Optimizing Your Feelings

Most people only solve for positive emotions/feelings in their lives. The premise they operate upon is that they should feel great all the time. This is an unrealistic expectation of life, we are all human and the reason the negative emotions even have a name is because they happen. People want to feel good all the time every second of the day, so they start taking drugs or numbing the negative feelings with alcohol which only magnifies them when sober. The pleasure of dopamine is all about the peak relative to what you were recently experiencing, the pleasure comes from the relative difference between states. It is impossible to constantly experience pleasure unless your finite dopamine constantly rises and never stops. With every dopamine peak there is also a trough of pain. Pleasure doesn’t exist without pain. You won’t be able to avoid all negative feelings and only experience positive ones, there is no light without dark.

Rather than solving for purely positive feelings, we want to moderate the negative feelings and promote the positive ones. It is a dichotomy to be managed rather than a problem to be solved. In life, the only thing that you truly have power over is your mind. You cannot choose your experiences only your reactions. When something “negative” happens in your life, first understand the subjectivity of good/bad and negative/positive: you can only ascribe one of those labels from someone or something’s perspective. What you perceive as bad others will perceive as good.

You will always feel negative sometimes, and that’s okay.

So how do you go about moderating the negative feelings? Firstly, as mentioned understand that there is no good or bad, there only is. The only thing you can control is your reaction to the experience. You don’t have to stand beside and fight for the negative feelings you understand that they are only in your mind and you have complete control over the mind, you are never disturbed by people, things, or events, You are only disturbed by the view you take of them. With all this said, when something happens in your life that you view negative reframing it as normal or ‘part of the game’ can help. Every negative experience is a test of your stoicism.

How should you try to promote positive feelings? This answer is less intuitive than the previous, you shouldn’t directly try to feel positive. Positive feelings such as joy, love, and high self-esteem are all byproducts of other actions. Rather than attempting to be “joyful” you should try to complete the actions which would result in that. Happiness is a byproduct of fulfillment. Find purpose in an endeavour and pursue it every day. Then you’ll step back from whatever you're doing and realize that you are enjoying the process, and enjoying life. 

Find a mission, a purpose, that word and advice gets thrown around often so here is some actionable advice on “finding” it. Think of discovering purpose like being an archeologist, it slowly gets discovered from subtle hints in the environment. Some hints to help discover your purpose can be found back in your childhood, think: “What was I good at?” “What was I better than other people at?” “Are there any notable defining moments that come to mind?” “What looks like work to others but feels like play to me?”. Thinking on prompts such as these can help you find a hint towards your purpose, and once you find a hint then explore it. You will never find your life’s purpose by staying in the same old routine, you need to be open to explore any corner of life. Lengthened periods of self-reflection with no outside stimulation can be eye-opening too. If you are serious and/or desperate about finding your purpose then find a room, you could buy a motel room for 1-2 days, and make sure that there’s nothing stimulating that you have access to, phone, TV, or computer. Just sit in the room and stare at a wall, let yourself be bored for hours on end. Remember that you’ll only find hints about what to explore, you won’t suddenly become enlightened with purpose.

As discussed in last week’s newsletter, discomfort is what makes you grow. Stress on bones and muscles strengthens them, skin calluses, and being overwhelmed by information makes you learn. If you can lean into the inevitable stress of your life (NOT avoidable stress), then you’ll be better equipped to deal with those problems. Discomfort such as the muscle’s “burn” in the gym, makes you grow. So don’t shy away from the discomfort which is associated with the pursuit and archival of your goals. It’s the price you have to pay for the outcome you want. A positive mindset about stress will contribute to the promotion of positive feelings, and moderation of negative ones. The “negative” effects of stress on your health get exacerbated by most people’s view of stress, when you have a “stress grows me” mindset it will change the physiology of how your body takes stress for the better. What you want to avoid is to have your body in a constant state of the stress response, it needs to relax and recover. So lean into the stressed moments and feeling, understand you will grow from it (mentally of physically), and in moments of downtime give yourself permission to wind down and relax.