One thing that I had to learn over the last months is the importance of being able to control your emotions.
I thought a while about writing this thread, because it's very hard for me to put this stuff into the right words. I'll try anyway, cause I think some of you can benefit from that.
"How Can You Be So Cold?"
Last week some shit happened (again) with my dad, that made my younger brother break down and cry and ask our family for advice on how to react, while we were at my mom for dinner. After a while my brother's GF and me hit the balcony for a cigarette (as usual) and kept talking about the topic. Our convo went something like:
Bro's GF: "this shit really F*cks him up.."
Me: "yeah I know, my dad knows how to give him a bad conscience for just everything, my dad F*cked it up and now he makes my brother feel responsible for him being alone and all that"
Bro's GF: "and he only does it to him, because he knows how your brother reacts to it."
Me: "yes, he tried to do it a few times, writing me some stuff.. but he knows that this shit doesn't work with me."
Bro's GF: "yeah because you can get cold if you want, but not in a bad way, you can handle all that better than him. I wish I could do that too, makes shit a lot easier sometimes"
This conversation made me think about something that I started doing after my mom broke up with my dad (after she discovered that he's addicted to gambling and lost his company and their (our) house because of it. The foreclosure of our house was 1.5 months away when my mom finally found out everything.)
At that point I started to get cold. At least I thought that I was getting cold. Man I was afraid that I turn into a Dexter. But I didn't really get cold, what I actually did was starting to control my emotions.
Of course I felt all those emotions that you feel in situations like this. But after about 30 minutes, I had a thought process going on in my head like this:
FEELING SAD 'I can't understand it...'
FEELING ANGRY 'how could he do that...'
FEELING WEAK 'what should I do? What's next? Will we overcome this?'
FEELING ANXIOUS 'do we find a new home? Can my mom recover from this?'
FEELING RESPONSIBLE 'I know my mom and my brother are doing bad after all this, we need to get over this shit..'
FEELING STRONGER 'F*ck this shit, we will get over all this.'
FEELING NEUTRAL (COLD) 'ok let's see, what needs to be done..'
From that moment on I didn't spend a tear until we got over it. Yes there were moments where I worried and felt the bad emotions again, but it didn't last too long. I automatically switched into the good emotions after a few minutes, to be able to get over this.
This happened in February 2014. If I look back at it I'm actually thankful now for all the things I learned because of it.
How my family is doing now?
I never saw my mom this happy in years. Really almost made me cry to see her smile after she found a flat to live in. My brother and me became really good friends, we moved into a flat together. This whole situation made us from far-from-friends to very good friends. I also found something like a good or almost best friend in my brother's GF since that. My dad is still struggling and probably still gambling, I hope that he will get over it sometime.
Control It, Not Remove It
Don't get me wrong, I don't wanna tell you to not be sad, angry or disappointed if something bad happens to you. Control your emotions doesn't mean to not feel any emotions. It just means being able to shift your emotions into good emotions, emotions that help you and others.
I had to learn to control my emotions to help my family to get over the situation we been in. But that was just the beginning. I was able to shift my emotions into emotions that help me to get my a$$ up and not get lost in my worries and sadness. I hope you can see the benefit of this ability for your journey to/on the Fastlane.
Imagine being able to overcome all the worries and doubts you got concerning your business. How you do that? Try to make your good emotions overweight your bad ones.
Light vs. Dark
It's the old game, Good vs. Bad, Day vs. Night, Light vs. Dark.
If your bad emotions overweight the good ones, it's easy to get lost in your unhappy emotions. Let's use a breakup for example. The easiest way to exit the sad feelings of your GF breaking up with you (for me) is to watch endless episodes of a great tv series like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc. You dive into a different world and forget the shit that's going on in your real life, at least for the time you watch it. But what does this 'getting lost' do to your goals? Can you remember? The goals you had before she called you to tell you that it's over? Your goals of creating a Fastlane business? Your goals of creating value? Ah right, those goals. It's easy to get lost in bad emotions. But it's hard to get out there after weeks of returning to the standard life, after weeks of doing nothing but working your job and watching 5 episodes of GoT before going to bed every day. If you get lost in your bad emotions, you will probably stop creating the future you want to live in.
But what happens if you try to make your good emotions overweight your bad ones? Feeling worried about people maybe not liking the service or product you are working on? First thing to do is to accept that those emotions are normal. It's normal to worry about something that is important to you. But remember why you started working on this service/product, remember the need you saw when you decided to create this service or this product, the value that it creates for others. Be excited about the next step of creating your service/product that you will reach as soon as you are done with the step you are working on right now. Shift your emotions from worries and anxiety to euphory and excitement.
2 weeks ago my ex GF (been in a relationship for 3.5 years until last october) and me spoke on the phone and she told me that something terrible happened to her half a year ago. My first reaction were the usual emotions, feeling anger and sadness. I wanted to smack in the wall behind me. But after a few minutes I shifted my emotions into positive, supporting ones. I knew I could just watch a few episodes of Supernatural to escape all this shit for a few hours, and I actually thought about it for a minute. But then I switched on my laptop and continued working on my business. Why? I told myself that me feeling bad doesn't change what happened, it doesn't do anything good for anyone, not for me, not for her. You can't avoid those emotions, but with learning to be able to control them, to shift your emotions, you can prevent them from working against you. A few weeks ago my mom gave me her old phone for me to use as a business phone and I put all her photos on a usb drive before I reseted the phone. While copying the photos, I saw a photo of our old house in the preview. I clicked through the photos that my mom apparently made before she left it. It hit me like a slap in the face. I didn't see a photo of our old house in months. But the photos were not the thing that almost made me cry in that moment, it was the thought of my mom going through the empty house that she put everything in over the years; taking photos of every room to keep memories of it. This image in my head really fcked me up for a moment. It's not about removing those bad emotions, they will come through at some points and that's ok. As long as you won't let them win over your good emotions.
Use It To Help Others
Before I bring this post to an end, let me add something to think about:
If something bad happens to you or someone you know, think about the possibility of creating a service or a product that can help to prevent this stuff from happening to others. You just found a need, something that creates a lot value for others.
Disclaimer: I didn't use the stories above to arouse compassion, neither am I bragging or anything like this (about what?). It just is what it is. I did it because I think it makes it better to understand what I wanted to share with you. If you read until this point, thank you for reading. I hope I didn't turn you guys into cold hearted sociopaths with it, if so, I did a terrible job at writing out my thoughts. Hopefully this will help you to fight through some bad situations and bad emotions on your journey and keep yourself on the road.
I thought a while about writing this thread, because it's very hard for me to put this stuff into the right words. I'll try anyway, cause I think some of you can benefit from that.
"How Can You Be So Cold?"
Last week some shit happened (again) with my dad, that made my younger brother break down and cry and ask our family for advice on how to react, while we were at my mom for dinner. After a while my brother's GF and me hit the balcony for a cigarette (as usual) and kept talking about the topic. Our convo went something like:
Bro's GF: "this shit really F*cks him up.."
Me: "yeah I know, my dad knows how to give him a bad conscience for just everything, my dad F*cked it up and now he makes my brother feel responsible for him being alone and all that"
Bro's GF: "and he only does it to him, because he knows how your brother reacts to it."
Me: "yes, he tried to do it a few times, writing me some stuff.. but he knows that this shit doesn't work with me."
Bro's GF: "yeah because you can get cold if you want, but not in a bad way, you can handle all that better than him. I wish I could do that too, makes shit a lot easier sometimes"
This conversation made me think about something that I started doing after my mom broke up with my dad (after she discovered that he's addicted to gambling and lost his company and their (our) house because of it. The foreclosure of our house was 1.5 months away when my mom finally found out everything.)
At that point I started to get cold. At least I thought that I was getting cold. Man I was afraid that I turn into a Dexter. But I didn't really get cold, what I actually did was starting to control my emotions.
Of course I felt all those emotions that you feel in situations like this. But after about 30 minutes, I had a thought process going on in my head like this:
FEELING SAD 'I can't understand it...'
FEELING ANGRY 'how could he do that...'
FEELING WEAK 'what should I do? What's next? Will we overcome this?'
FEELING ANXIOUS 'do we find a new home? Can my mom recover from this?'
FEELING RESPONSIBLE 'I know my mom and my brother are doing bad after all this, we need to get over this shit..'
FEELING STRONGER 'F*ck this shit, we will get over all this.'
FEELING NEUTRAL (COLD) 'ok let's see, what needs to be done..'
From that moment on I didn't spend a tear until we got over it. Yes there were moments where I worried and felt the bad emotions again, but it didn't last too long. I automatically switched into the good emotions after a few minutes, to be able to get over this.
This happened in February 2014. If I look back at it I'm actually thankful now for all the things I learned because of it.
How my family is doing now?
I never saw my mom this happy in years. Really almost made me cry to see her smile after she found a flat to live in. My brother and me became really good friends, we moved into a flat together. This whole situation made us from far-from-friends to very good friends. I also found something like a good or almost best friend in my brother's GF since that. My dad is still struggling and probably still gambling, I hope that he will get over it sometime.
Control It, Not Remove It
Don't get me wrong, I don't wanna tell you to not be sad, angry or disappointed if something bad happens to you. Control your emotions doesn't mean to not feel any emotions. It just means being able to shift your emotions into good emotions, emotions that help you and others.
I had to learn to control my emotions to help my family to get over the situation we been in. But that was just the beginning. I was able to shift my emotions into emotions that help me to get my a$$ up and not get lost in my worries and sadness. I hope you can see the benefit of this ability for your journey to/on the Fastlane.
Imagine being able to overcome all the worries and doubts you got concerning your business. How you do that? Try to make your good emotions overweight your bad ones.
Light vs. Dark
It's the old game, Good vs. Bad, Day vs. Night, Light vs. Dark.
If your bad emotions overweight the good ones, it's easy to get lost in your unhappy emotions. Let's use a breakup for example. The easiest way to exit the sad feelings of your GF breaking up with you (for me) is to watch endless episodes of a great tv series like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc. You dive into a different world and forget the shit that's going on in your real life, at least for the time you watch it. But what does this 'getting lost' do to your goals? Can you remember? The goals you had before she called you to tell you that it's over? Your goals of creating a Fastlane business? Your goals of creating value? Ah right, those goals. It's easy to get lost in bad emotions. But it's hard to get out there after weeks of returning to the standard life, after weeks of doing nothing but working your job and watching 5 episodes of GoT before going to bed every day. If you get lost in your bad emotions, you will probably stop creating the future you want to live in.
But what happens if you try to make your good emotions overweight your bad ones? Feeling worried about people maybe not liking the service or product you are working on? First thing to do is to accept that those emotions are normal. It's normal to worry about something that is important to you. But remember why you started working on this service/product, remember the need you saw when you decided to create this service or this product, the value that it creates for others. Be excited about the next step of creating your service/product that you will reach as soon as you are done with the step you are working on right now. Shift your emotions from worries and anxiety to euphory and excitement.
2 weeks ago my ex GF (been in a relationship for 3.5 years until last october) and me spoke on the phone and she told me that something terrible happened to her half a year ago. My first reaction were the usual emotions, feeling anger and sadness. I wanted to smack in the wall behind me. But after a few minutes I shifted my emotions into positive, supporting ones. I knew I could just watch a few episodes of Supernatural to escape all this shit for a few hours, and I actually thought about it for a minute. But then I switched on my laptop and continued working on my business. Why? I told myself that me feeling bad doesn't change what happened, it doesn't do anything good for anyone, not for me, not for her. You can't avoid those emotions, but with learning to be able to control them, to shift your emotions, you can prevent them from working against you. A few weeks ago my mom gave me her old phone for me to use as a business phone and I put all her photos on a usb drive before I reseted the phone. While copying the photos, I saw a photo of our old house in the preview. I clicked through the photos that my mom apparently made before she left it. It hit me like a slap in the face. I didn't see a photo of our old house in months. But the photos were not the thing that almost made me cry in that moment, it was the thought of my mom going through the empty house that she put everything in over the years; taking photos of every room to keep memories of it. This image in my head really fcked me up for a moment. It's not about removing those bad emotions, they will come through at some points and that's ok. As long as you won't let them win over your good emotions.
Use It To Help Others
Before I bring this post to an end, let me add something to think about:
If something bad happens to you or someone you know, think about the possibility of creating a service or a product that can help to prevent this stuff from happening to others. You just found a need, something that creates a lot value for others.
Disclaimer: I didn't use the stories above to arouse compassion, neither am I bragging or anything like this (about what?). It just is what it is. I did it because I think it makes it better to understand what I wanted to share with you. If you read until this point, thank you for reading. I hope I didn't turn you guys into cold hearted sociopaths with it, if so, I did a terrible job at writing out my thoughts. Hopefully this will help you to fight through some bad situations and bad emotions on your journey and keep yourself on the road.
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