I'm gonna start this episode off with an old
legend. One evening an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on
inside people. He said "My son, there are two wolves inside of my heart. They fight each other
terribly. Each is trying to destroy the other. One wolf is evil, it's anger, it's envy, hatred,
self-pity, arrogance, greed, selfishness, resentment, lies, superiority, inferiority, and
ego. The other wolf is good. It's joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness,
benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The young grandson looked
nervous. He thought about it for a minute, and then he asked his grandfather "Which wolf will
win?" The old Cherokee simply replied "The one that I feed." I wanted to start this course off
with some things you could act upon right away, so in the previous episodes we talked about how
to soothe the body, how to identify unhelpful thinking, how to practice willingness with
emotions, and so much more. So if you're new to my channel, make sure to go check out the playlist
that starts this course from the beginning. But now it's time to step back and look at
the big picture. Now, you want to feel happy, you want to feel in control of your destiny, and
you want to know how to resolve painful emotions. In this section we're going to talk about
how to create the life that you want. But before we do that, let's talk about
the big picture of how to create change. I get asked all the time if I can take new
clients, and I wish I could. I love doing therapy. But the truth is I really can't add
any new clients to my caseload at this time. And even if I could, the way that the law works
is that the therapist has to be licensed in the state where the client lives. So unless you live
in Utah, I probably couldn't be your therapist anyway. But that's where BetterHelp comes in.
BetterHelp is an online therapy provider. They connect you with a therapist who is licensed in
your state. They can help you through messaging or voice calls or video calls. And i really
like BetterHelp because they make it easy to start working with an individualized provider
right away. So if you've been thinking about therapy and you don't know where to start,
this is a super easy way to give it a try. Plans start at $65 a week. You can go to
betterhelp.com/therapyinanutshell to get 10% off. Okay, back to the video. In case you didn't know,
this video is number 24 in my 30-skill course How to Process Your Emotions. The full course is
available to purchase, ad-free, with a workbook, downloads, extra videos, and resources. So
check out the link in the description to buy How to Process Your Emotions. Okay, so welcome to
section four. So here are the two main ideas from this 30-part course: number one, we create our
happiness in a gradual, choice-based approach; and number two, we create power to choose through
careful emotion processing. When we process our emotions, we're no longer reactive to them. So
let's talk about number one, right. We create a good life through many small choices. We get
more of what we feed. The tiny choices we make over and over create our character, they influence
our mood, and they determine our quality of life. When these choices involve emotion processing
and values-based action, they lead to an overall change in our emotions, usually by how we respond
to them. This is a process that takes a little bit of time. It takes consistent effort. And in the
long run, it's easier and it works better than an endless struggle with emotions. Thich Nhat
Hanh said "In our consciousness, there are many negative seeds and also many positive seeds. The
practice is to avoid watering the negative seeds and to water the positive seeds every day."
You can create real huge change in your life by changing one percent every day. Now I once
read a story, and I can't remember where; I wish I could credit the author for this. But
I once read a story of a man whose doctor sent him to therapy because his health was at risk,
but he didn't seem willing to change anything. This man was discouraged about life. He was in his
40s, he was overweight, he had developed diabetes from a poor diet, he hated his job, he was
single, and to make things worse, his diabetes was affecting his vision. He was losing the ability
to see even with glasses. So he starts seeing a therapist, and he tells her all his problems. And
as she listens, she realizes that he really does have an overwhelming situation. He doesn't really
have any social support, he is poor, his mother had recently passed away, and for him the prospect
of changing just didn't seem worth it. The only thing that relieved his pain a little bit was the
momentary joy of a hamburger, fries, and a coke. The thought of exercising or changing his diet
just seemed too hard. Trying to get a new job seemed too overwhelming because he'd have to go
back to school to get new training. And so as the therapist gently tried to convince him to change,
he would just say "Why bother? It'll never work." So she decided to just let him come in every week
and listen to him and care about him and just encourage him to make one tiny change. The one
thing she suggested he do was to just switch out his coke for a diet coke. Now he didn't like this
idea. He didn't think diet coke tastes as good. He figured that with all the other crap he ate,
it wouldn't make much of a difference to drink diet coke instead. And so he would complain to her
about this every week. But eventually he did it; he started to buy diet coke instead of coke.
And he did this for a few weeks, and then he got used to it and it wasn't such a big deal. A
few months later the therapist was driving and saw an exercise bike on the side of the road
and it was free. And so she picked it up, and she found that it worked. And um you know, it
wasn't the fanciest exercise bike, but it worked, right? So she brought it with her to work. And the
next time she saw this client she gave it to him, and she encouraged him to ride the bike for
two minutes each day while he watched tv. Now he griped and he complained, but he
put the bike in his car and he went home. And the next week he had told her that he had set
it up where he watches tv and that he'd tried it a few times. Now at this point he'd been in therapy
for months. He had talked about his grief and his frustrations at work and his hopes and his dreams
and his sadness, and in that environment, in that therapeutic environment, he was working through
his emotions slowly and he was getting a little bit of support. And after months of this, he was
starting to feel just a tiny bit better. Like, his emotions didn't drag him down so much. He
was still depressed, but it wasn't so bad, and he had a little bit longer moments of happiness. Now
one week he came back to therapy, and he told his therapist that something exciting had happened. He
confessed that he was actually riding his exercise bike for a whole 30 minutes while he watched
a show. And as he did this, he realized his vision was improving, his blood sugar levels were
going down, and his eyesight was getting better. This meant that his diabetes was improving. And
for the first time, he actually felt a glimmer of hope that his life really could get better. So now
he was ready to start making a few more changes. So he would just try to change one small thing per
month, like, you know, just eat a few more veggies or get out of the house a little bit more or reach
out to an old friend or take a class to learn something new. And so little by little he started
getting healthier, he started feeling a little bit more energy, he had something to look forward to,
he was excited about an upcoming outing with some friends, and he was getting ready to apply for
a new job. Now, this took over a year of tiny changes, but his life really was turning around.
And this was all because he started with just one small thing: switching from coke to diet coke. Now
in the previous sections, you've learned at least 22 skills to change your life. Now you don't
have to do them all. Don't don't allow yourself to get overwhelmed. Making one small change can
make a huge difference to your life over time. In this section we're going to talk even more
about how to put your life on the path that goes in the direction of happiness. Happiness is most
likely to be achieved through focusing on values, focusing on character and integrity rather than
focusing on changing your emotions to feel happy. Now most of us do want to be kind, we want to be
successful, we want to have close friends and a happy family. But most of us do dump stuff when
we get emotional. We blow up in anger or we get overwhelmed with despair or we get burned out by
stress. So in the workbook or down below in the comments write about a time you acted contrary
to your values because you felt flustered, rushed, or really emotional. In order to really
choose the path we want to be on, to create that ability to choose, we have to slow things down and
be intentional. So this is principle number two, right. We develop the ability to make better
choices through careful emotional processing. Viktor Frankl was a Jewish doctor who survived
Auschwitz during world war II. He came out of that experience believing that between
stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom. In order to have more choice over our
actions and more influence over our emotions, we need to slow down our emotion processing.
Lengthening that space gives you more and more power to choose by by expanding your awareness
and opening yourself up to more options. Slowing things down gives you more options to be
flexible and creative in your problem-solving, and this can help you develop emotional strength
and resilience. This this is the difference between being reactive and intentional. So let me
give you an example. I was once working with the father of a 14-year-old girl. She was acting out
in dangerous ways. She was staying up until, you know, three in the morning with friends, and she
was using illegal drugs and vaping at school, and she was failing her classes, and she was pretty
manipulative with her parents. So they tried to talk to her and convince her to stop, but she
didn't really listen to them, and she just kept doing whatever she wanted. Now the dad thought
that he should set better boundaries with her, but whenever he tried she would argue and get really
upset, and then he would back off. Now he knew in his heart that he should be stricter with her to
to help her, but every time he tried to give her a consequence for her behaviors she would just get
really upset, and then he wouldn't follow through. So when I asked him about it, I asked him
why he wouldn't hold boundaries with her, he said he just didn't want the contention,
he didn't want to fight. Now when we dove deeper in therapy, he explained that he had
a very contentious mother who would scream and yell and argue with his dad about the
kids. And as he was telling me about this, I could see his body tightening and, you know, his
leg starts jiggling, right. He was getting anxious just remembering the fighting in his home growing
up. Now he didn't realize it, but in order to avoid that unprocessed feeling of fear and anxiety
he was avoiding setting boundaries in his home. When we worked through those feelings, when we
processed through those feelings of fear, he became better at managing contention and allowing
his daughter to be mad if he held a boundary. Because he wasn't automatically avoiding that
emotion, he was able to be a better parent. Now on a side note, we later found out that one
of the reasons the daughter was acting out so much is that she had been sexually assaulted, but
it happened one night when she had snuck out so she didn't tell her parents about it.
And she thought that it was her fault; she she felt like she was a bad person. And so
she started hanging out with the wrong crowd and doing drugs because that was how she
avoided her feelings of shame and trauma. Both the father and the daughter's behaviors were
due to reactively avoiding suppressed emotions. For us to choose the life we want, we need to
learn how to be less reactive to our emotions. In this course we've talked about many ways to
slow things down. Uh dropping the struggle with emotions, mindful acceptance of emotions, how
to calm your body, and how to use a bottom-up approach to soothing the nervous system. We've
talked about resolving destructive thinking patterns and learning to notice our thoughts
and how to separate yourself from your thoughts and how to challenge your thinking
and choose which thoughts to act on. So each of these emotion processing tools can help
you slow things down and breathe and stretch out that space between stimulus and response. That's
why emotion processing is such a powerful tool in helping you live the life you want. Now the
next seven videos in this section are all about how to create the life you want; how to know
what you value the most; how to create lasting and sustainable change; how to let go of yourself,
labels; how to develop a growth mindset; and how trying to feel happy actually backfires and what
you can do instead. So stay tuned to this channel. Make sure you're subscribed and have notifications
on if you'd like to see the next video in this series. Thank you for watching, and take care.
This video is one skill from my 30-skill course, How to Process Your Emotions, where I teach
30 of the most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental
health. Emotion processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but
most people have never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on
YouTube for the world to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing
to my Patreon and my sponsors make this possible. If you would like to access the entire course
in one place ad free with its workbook, exercises, downloads, extra videos,
live Q&A's, additional short readings and links to extended resources, the link to
buy the course is in the description below.
