Modern Emotional Health

We live in a day an age where you don’t need to be at the office to build your presentation or even give it. We can see what friends and family are doing at practically any moment thanks to social media. We can track our kids every movement and we can get practically ANYTHING delivered right to our door whenever we want it … clothes, food, booze.

If you want a burger, fries and a beer we don’t even have to get off the couch to get it. There are multiple businesses that will deliver it right to your door.

You no longer have to question if your kids are where they say they are because you can track them. Which can be both a blessing and a curse.

Ever wonder what your friends, family … ex’s are doing right now? Log on to social media and find out.

All of these modern ‘conveniences’ are both a blessing and a curse. We can see how they are benefiting us but they are also having a massive impact on our modern emotional health.

What is modern emotional health? Chances are you’ve never even considered that question. Most people believe that means being happy all the time.

I want to tell you THAT belief system has caused more trouble and emotional unhealthiness than any other thing that we focus on in our lives.

We think… everyone else is ‘happy’ …but us. Just look on Instagram or Facebook. Everyone is smiling, living their best life and there isn’t a zit in sight. Happy and perfect!!!

And we think something is wrong with us when that isn’t our life.

But don’t beat yourself up if that is what you think because that is what we’ve been told.

We’ve all be taught other people hurt our feelings. We ask kids, ‘did little Joey hurt your feelings?’ We tell them, ‘that hurt mommy’s feelings’ and it’s no wonder they grow up thinking they are responsible for how other people feel and give that power to people as well.

There’s also this belief that other people make us happy. We tell people, ‘you make me so happy,’ Find a husband that makes you happy. A group of friends that make you happy.’

We’re also conditioned to believe our situations make us happy or sad. If we achieve and get good grades, we’ll be happy… if we don’t we’ll be sad. If we’re rich, thin, successful we’ll be happy. If not, we’ll be sad.

I don’t know about you but I know some pretty miserable skinny people. Some depressed rich people and some lonely successful people. But this is what our emotional education is reduced to.

NEWSFLASH: Life is 50-50. It’s 50% positive and 50% negative. Yeah, we want to renegotiate that and try to get it to 80% positive and 20% negative but that’s not how life works.

You know what happiness feels like because you’ve experienced unhappiness

You know what joy feels like because you’ve experienced misery.

You know what peace feels like because you’ve experienced stress.

We need the OPPOSITE to experience life.

THAT is the human experience. It’s not to be HAPPY all the time … so take a deep breath.

So when we ARE experiencing the half of life that is negative it’s important to just allow it to be there. So many of us are so uncomfortable with those negative emotions… we’ve never been taught how to process them … that we run, hide, distract ourselves from them with over eating, over drinking, over working, over facebooking, over shopping … etc. We seek pleasure to escape pain. The problem is the pain is still there … and now you’ve also added all the problems that come with the extra food, extra alcohol, extra work hours away from the family, extra amazon bills.

Whatever we resist, persists. Whenever life doesn’t go the way you want it to and you’re feeling pretty crummy, take a step back, a deep breath and know that you’re experiencing the part of life that’s 50% negative.

Nothing is wrong. It’s just life.

And in life …. it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be disappointed. It’s okay to not be okay.