I want to talk to you about something that's kind of cool in the exercise world,
And I know probably a lot of you are in that world,
But specifically the runner world.
And I'm a big runner,
I love running,
And I want to relate that to emotions a little bit.
Because sometimes when we have outward things like weightlifting or stuff like that,
You can see the process,
You can see the progression,
But with emotions it's difficult to kind of gauge your intelligence,
Your emotional intelligence.
And I've said many times before,
I think that's way more important than bodybuilding.
Equally important as far as your health is concerned,
But emotional intelligence is such a valuable tool in life,
In relationships,
And it leads you to the gym because it gives you this intelligence and this confidence and this peacefulness that makes you want to take care of your body.
But let's talk about running for a second.
So if you've ever ran and you've ran hills,
Which can be very,
Very difficult to do,
You know that there's a recovery period.
So,
You know,
They test it with what's called like a VO2 max,
Which is how far can you go until you just can't go anymore.
And the way that you decipher if somebody is in shape is how quickly do they recover?
What's their recovery time?
So if you get to the top of the hill and you're huffing and puffing and huffing and puffing for 10 minutes,
That's not a great recovery time.
But I can tell if I've been running a lot because the recovery time is very quick.
And I think that that shows to you what kind of shape you're in.
And it's really cool to relate that to emotions.
So how do we relate it to emotions?
Well,
If we are triggered,
Or if we have an emotion that we can't control that pops up,
Or an emotion that happens when your partner says something to you,
Or your boss says something to you,
If that emotion sits with you for like 24 hours,
It needs to be looked at,
It needs to be addressed.
And you also need to understand that you are attached to the emotion,
And maybe your recovery time when it comes to being triggered needs to be looked at.
Now,
You can very well be triggered by something that you don't know has come up,
Or be triggered by something that you have to process.
And granted,
That can take a long time,
Like you can sit with an emotion for a very long time.
But it has,
You have to give it awareness.
And as your emotional intelligence grows,
Or your EQ,
You'll start to see that those times of you not really knowing what the emotion is,
Or the trigger is actually going to shrink.
And you're going to be in really good emotion shape.
I guess that's what we would call it,
Something like that emotional intelligence shape.
But you're going to be in good reaction shape.
So anytime you're reacting to something,
If it sits with you,
And you're like,
Oh my god,
I can't wait that you said that,
I can't believe that you said that,
I can't believe that you said that.
It's like you're just funneling in this non-emotionally intelligent space of either not dealing with the emotion,
Or letting it pass through you,
Or understanding that that person that triggered you,
There's reasons why that trigger happened.
And you can sit back and you can ask questions.
And the faster,
Because for me,
This is,
This would happen to me a lot when I was very,
Very,
Very emotionally triggered,
Which I've spent the majority of my life emotionally triggered.
But I'd like to think that my emotional intelligence has gotten a lot better over the years,
Especially the last four or five.
But if you were to talk to 20-something-year-old Tyler,
What would happen to me is somebody would do something or say something,
And I would be triggered by it,
And I'd be emotional about it in a very,
Very interesting way where it didn't really make sense.
And it would take me a long time,
Sometimes it would take me weeks,
To figure out why was I triggered by that?
Why did that bother me so much?
Where you're digging into your past,
You're digging into your relationships with yourself,
You're digging into your inner child to try to understand,
Why did that bother me so much?
And what I feel like emotional intelligence is,
Is it takes the time where you feel the emotion to when you understand what the emotion is coming from,
And it starts to shrink it.
So I started doing that,
And I really started noticing it.
And especially you notice it when you're in a relationship,
Because you can give your partner the silent treatment for 48 hours.
I don't recommend it,
Because that's on you.
But I've been there,
I've done that,
Been super passive-aggressive about stuff.
Or you can take ownership of it and say,
Why am I being bothered by this?
And you get that shrink of time where you go,
Oh,
I remember that that happened to me with the teacher in second grade,
And you just triggered that thing.
That time for me has gotten shorter to the place where now if I'm triggered in my relationships to friends,
That I can shorten that time.
A lot of the times in that moment go,
Oof,
I know exactly where that came from.
Now it doesn't mean that it still doesn't happen where I have moments of,
Oh man,
I don't know what that is.
But it still happens.
But what I notice now about it is,
A situation will trigger me,
And I'll have the moment of,
I'm fine,
I'm fine,
I'm fine,
I'm fine.
And then I know in my head,
I'm like,
Oof,
That's a trigger that's going to come back in a minute,
Or come back later tonight,
Or come back tomorrow,
Like if something really bad happens to you,
And it triggers something inside of you.
And then you have to just let it have space until you've pushed it down enough until you go,
Okay,
You can tell me what happened there.
And then it rises to the top,
And emotion comes out,
And then you can start analyzing it.
So really start to be aware of how long it takes for you to recover from being triggered,
Basically,
Or from feeling an emotion that may not rationally be happening in that moment.
Like there's so many times where we've gotten angry or done something,
It's something ridiculous.
I mean,
I've had that,
I've done that so much.
I had my best friend in college one day,
I was so like passive-aggressive with the relationship that he ate the last piece of bread,
And we call it the bread incident,
Because I threw the bread,
And I did all these things,
But it had nothing to do with the bread.
It was because I was just emotionally like built up about our friendship or something going on.
I don't even remember what it was,
But I do remember throwing the bread.
So don't have any bread incidents.
That's the point,
Is see if you can circumvent that,
But it doesn't happen overnight.
You have to take time to really practice that.
And just like it takes time to get in shape,
To run,
To have that VO2 max,
Be better,
To have that recovery,
Be faster.
Think about that with your emotions.
Think about how you can practice and how you can work out your emotional muscle,
Your mindfulness muscle,
I like to call it,
To make it so that you aren't reactive.
Because when you're not reactive from an irrational,
Or when you're reacting from an irrational place,
Not a lot of people want to hang out with that.
And you come across as,
You just come across as being unstable.
You come across as being unpredictable.
And we don't want to be predictable,
But we also want to go through life and just not be triggered by everything.
Trigger,
Trigger,
Trigger,
Trigger.
Because I'm going to learn this pendulum of joy,
Or pendulum of happy and sad,
And happy and sad,
And triggered and triggered.
If you're getting triggered constantly,
It definitely is an invitation to look in at your mindfulness muscle,
And start looking at how long your recovery time is from that trigger.
And I think that that's just really going to make your relationships to friends,
To your partner,
To people you work with,
It's just going to make them much,
Much more full of joy.
And you're going to start seeing other people in your life that like,
Oh,
Wow,
They're really triggered by that.
Or,
And you're going to start to see that,
That energy.
And you're going to start to really open your eyes to this life of not being triggered by everything.
Because it's awesome.
It's awesome.
But you have to start taking ownership of your emotions.
So build that mindfulness muscle.
Keep going to the gym.
But just remember that emotional intelligence is awesome.
And it's one of the greatest gifts we can bring to this world.
And it's one of my sole goals as a contributor and as an educator is to help people grow their emotional intelligence because our society would be so much better off if everything wasn't trigger,
Trigger,
Trigger,
Trigger,
Trigger,
Trigger.
If everything was just interesting,
I wonder why that happened.
And asking questions instead of being triggered.
Build that muscle.
I'll talk to you soon.
Peace and love.
