In my old blog, “The dream you took for granted”, I gave an example of myself. I said that I am living the dream life of my 19-20 year old self, and yet, I don’t feel that great. Many people have a similar situation as mine. As a solution, I had mentioned that we should practice gratitude (check out the blog for more details). We should be thankful for everything that has went our way. Few of my friends questioned this, and they had a very valid point. If we are always satisfied of where we are, how will be put in the effort for growth? We will forever stay stuck where we are. The negative emotions that we get in our current position lead us to work towards a better future. In this blog, I will hopefully be able to provide an answer to this question.
Let me begin with a very simple situation. You are sitting on the couch in your house and it is hot outside. You get thirsty. What will your reaction be? Will you shout, scream and curse your life for how bad it is that you got thirsty? Or will you just get up, fill the water in a glass and drink it? This might seem like an exaggeration, but the first option is essentially what we do in most of the situations we face in life. The root cause of the question in the first paragraph is that we can’t distinguish between discomfort and a negative emotion. Discomfort is something external. Discomfort comes from a wide range of things. It could be something physical like itching, feeling hot, feeling hungry or feeling tired. It could be something mental like we experience during exams. It could be social like the awkwardness we experience during a conversation with some people. Discomfort can be of varying degrees, from minor scratches to fatal accidents, everything is a discomfort.
On the other hand, negative emotions are internal. They are a reaction to the discomfort. In a normal case, when we are sitting on a couch and get thirsty, we don’t get agitated. Prolonged thirst can trigger negative emotions, but that is not what we are discussing here. This distinction between discomfort and negative emotions is very important for the question we are trying to answer. We need discomfort for growth and not a negative emotion. We can be happy and uncomfortable both at the same time, because, the opposite of happiness is not discomfort, it is sadness. We can be grateful and grow at the same time, because, growth is external and gratitude is internal. You don’t need to hate the current situation to get to a better one. Hopefully I have answered the question we considered in the first paragraph. Now, I want to discuss this on a deeper level, not just from a growth perspective. Almost every situation in our life, be it small or big, this action-reaction (situation-emotion) dynamic comes into play.
Two years back, I had a situation where a person of authority had said something very inappropriate to me in a very insulting way. I had an instant urge of giving it back. My mind was filled with ego. How dare he says something like that? Who the hell does he think he is? These thoughts started storming in my mind. His seniority meant that I couldn’t give it back to him in the exact same insulting way, but it was very obviously visible on my face, I was angry. He gave me a mental “discomfort” and I had a “negative emotion” as a “reaction” to it. When I was able to think after some time, I realized that I could have handled the situation a lot better if that reaction, or the negative emotion wouldn’t have taken over me. I think many of you might relate to this. The tendency of our feeling brain to give an instant, equal and opposite reaction (in the form of an emotion) to the external environment is harmful sometimes. For those who don’t know what is the feeling brain (or the lizard brain), refer to this blog. To elaborate my point, I would like to give another example.
Consider a hypothetical and extremely patriotic soldier from country A who is hiding in the enemy camp and the enemies (soldiers of country B) are not aware of it. The country A soldier is shooting enemies one by one from the hiding place. Country B soldiers are confused, they know that someone from country A has infiltrated their camp, but they are unable to find the infiltrator. One of the country B soldiers is smart. “Country A soldiers are cowards”, he announced. “They just know how to fight behind the back, they have got no real courage to come in front and fight face to face with us! If you have courage, come in front and fight face to face, or we will declare your country as the country of losers!” A roar of laughter went through the country B soldiers. The hidden country A soldier, being extremely patriotic, felt humiliated. He was furious and wanted to kill each and everyone of the enemies. The story could go two ways from here. First, the soldier’s feeling brain takes over, he comes out of the hideout and roars, “I WILL KILL YOU ALL!!!”, now the enemies know his location and they instantly shoot and kill him. Second, although the feeling brain is itching to get up and show them that country A is not a country of cowards, he calms his nerves, he tries to clear his mind, takes aim at the person insulting country A from the hideout and shoots. The roaring laughter stops, and all the soldiers are silent. Which one do you think was more rational for the country A soldier? I feel it was the second scenario.
The mockery of country A was an external and an uncomfortable situation, you can replace this with any situation that you have faced in life. Such external situations are often uncontrollable. Although a cliche advice, but “focus on what you can control” works really well if executed correctly. The external discomfort is not under our control, but the instinctive equal and opposite reaction is. The thirst is not in our control, but the action of quenching the thirst without getting emotional is. The insult was not in my control, but my anger and ego was. If lets say that I would have stayed calm, that does not mean that I would have tolerated that insult. That just means that I would have replied to it in a much better way. Like everything else, the first step to solving this is consciously noticing it. We should try to treat the impulses of the feeling brain only as a way to know what we actually want and letting the thinking brain handle the rest. Letting the thinking brain work on reactions would also mean that it would be easier to separate the actual and genuine criticisms which we need to work on from the unncessary insults, which the feeling brain is incapable of doing.
One criticism that some of you might have on this whole thing is - “Are you a rock or a living being? How can you not have emotions for extreme external situations?”, and you are correct in asking that. But I am not asking you to abandon your emotions, that is stupidity. Gratitude is also an emotion. All I am saying is, we don’t need to pamper ourselves too much. Discomforts make us tough, not depressed.
Hope you liked this one, and remember, if we think that our emotions are a direct result of the external discomfort, we are giving the power of ourselves to something that is not in our control.