad for feeling bad.”
“Ugh! I feel even worse now that I’m feeling bad for feeling bad about my bad feelings!”
The downward spiral continues with seemingly no way out.
You tell yourself, “I shouldn’t feel bad. I shouldn’t feel this anger, or sadness, or depression! I shouldn’t feel this confusion! I’m beyond this. I’m a good, wise, well-balanced, positive person. But yet I’m feeling bad… So something is wrong with me! I’m not OK, and that’s not OK!”
Stupid Obvious Reminder: Feeling bad about your bad feelings isn’t the way to stop feeling bad. #NoShitSherlock
It’s ridiculous, but isn’t that what so many of us end up doing?
The first thing to get out of this downward spiral is to stop labeling the feelings or thoughts or condition as “bad” or undesirable. You already know you can’t label things “good” or “bad” outside of looking at how it fits into a bigger context by now. Just realize you might not see the bigger picture until more time passes, or you choose to make it mean something good.
But changing your language is a slow albeit critically important way to change your feelings. Also, let’s not kid ourselves and think feeling depressed is sunshine and rainbows. It’s OK to acknowledge you feel like shit. You’re not a freakin’ robot here. You’re a human who’s going to get torn up about things, and that’s OK!
This last part is critical…
It’s OK if you’re not feeling OK.
The solution is obvious…
Be good with not feeling good.
Feel the feeling of “I’m not feeling OK and that’s OK.”
Look yourself in the mirror and affirm it.
Can it really be this simple?
Yes, but still you may be dealing with a bit of “easier said than done.”
This is because you may have plenty of practice with attaching feelings of resentment, discontent, anger, sadness, and hatred to what you don’t like, and not enough practice attaching feelings of joy, appreciation, and happiness to what you don’t like.
You have to retrain yourself to start to feel appreciation for whatever shows up in your life. You have to feel appreciation for whatever you’ve chosen to do. You have to feel appreciation for all your inner demons and drives. Taking it even further, this means appreciating why other people do what they do.
What if the way to stop feeling bad is to welcome and embrace with love and appreciation the very things making you feel bad? What would happen if you loved your uncertainty, suffering, and fear?
It’s not an intellectual idea, but a way of being. An intention you have. Something that takes diligent effort. It’s a practice, because you have to actually practice it. One can’t truly appreciate guitar playing by reading a book on how to play guitar and getting it only intellectually. One must actually sit down and start practicing the guitar to embody the concepts.
When creating music, each note can serve a role. An F# note isn’t good or bad or better or worse than a G note. Even a happy s
ong isn’t necessarily more beautiful or appreciated than a sad song. Music is beautiful because there’s no judgment of one note over the next. Tension in music is valued just as much as harmonious consonance. Nature shows us its beauty by reflecting back the full spectrum of colors. You may have a favorite color, but what kind of dull world would it be if you only saw the one color you prefer?
In much the same way, to create the life you want, you must choose to embrace all the notes and colors available to create the music and movie you dream of. And even plot twists you didn’t see coming can be appreciated for keeping you from getting bored.
We All Just Want Some Apples
While this appreciation may take time to cultivate, there is a way to speed up the process of appreciation.
You appreciate what you value, and you value things when you understand them on a deeper level. In a sense, you can use your intellect to affect your emotion.
If I told you I have an apple, and you value apples because you like their taste and know that they help keep you alive, you’d appreciate an apple if I gave it to you.
If I said, “I have a special type of new apple that is the juiciest, most delicious apple you’ve ever had in your life,” and you took a bite and confirmed it, would you value that apple way more than other apples?
You may think, “The apples I already have are good, but I’d rather have these. I might even trade in my old apples for these new apples. Not because the old ones are bad, but because these new apples are even better.” You wouldn’t stop valuing the old apples, you’d just prefer the new ones. This is critical to appreciate for what’s coming up.
If you already had some apples of your own, and then you were told “your apples look nice, but inside they’re really rotten,” would you appreciate them? Probably not anymore, once you have this understanding of their rottenness. Especially if you weren’t just told they were rotten, but you proved it to yourself by cutting them open and looking inside.
At first you might have loved your apples. Maybe you even clung to them and danced around giddy as a school girl about having a nice basket of these beautiful apples. But once you realize they’re rotten, you don’t value them.
Unless, of course, you were starving to death and didn’t feel you had another option for food. You’d still value a rotten apple if it meets your survival needs and it was all you had available. You’d still appreciate a rotten apple more than starving to death. Why? Because you appreciate life. The apple is just a means to an end. What you really appreciate, even more than apples, is being alive.
Disclaimer for smart asses: I realize you need to eat more than apples to live. It’s called an analogy.
All of these apples have some type of value. If you didn’t have any other options, a rotten apple is still valuable if it can keep you alive. However, if all three types of apples are available, and you looked beyond the surface of the apples and appreciated the true difference between them, wouldn’t you easily choose the most delicious apple?
The reason you’re still eating rotten apples is because either you have what looks like nice apples that you don’t realize are rotten because you haven’t looked inside them, or you know you have rotten apples but don’t feel better apples are available to you. “All the good apples are taken,” or “I don’t deserve good apples.”
For many people though, it’s not a matter of eating rotten apples. It’s a matter of eating mediocre apples. They’ve settled for what’s good enough to keep them alive, and they’re not going to risk giving up what keeps them alive to go search for something even greater. Maybe it’s just simply, “I don’t want to leave my mediocre apple tree for the slim chance of finding a better apple tree in case I starve to death on that journey.”
What does all this apple stuff mean? It’s OK if it’s not quite clear. I’m purposely keeping it vague. Confusion precedes clarity. It will make a lot more sense in the next section and the second time you read this book. You’re going to read this book a second time, right?
What you’re about to discover are the six human needs. Everything you do stems from trying to meet these six human needs. Just like one may eat a rotten apple to meet their physical needs if they had no other choice, one would eat a rotten apple in the form of unhealthy actions if it met their emotional needs and they felt they had no better choice.
Whenever you do something stupid that you know better than to do, it’s because it was meeting one of your needs. It’s like eating a rotten apple but feeling like you had to, otherwise you would starve to death emotionally if you didn’t. Rotten apples suck, but starving sucks more.
When you don’t do something that you keep telling yourself you should do, it’s because you feel you’d be missing out on something that meets your needs best. Like trading your good or acceptable apples for some that might end up being rotten.
Understand your needs and how you’re meeting them, and you’ll be able to understand all the crazy illogical behavior you have and other people have. No matter how ridiculous or short-sighted something may be, you, I, and others wouldn’t do it if it didn’t meet at least one of our needs on some level.
You Really Are Crazy… But So Is Everyone Else
Do you ever crave comfort? Hope you have a “steady” job, relationships, and security? Try to avoid mistakes? Analyze the hell out of everything to make sure you get it right?
Who doesn’t want these things to some degree?
We all want comfort. We desire some sense of safety and security. Even the biggest risk-taking, adrenaline junkies want some degree of certainty. Maybe the reason they take risks is because they’re certain they’ll get a rush from it.
Do you ever crave variety? Love having fun? Do something new every now and then for shits and giggles? Yearn for excitement?
Who doesn’t want these things to some degree?
We all want variety. As much as you like to know what’s going to happen at times, secretly or not so secretly, you wish for the occasional, unexpected occurrence to keep things interesting. Some like “safer” variety like playing a board game. Some like “riskier” variety like gettin #TurntUp and #CrayCray with a bunch of party animal friends and going streaking through the quad. #GotAnOldSchoolReferenceInASelfHelpBook #Winning
No matter how much you love comfort, a part of you, slowly or quickly, starts to feel angst when things are the same old, same old for too long. As much as you may desire predictability to some degree, there will always be a little kid in you who wishes things were new, exciting, and different.
So let’s think about this…
You want things to be the same and predictable, but you want things to be different and unpredictable.
You. Are. Crazy.
What about your relationships to other people or things…
Do you ever crave connection? Want to have other people’s approval? Or at least, the approval of some sexy person you’re totally into? Do you wish people liked you… even if you don’t always like them? Do you ever wish you were at least a little more like other people you admire, and less weird or different? Even if you didn’t give two shits about other people, do you at least enjoy having love and connection with a pet or animals or nature?
Who doesn’t want these things to some degree?
We all want connection. You can bullshit yourself and say, “I don’t care what anyone thinks about me.” But even if you don’t particularly care about other people, do you want to feel close to something? Want to feel like at least a dog or cat or horse or something on this planet is bonded with you? Doesn’t a part of you want to fit in somewhere, with some people or something? To be accepted? To be approved of?
Do you ever crave being significant? Perhaps not all the time, but do you ever secretly dream of having admirers who praise how special you are? Do you want to feel you’re different, in a good way, and therefore irreplaceable? That you have a unique role in this world that only you can fulfill? To have someone look at you and say “you�
�re one of a kind” in a totally awesome way?
Who doesn’t want these things to some degree?
We all want to feel significant. Some may prefer not to be in the spotlight and would often rather hide in a corner while others might be egomaniacal, selfie-taking machines. But either way, no matter how much or how little, there’s a part of all of us that wants to feel like we’re not just skin and bones, but someone truly special and unique. Someone that stands apart. One of a kind.
So let’s think about this…
You want to fit in, but you also want to stand apart.
You want to be like others, but also different from others.
Maybe one side of the spectrum is more appealing than the other, but no matter how much you fight it, do you find that secretly you kind of wish you had each at times?
You. Are. Crazy.
Totally illogical, right?
Don’t worry, we’re all a bit crazy.
If you get upset with others or yourself for not being logical, that’s illogical. We’re emotional creatures, and it would be illogical to expect human beings to always be logical. Not only that, it wouldn’t work. Behind all this craziness is actually a very sophisticated logic. The same kind of logic that says, “Breathing and not breathing are both good ideas and both bad ideas.”
But still, human beings do some downright stupid stuff that seems hard to justify.
Why does someone complain about their jacked-up relationship, but then stay in it?
Why does someone worry about a heart attack, and then go stuff themselves with doughnuts?
Why does someone join a hate group, even though we all want to love and be loved?
All of these crazy behaviors are really just examples of eating rotten apples. The apples are the behavior, and the appetite is driven by the six human needs.
Learning the six human needs that motivate you will help you determine what you really want, why you want it, and even open up new possibilities for how you can achieve happiness and fulfillment right now.
Break Through Your BS_Uncover Your Brain's Blind Spots and Unleash Your Inner Greatness Page 8