Most people are weighed down by a considerable amount of emotional baggage. And when you're dragging insecurities, irrational fears, neuroses, negative self talk and self image issues around with you, it limits not only your life quality but also your effectiveness.
So, what do we do to deal with such problems?
As ever, the How to Get Your Sh*t Together series is here to provide you with the top 3 highest leverage interventions. Meaning: if you want to become emotionally resilient and get rid of your baggage, these are the 3 simplest and most powerful tools to start with.
In this episode...
Some of the points covered in today's conversation:
- Imagine how nice it would be to have absolutely no negative mental chatter in your head. At all. Think of how much "brain bandwidth" that would free up. As it turns out, this is absolutely possible.
- Why the experience of school was traumatic for me and what I discovered over many years of overcoming the various psychological issues that plagued me early in my life.
- How to use introspective writing as a universal tool for emotional problem solving.
- A simple perspective shift that can help you see difficult situations in your past in a different light.
- Sometimes, all it takes to start resolving an issue is to see it clearly. Writing is a great way to see fuzzy, difficult emotional issues with greater clarity.
- How to reframe experiences of conflict and difficult social situations, to get closer to seeing the truth behind them.
- Why we put certain emotions in the "shame closet" and how that limits our personal growth.
- How the question "is this motivated by love or motivated by fear?" can be used to direct and examine our behavior.
- Does your striving for personal improvement come from fear and shame? From a feeling that you are not enough? Or is it driven by a desire to move towards something positive?
- Why gratitude is an ubelievably effective tool for leveling up your emotional wellbeing. It's almost too good to be true, but countless studies show that it is, in fact, true.
- Why the idea "once I'm rich and successful, I'll be happy" may be upside down...
Links & Resources
- The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi,
Fumitake Koga - TED Talk by Brené Brown: Listening to shame
- TED Talk by Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work
A note on gratitude research: gratitude is a fairly well researched subject in the field of positive psychology. There are countless books and papers we could point to, but instead, let me provide 2 meta analyses: this one on the psychological effects and this one on the physical effects of gratitude practices.
The abstacts of these have a sobering tone, as is the language of research papers. However, they do find positive effects across a variety of psychological and physiological health markers. In addition, it's worth noting that such studies look for an effect beyond placebo. Depending on what the control group in a study was up to, the placebo effect may be a significant part of the full effect. And for the practical use of such interventions, remember that you are getting the "full dose": you're getting the benefit of placebo + what gratitude specifically adds on top.
Over to You
We hope you found this episode useful! Which of the top 3 emotional health tools will you try first? Do you have questions or feedback? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
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I needed this