 Hello, this is Dr. Reed Tuckson and welcome to another edition of our spirituality and health podcast Which we call decide and for those that have been with us the premise of this show has been that we can make choices to decisions About our lives to be able to live the best possible life that that we really want to live and in past shows We have tackled the the D for diet. We've talked about exercise community development inner development Dreams is what we did the last episode and today we will conclude our season two experience with talking about Emotional development and we're pretty excited to be able to bring that to you As I mentioned what we're trying to do is to be a support system for those of you who are Making the choice or who are trying to make the choice to be the best possible person They can be fulfilling the maximum of your potential and really being in touch with your true self your inner self your spiritual self We also in find it important to remind Ourselves as we have this conversation as we take this journey that sometimes, you know We don't always do what we want to do even with sincere intent and sometimes it needs you need a little support that says, you know I may not have done what I wanted to do yesterday But today I could make that choice and so if we choose to sincerely step by step We can make the choices that will give us much better much more fulfilling and enriching lives And so thanks for taking the step with us as we go forward The premise of of what we've done also is very grounded in this definition of health by the World Health Organization And I think that it's good to always remind ourselves that health is not the absence of disease But it is in fact the physical the mental social and what I call spiritual well-being Of the individual of the community of the country and of the world And so we really see health in its holistic complete Context and I can't think of anything that's more important to the experience of being healthy than having a healthy Emotional outlook on life a very healthy emotional interior as we go forward well Gonna talk about emotional development. So I guess it's best to start with what our emotions What is this thing that we seem to all you know I think sort of understand But emotions really are as defined by the dictionary a strong feeling derived from one's circumstances one's mood or relationship with others the Effective the experiential aspect of consciousness a state of feeling a conscious very important word a Conscious mental reaction such as anger or fear that's subjectively experienced as a strong feeling Usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by really Physiological and behavioral changes in the body and so I think you get the idea that emotions are really all about feeling Unfortunately in America today, there are an awful large number of people who are feeling badly who are feeling sad We have shown this This slide in previous shows only to emphasize that there is a significant a number of people in this nation Who are dying from diseases of despair people? More than 175 people die from drug overdoses on a typical day in the United States of America We have some real work to do if we're going to get at the emotional health of the people that live in this nation And of course we're seeing so many people Exposed to the opioid epidemic and ruining people's lives, but we're also seeing That this sense of despair which people I think often used to think were visited by inner-city people Now is so prevalent across rural America. And in fact, it's become a national issue and one of great concern as a physician. I Understand that many people who we meet may have significant psychiatric challenges that may prevent them from Doing some of the things we're going to talk about today They may need more help than then than the advice that we can give on this show And so I hope that as you encounter those people in your life And if you're one of them Seek the care that you need and let the rest of us make sure that we're pouring Compassionate loving kindness over those people because they deserve it and they need it. Similarly My experience in the world also reminds me that many people are living in such dire socioeconomic Circumstances that they too may simply lack the emotional free space Necessary to implement some of the things that we're talking about today And so I would remind us again as we meet those people in our lives Let's give them every bit of our loving kindness Let's pour our compassion into them and let's take the social action that's necessary That we talked about in our show and community engagement that will help everyone have the opportunity to live the lives that they want to live However, the overwhelming majority of us really can and should do it make the decision to consciously develop our emotional health I know in my own life when my when I have faced those moments when Everything just looked hopelessly bleak and my future was uncertain It was the decision that I made to consciously take charge of my my attitude To control my emotions to take responsibility for growing my resolve to change my life That was what turned everything around for me And I hope that that kind of decision and the resolve to act on that decision will change your life for the better as well So good luck to to you as we go forward Well as we go through life's inevitable challenges What's our goal? And I think our goal is that we seek to find Joy and we seek to find the joy that comes from being emotionally balanced. I love this picture Someone on a high wire clearly excited about their life taking chances I don't think I want to take that particular risk But this person seems to find joy in a very unusual way, but the Sun is shining. It's very bright and clearly This is a person that's engaged With their sentence. They're certainly mindful in that they are in the moment, but they're clearly a very balanced person Well, why are there so many people who are so unhappy with all this despair about it? And why is our so many people struggling with their emotional balance and well-being? part of it is that we live in a society where so many people are alone that they're isolated Living by themselves or not connected in with others. Some of that becomes because of the collapse of Family life and unhealthy family relationships that provide tension and stress Day-to-day as we try to please those who are our family members Many people are sad because in our present society so many are disconnected from spiritual roots and religious roots Who suffer from an absence of meaning in life? That's really tragic when you have people who just feel like life is meaningless It has no purpose and of course that will affect their emotional well-being Others are sad because of oppressive or abusive work environments And we see that a lot in the news today as people are reporting on how terrible it is to be in some of these Work experiences and work environments others are sad because of the lack of steady well-paying jobs Especially for people without college degrees and again so many people living in inner cities in rural America But it's it doesn't really matter what kind of geography that defines your community There are lots of people living without well-paying jobs and and so there are many many people who have a sense of pervasive Hopelessness no concept of the possibility of a meaningful future Others of us are sad because our society is so tribal so Segmented so you know we have so much a concern about the the rise of racism and sexism and and just Almost a celebration of I'm different and I'm distinct from you and we're not connected and we're not one And so there's tension and anger that comes up all the time and of course that tension and anger is fed by the 24-hour news cycle people who make lots of money celebrating or Exploiting the differences between us and causing us to tune in to see which group is yelling at what group today And so there's that stress and tension always in our lives And of course one of the premises of all of that segmenting and tribalism is fear We're encouraged to be afraid of the other afraid of this horrible threat That's about to happen or that threat that's about to happen And so we're always on alert and of course our physiological our body reacts to those things by producing Chemicals that make us think that we're under attack and they have their secondary consequences Many of us are sad because we're so addicted to things the material Possessions and needing to acquire and so there's always this race to get more and more and more and more And of course that leads us to jealousy and envy of others because we can see what others have and we don't have it And we think our lives aren't great because I don't have what the other person has and and now I feel badly And I'm sad and I'm and I'm tense and I'm anxious And then we have the rise of mental health disorders and people that are treating their mental illness with substance abuse So lots of reasons to date Why people are sad and of course what that means lots of ways in which we can overcome it and lots of ways We can find joy and balance and happiness in our lives I like to think about what then would be a healthy emotional person and sometimes that's called Emotional intelligence and the way that I think most people that have studied this issue think about it is Emotional intelligence or being well-balanced emotionally means that you have the capacity To be aware of and to control and express your emotions and to be able to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and then be able to Interact with the people around you people with a high degree of emotional intelligence. They know what they're feeling They know what their emotions mean in the moment and they know how those emotions can affect other people Now let's be clear emotions are not necessarily always good or always bad I love this little picture of this young man who's got so many different expressions And you can't always tell whether or not that one one particular face is a face of Exalting happiness or absolute terror What he's really happy or really sad is he amazed in a good way or amazed in a bad way? Emotions are not all you know very rarely are they just one thing or another. It's up to us To be able to to understand our emotions life would be very dull and empty without emotions Imagine yourself or your life without joy without excitement without sadness without anxiety without sorrow Or any of the emotions that give life its contours its textures its colors What if all there was to life was happiness without the balance of sadness that opens the door to experiencing? Compassion for others or compassion for yourself or that leads us to the tender expressions of our hearts so much of our music and our painting and our written Artistry comes out of the feeling of difficult emotions that give depth and richness to the experience of being human What if you never experienced the warning signs of fear such as you were then unable to protect yourself from danger? What if you never were touched by the anxiety that motivates us towards creative solutions and challenges you get the idea? Emotions in and of themselves aren't necessarily good or bad But what's important is that we don't become ruled by our emotions that we don't get caught up in our emotions or Lost in emotions when we think about emotions I think we'd be very good to remember we have a choice either our emotions will control us Or we will control our emotions. I love the teaching that I have taken to heart that says my emotions are not me They're mine My emotions are not me They are mine and I'm in the position if I choose to be the one to control them Well, I try to think about a visual. What if unhealthy emotions were visible and you could see them You know and this picture really shows it You know we carry so much weight so much unnecessary baggage on our backs Weighing our lives down because we don't take control and let our emotions build up and then we carry and lug these things around So we have to learn to set down the unhealthy Negative negative feelings put that down somewhere and let ourselves breathe and be free There's a wonderful quote by the teacher Ilchi Lee that I really enjoy and he suggests that we have to choose for ourselves Will we live our lives? Continuously troubled by regretful emotions, or will we release them and be free? Do we cut that cord and let those that balloon of negative emotions just float up into the sky and we can let our spirit soar You can choose to walk away from an emotion the same way you can choose to walk from out of a room It's about whether we will neglect or whether we'll solve the problem If you want a life that is truly without regret If you want true freedom, if you want peace for your soul, then you choose the latter and actively explore solutions So let's think about some of the solutions and see what we might be able to learn What does emotional development then entail if we're going to have this emotional intelligence? What does it mean then that we will have to focus on well? I always begin with sincere intent. What's our motivation? Why do you know? I want to have a more peaceful joyful balanced well-fulfilled life and that's that means that you need to spend some time with yourself asking yourself that question Have a pure and sincere intent for me. It always comes back towards I want to be so connected with divine intelligence with the creative forces that created this earth that my spiritual life It means so much to me and anything that gets in the way of that I need to deal with because I know the joy that waits on the other side So I try to approach my emotional development with sincere and pure intent I'm willing to embrace change in order to improve as I mentioned earlier I have had my moments of being deep in the valley of despair unhappy and sad But what saved me was not only my intent But a willingness to embrace change to improve this that i'm doing now ain't working So to keep doing the same thing when it ain't working doesn't help very much I have a good friend of mine who always challenged me by saying, you know after I maybe expressed Something that didn't work out well and said, you know, how's that working for you? And I always say, you know, it ain't working too well Okay, well, maybe I need to be willing to change and have the courage to change and have been The flexibility to change and that's so important to be willing this to be flexible Cultivating giving without expecting a return is a great great way to build on this motivation, you know I find so often that when you give a gift of yourself to someone else You just feel so much better Not because you're expecting somebody to be nice to you when you pay it forward in the in the in the uh In the coffee shop and you pay for somebody else's coffee. Who's behind you and they didn't know it boy Emotionally, you just feel so good. I wasn't expecting any return. I just felt like Cultivating the sense of giving and I try to practice that every chance I get emotionally. It's terrific Generosity then is a key to emotional development being generous with others But it also means and this is the hard lesson that I've had to experience Being generous with myself and not feeling guilty being Kind and showing loving kindness to others and to yourself And then of course I ended with the most important probably of all Because compassion is almost always the doorway out of any problem being able to show and experience Compassion really does allow you to regain your own equilibrium for sure the second area of Getting to a good emotional development is being self aware And and and I think I love this picture with this young lady Out in the garden and she's paying attention to and I don't see this picture as someone who is narcissistic Or focused only on their own, you know beauty and and so forth I think what we're trying to show here is always knowing Always being able to identify Always being able to interpret how you are feeling in The moment at that moment. So be self aware if you're feeling crappy and bad and and miserable Look at what it was that caused you to feel that way and then ask yourself Is this working for you? If it isn't working for you, maybe you need to change up. So Being self aware only you can do that kind of survey in your mind third What does emotional development entail? self Regulation you are in charge my emotions are not me They're mine. And so really we have to have the goal of staying In control of ourselves take responsibility for your actions except accountability and then Let it go if you've done something that makes you unhappy that makes you unbalanced that gets you sad Uh, uh despondent unhappy Take responsibility and sit beyond yourself. You know, I didn't do that very well I know next time I'm going to do it differently and then Let it go Don't carry it back. Don't you know, some of us grab that bad feeling and we put it in our backpack And we walk around and then we add another thing and we put it in the backpack and we walk around And by the time the end of the day our backpack is so heavy you can hardly walk and you certainly can't smile Let it go put the bag down love yourself enough to be able to forgive yourself And just don't make the same mistakes the next time Have grace under pressure. What does that mean? Grace under pressure. You may be working in very challenging Uh, uh, high pressure involvement, but always try to stay Calm stay graceful Stay wonderful. Don't let them see you sweat. Just be the best you under that pressure Please above all don't harbor negative thoughts from past insults. I like showing this this image You know, so many of us water all the wrong seeds in our brain and wonder why You know weeds grow in our mind You know, if you water the bad seeds, you're gonna get weeds Water the beautiful seeds and you get beautiful roses and tulips and daffodils Don't harbor negative thoughts from past somebody injured me back in 1944 and I am still mad Well, guess who won the person that insulted you They're happy eating a cheeseburger somewhere enjoying their life and you're walking around with these bad feelings Why would you give anybody that kind of control over your life? Let it go So what you were insulted when you were in kindergarten? Hey, you're an adult now. Let it go Refuse to indulge and gossip and negativism You get around the water cool at work and everybody wants to talk about somebody that did something Stupid and everybody and then you share and then that person talks and by the time you finish You have a whole big grab bag of negativism and garbage Do you really want to be in that conversation? Or would you like to go outside and plant some roses? It's up to you and then of course keep Focused on gratitude. I still do every day my gratitude journal It has changed my life so much because it reminds me no matter what problem is going on There still is that ray of sunlight that's bouncing off of the leaf on the little flower In my garden and if I'm not grateful for that little ray of sunlight and that flower and the reflection shining into my eye Making me happy, you know shame on me There's so much to be grateful for and the stuff that we have to be grateful for doesn't cost any money And you don't have to go to hawaii on an 8000 ballot vacation to see it Keep your set of gratitude and finally emotional development entails empathy Caring about other people's feelings as much if not more than your own This little girl just seems so You know interested in this little cut on that boys finger and together They're sharing such a beautiful simple experience being interested in others lives You can't imagine how good it is for your life when you do that So we've talked about some of these things with emotional intelligence and we hope that Some of these concepts will make sense, but let me just sort of end up with What I call the dozen Tips for your consideration, which is what we do With at the end of every show and we by the way really appreciate our audience for sending us suggestions for Topics and things that we should talk about and tips and suggestions that we should share With others who are taking this journey with us. So here's my my 12 tips for emotional development That I just want to leave you with succinctly number one Keep working to find your true self cultivate the brightness of consciousness the power Of your soul Sit quietly take the time to meditate Take the time to be in a quiet space and be in touch with the inner you It's so beautiful to do It's so beautiful in and of itself if there was no purpose other than just sitting and being in touch But in this case for this show it also turns out that it has great benefit for emotional development number two Never forget your emotions are not you They're yours You are the charge of them and you can be the one to decide how you feel about any particular element that happens in your life Only you can do it and you can do it. It's your choice. Make a decision decide number three Cultivate the ability to observe your feelings make a conscious decision to reprogram the negative information you're receiving And observe as your mind transforms in the moment that negative to a positive So be attentive right now. How do I feel and then decide I'm going to put some new information in and get rid of the bad information number four Don't wait to release stress The best way to manage stress is to deal with it in the very moment that it comes up Learn to identify your stress signals that are happening in the moment and then stay in control when the pressure builds Really important. Don't say well. I'm stressful now. I'll I'll deal with it when I get home tonight. No, no, no, no deal with it right now breathe take the time and And by the way the best part of breathing to relieve stress I found it's the exhale Pay attention to the exhale long exhales release Everything when you breathe so breathe in And breathe out I was feeling a little stressful. So I had to do that uh five delete victim mentality from your brain's hard drive You are in control of you look within and not the external environment Just because something happened bad a long time ago. Don't play the victim You don't need to be a victim be in charge of your life So delete that from your hard drive. So you never play the victim mentality again Number six remember the principles of acceptance forgiveness and then letting go Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes. It's okay Accept responsibility for your action then forgive yourself And then let it go then pledge not to do it again. Number seven make a sincere commitment to stay true to your goals Know what you want out of life And don't let anybody get in the way if you're going to choose to be emotionally well developed and happy Focusing on the things that matter like your spiritual health being compassionate to others loving kindness Then go and do that Don't let anything get in the way and practice doing the things you need to do every day number eight Cultivate your allegiance to your values of gratitude and compassion Avoid jealousy greed attachment to material things Hatred and absolutely bigotry when you see those things walk away. Just escape say I want anything to do with this I'm going to focus on gratitude and compassion number nine in the heat of the moment Sit or lay quietly and just control your breathing without doing anything else as we talked about By the way, one good thing to to do that is one minute exercises are great every hour One minute do something physical that'll help to reset your emotional thermostat And when you get upset number 10 go for a walk go outside take a walk don't have the argument right there I'm upset and I'm gonna have a problem with my spouse or my partner or my coworker because I'm mad No, when you feel those emotions say, excuse me I'm not at my best right now And I'll come back and resume this conversation a little later. I need to take a walk I'll tell you it works so well But if you try to have the argument why you're angry It never goes well Again, keep doing the same dumb things and it doesn't work. Why keep doing it. Is this working for you? No, what works for me I take a walk and I decide I'm sorry. I really can't have the conversation. I really care about you I'm not ignoring you, but I'm not at my best right now I need to take a walk and then I'll come back and give you a better me and they will have our conversation number 11 Grow your joy and don't let anyone take that from you Nobody on the tv news not one of these people on msnbc and fox and seen They can't have your joy unless you give it to them So turn off that tv. Don't let anybody have your joy number 12. Keep a journal Write down your thoughts. How are you feeling? What did you do that made you feel badly write it down that way you can avoid it change your behavior I'll give you a last freebie 13 As in a dozen, this is a 13 be careful what you feed your brain Turn off the note ways from tv Popular culture the things that are engendering in you bad feelings that you know aren't healthy for you Don't water those seeds. Well It's been really fun to think about this idea of emotional development And so as we end up as we go through life's inevitable challenges Seek to find the joy that comes from being emotionally balanced Life is so beautiful so wonderful I hope that every day that you put your feet on the earth and walk among it That you have the chance to let your Your your your whole being completely Immerse yourself in joy and happiness Transform the world around you so that it can be consistent with the vision that you have for your life You can do it. It's under your control and everything you need You already have inside Hey, thanks a lot for joining us and see you on the next part of our spiritual health Journey and please contact us with your suggestions We love hearing from you to tell us the things that you want us to talk about and until then Happy meditating. Happy walking. Happy peace. Take care. Bye. Bye