Shaun Kober: Emotions are emotions. They come and go. And if you are trying to be happy all the time, you will never succeed. Because if people are chasing happiness all the time, and something makes them not happy, then they're fucking sad, then they're depressed. If you think that you can stay happy all the time, that's like trying to ride a wave. You can ride that wave for a certain period of time, but then that wave is going to crash.
What are you going to do now?
You've got to fucking paddle back out. You've got to stay on the board. You've got to wait for the next wave. Does this mean you can't be happy until you catch the next wave? And that's what emotions are like, man, they come and go. And as soon as you understand that, the sooner you will not try and chase happiness, and rather, focus on fulfilment.
So many things affect our emotions. Our environment is a big one! What we do, how we use social media, what we read, what we listen to, who we speak to, who we interact with, how we eat, how we're sleeping, training...everything impacts our emotional, physical and mental wellbeing.
So if you can pay attention to those thoughts and not act upon them and just acknowledge them and be like, all right, well, I'm not feeling great about myself today. What's within my control that I can do, that's going to allow me to kind of balance everything out?
I'm going to acknowledge that, hey, today I'm a little bit sad and I don't know why.
Okay. How's my sleep then?
I probably didn't sleep very well last night.
My nutrition's probably a little bit shit. I haven't trained today.
Had a fight with the Mrs this morning.
All right. There's a few things there that I can probably address that that are within my control. That's kind of going to balance me out a little bit, but if I don't pay attention to it and I don't acknowledge it, and I don't put some action steps in place to balance myself out, you know, and ride that sad wave out or whatever you want to call it, and put myself into a good position to be able to catch the next happy wave or whatever it might be... we can only control what we can control.
I think it's really important to spend some time with yourself, and your own thoughts.
Acknowledge those thoughts and process them. You don't have to act upon them. You don't have to attach meaning to them. Just understand that they're going to come and go.
Something I heard in a book or a podcast or something was like, think about your thoughts like a thief in the night. If a thief comes into your house and walks out with your laptop and car keys and phone etc. that's giving the thief something to steal.
You're attaching meaning to those thoughts. And those thoughts are going to then hijack your attention. And you go off on this tangent and then you start going down a slippery slope.
However, if the thief comes into your house, and you have nothing there for him to steal, then he looks around, and walks out without taking anything. You don't attach any meaning. You just watch him walk in, look around, and walk out.
Don't attach meaning, don't attach emotion.
Acknowledge it. And then afterwards go, what do I want to act upon? Okay. I don't need to be reactive to every thought that came into my head, but there are some I should pay attention to. There's gonna be some thoughts that are going to be important that are within my control, that I can start putting action steps into place. There's going to be some thoughts that I can't control, and I can't put action steps in place.
Acknowledging that difference, and then being able to determine the difference between them, what you can control and what you can't control, and what you want to action, and what you want to let slide...I think that's super important for quality of life and quality of thought.
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