#231 Consolidating the knowledge (Emotions part 3: the three levels of emotional awareness, the emotional ‘ring of fire’, and emotional prosperity).

___

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

___

Please note that while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.

___

Agi Keramidas  0:06  
Welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast where you will find both the inspiration to grow and the actions to implement towards your next level. I'm your host, Agi Keramidas. And I've been on a journey of personal development and self mastery for six years now. And my mission is to inspire you to stand out and take action towards living your best life. In this podcast, I invite myself inside the minds of authors, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, spiritual teachers, people who will inspire you to improve your life and also provide you with actions you can take and implement. So on my ongoing journey of the podcast on Thursdays episodes, I now focus on consolidation. Repetition is the mother of all learning as they say. So instead of adding more knowledge, I revisit the previous episodes and consolidate the wisdom imparted by my guests. My intention in this consolidation episodes is to distil that wisdom of my guests on the topic and share it with you in a way that you will find something that clicks that inspires you to take some action as a result.

Today, I will carry on with the topic of emotions for a third consolidation in a row. I believe it's one of the most important elements one can mastered his emotional response. So in today's episode, we will listen about the three levels of emotional awareness about feeling our emotions, through being able to sit in the discomfort or of our emotions, and also about emotional prosperity. We'll listen to three of my previous guests, Chris Marhefka, say, the hustle Marley and Chris bottle. And let's start with Chris Marhefka, who was featured on episode 136. Chris is a coach in health and wellness, mindset, leadership and business. And he spoke about the three levels of emotional awareness. The actual physical sensation or the feeling the label, we tell me this they they motion we call it and then the mental awareness, that story we create about the feeling in our mind?

Chris Marhefka  2:50  
Yeah, I'll first start by talking about the the difference between explain three levels of awareness. The first level is the actual physical sensation that's happening in your body. Describing it by does it have a shape? Does it have a colour? Does it have a texture? Does it have a size? Like, if you were to describe this uncomfortable feeling you're having? What how would you describe it? In just simple adjectives. There's that level of awareness. And then there's the level of awareness of what we're calling that sensation. This is our emotions. So I'm calling this sensation, sadness, or shame, or I'm calling this anxiety, or I'm calling this any other anger. Any other emotion that we have a label for is just a set of sensations in the body that we've gotten used to identifying as, as this emotion. So there's so there's the level of sensation, which is just as if this is just what's happening in my system. There's the level of emotion, which is now I'm putting it into a box of this emotion. And then the next level is the mental awareness, where you're judging the emotion or trying to figure out why it's there. So there's a story involved now, so okay, why am I sad? Why am I anxious right now oh, I'm always anxious when this happens. And this is where the story in the mind complicates things. And so there's this as soon as you that mind level awareness is only the first layer. And so once you get stuck there, it's really hard to escape because it's sneaky. And it loops and it clearly tells you all these stories and then and sometimes it will tell you why. And you'll believe it for a short period of time or you'll you'll you'll distract yourself to something else. And it gives you this little moment of relief. But it's not lasting because you didn't actually deal with the with the sensation you just distracted. And so people get really used to these little short, short bursts of relief. And those are the actions that most people are taking that make up the majority of their life is they're just taking little actions to avoid feeling sensations in the body that we've judged as not good. Judges, wrong judges, the bad emotions, judges, things I don't want to feel. And when you get to a layer that's deeper than that into just, oh, I'm feeling feeling tingling in my fingers. I've got this tight sensation in my chest, and it's read. And it's when you get to that level, that's what we call pure acceptance. You're not making this thing in your chest wrong. You're just actually accepting it. You're saying, Oh, thank you for being here. Oh, interesting. Wow, that wasn't there a moment ago. Oh, it's here. Now get curious about it. And this is the process we do in our work is, it's just getting to a level of full acceptance of what's happening.

Agi Keramidas  6:08  
I find this explanation fascinating, getting curious about our feelings and accepting them without judgement. And let's listen now to how Chris explains dealing with emotions, feeling them through letting them happen.

Chris Marhefka  6:29  
Emotions go really fast. If you watch a child, and they're playing, they're playing with their their toys, and then one of them breaks. And they they're immediately sad. Oh my gosh, toys. And they feel through, they feel through and they feel through it. And what happens on the other side of a temper tantrum, they're ready to play again. Yeah, that's us as well. But we suppress the part that wants to throw the tantrum. So rather than than just throwing the tantrum and be like, Hey, I'm sad right now, I'm angry right now. And feeling it for two minutes. We suppress it. And it's just this low level anger. It's this low level sadness that just keeps stacking up. And so we teach people how to feel it, how to feel what's there, not judge it, just let it happen. Let it move through you in a really safe, and the safe way. safe container. And when they get to the other side of it. They're like, Oh, that's it. That's it. Like, I was avoiding just feeling this thing. And we just felt it in two or three minutes. And I feel great. Yeah, yeah.

Agi Keramidas  7:34  
And we will listen to one last clip from this conversation about how most people are not actually in control of their own life, because their decisions and actions are directed trying to avoid this sensations in our own body that we call emotions that we form stories about in our mind.

Chris Marhefka  7:59  
It's the mind that wants to understand it's the mind that wants to control it. And so anytime, and this is a constant practice for everyone, but anytime we jump back to our mind, we use the breath and the safety to just come back to the body nope, safe to go into that. No, it's safe to safe to experience this sensation. And we just keep no that's it. And it's, it's, it's so simple. And it gives you control back of your life because you're no longer controlled by these sensations in your body that we call emotions that we form stories, stories about in our mind. And most people this is this is the common ailment of most people is that the entirety of their lives are being directed. All of their actions, all of their thoughts, all of their being is being directed by avoiding certain sensations in their own body. The fear, the judgement, all of that is just controlling the way they live their life. And, and when they no longer have those things driving their life, they get to now create their life.

Agi Keramidas  9:18  
We will listen next to say that Hassan Ali, a transformation and leadership coach and an intuitive healer, who I spoke with in Episode 148. We discussed the topic of becoming the master of our emotions, and she talked about the concept that Dr. Joe Dispenza describes us the Ring of Fire, sitting in the discomfort of our emotions.

Sayyedah Hassanali  9:51  
So this sitting this process of sitting in the Ring of Fire, oh, it is the most painful and the most liberal Reading thing at the same time, this ring of fire in the in this in the context of what Joe Dispenza is talking about is it's really sitting in the discomfort of your emotions. And that's why for a lot of people practising the present moment is so difficult because it's very uncomfortable because as soon as you quiet, you get into a quiet space, your mind gets bombarded with so many things of the past regrets, resentments, failures, you name it so much is being bombarded. So sitting in that rink, but in order to climb or or, you know, it's kind of like your mountain climbing and trying to get to the top, it's not an easy journey, but it's so worthwhile. But it's being able to do find that courage to really just sit with your emotions, being in that ring of fire, right. And when you sit with the emotions, and you allow an emotion to because there's a lot of baggage, there's a lot of things that are stored in our subconscious mind that we're not even aware of. We don't know half the things that are 90%, not even half. And we don't know 90% of the things that hold us back, because we're just operating from a conscious mind, which is the 5%. But 95 is your subconscious. But how do we allow the contents of the subconscious mind to show up in the conscious in the in the surface so that you can actually release it? Well, you have to go still. You have to go quiet so you can make room for the stuff to come up. And that's really that that's the initiation process. That's the ring of fire that you're sitting in, because it's a very uncomfortable thing.

Agi Keramidas  11:42  
We will now listen to a different aspect of emotions. Emotional prosperity from Chris Baro. Chris Baro is a consultant, business coach, speaker and writer. And we had the conversation in Episode 103, where he spoke about being emotionally prosperous versus materially prosperous. Here's how he describes it using his own story in the transition from his career.

Chris Barrow  12:14  
I was materially prosperous as a result of a combination of hard work, and good fortune. But I was not emotionally prosperous. In the work that I was doing. And I was almost subconsciously, kind of keeping my eyes and ears open to say, there must be more than this in one's professional life, because just making a bunch of money, and living in a nice house and driving a nice car and raising the trophy family and sending the kids off to private school and going on, quote, The holiday close quote, you know, all of those things weren't feeding me. So moment number one was a half time complete career transition. And with the benefit of hindsight, I could not be more happy than that I did that. You know what, if I'd stayed in financial services, I would probably be now retired, I would probably be now financially independent, I would probably have built a successful practice. And I would probably have sold it. And I might have been even more materially prosperous than I was when I took the decision. But I know in my bones, I know that I wouldn't have been emotionally prosperous, even with the financial security around me. So I'm so glad that I made that decision. And one of the things that I do share with people. And I know we were talking about this before we went live today, Aggie but I know that one of the things I do share with people is that it is okay to have a career transition.

Agi Keramidas  14:02  
In the field of entrepreneurship. There's much advice given in the business coaching world about scaling your business in a way that eventually you can exit the business or sell it. But that's not right for everyone and Chris chose not to. So in the next clip, who will listen He spoke about accepting the limitations of being a freelancer again for the purpose of emotional prosperity.

Chris Barrow  14:34  
Accepting the life of the freelancer and accepting the material limitations of the life of the Freelancer I'm never going to have a business that I can sell to somebody else. Because the business is Chris Barrow. And if to coin a phrase when Elvis leaves the building, the show's over. So there's never going to be a for sale sign or outside streaming business. And therefore I've accepted the material limitations of that, and said, Okay, make sure you make a good living, make sure you put plenty of money into savings. And I've done that in return for the emotional prosperity, of being my own boss of having nobody to answer to have been free to make a success of it or to make a hash of it. And I've been free to decide every single day what mood I am in, and to not have that mood influenced by other people's performance or behaviour.

Agi Keramidas  15:39  
And again, on the topic of material versus emotional prosperity. Let's listen to a last clip from this conversation where Chris uses his son as an example.

Chris Barrow  15:50  
I have a son who gave up a career in digital advertising. He literally walked out of the city centre office at five o'clock on a Friday night and left his keys on the table. And he started in his early 30s. He started with a dog walking business. And he's now he works for himself. He's got nobody else there. But he walks dogs three times a day. And he's the happiest man I know. And his material prosperity is quite limited. Don't get me wrong, he has a nice life, but it's a limited material prosperity. But his emotional prosperity is through the roof. I've rarely met a happier man.

Agi Keramidas  16:50  
I hope you found something valuable among these parts of the conversations and also something actionable. Something you can implement yourself. If you have enjoyed this episode, you will find great value in my podcasts, supporters community. Here are some of the benefits you will get by joining my supporters community you will gain access to exclusive tailored for you content from me and my guests. You will have your questions answered in special asked me anything episodes, you will meet people just like you who value personal development in our community online meetups. You will participate in my mindset and accountability mastermind group and much more. The link is in the show notes or you can simply type BIT.LY/PDMSUPPORTER

and until next time, stand out don't fit in!