Bryan Goodwin: We know our life is 5050.
Half of its pain, half of its pleasure.
How do we
deal? How do we process
that emotional pain when we feel it? We're gonna be talking about that that this week on episode 230
of the relaxed male.
This is the relaxed male,
a show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.
Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to the relaxed mail. I'm your host, Brian, and I am a certified men's coach who assists men who are just neck deep in the suffering of their life, whether it's
a relationship problem with their wife, their kids, their boss,
rest some other family member.
We go through our day to day struggles, and we often get ourselves
completely wrapped around the axle when it comes to
how we process that. How do we handle
these emotional
roller coasters that we go on that are
relationship based.
And that's what we do here at the at Relax Males. We help men figure out what it is that's getting in their way. Why can they not have the relationships they want? Why can they not have the
find the happiness that they're after?
And we do that each week. We take look at a specific topic. We tear it apart. We look at it. We examine it, and we learn and grow from that.
So this week, we're talking about
processing
emotional pain because
we go through that. We
got a several we get
several instances
every day. Our life is 5050. We in the 5050 principle,
half of your life
is gonna be in pain. That is half of your day. That is half of your minutes, half of your hours from time to time, from moment to moment, you're going to either be feeling pleasure or you're gonna be feeling pain. Some form of pleasure, some form of pain.
Pleasure, pain. Pleasure, pain.
Sometimes it seems like you get in a whole lot of pain and then other times you're just nothing but pleasure. But it equals out to where your life is always at. Half of it's gonna be pain. Half of it's gonna be pleasure. And we avoid that pain
in so many ways that it hinders us.
It keeps us from having the
the
complete and full rich, full life that we really wanna have. When we avoid the pain, we're blocking out half of our life. We're avoiding half of our life. We're avoiding half the experiences
that we could be having
simply because, oh, well, that's something I don't wanna experience.
Well, tough, man. You're gonna have to experience it whether you wanted to or not. And that's what a lot of the problems that we have
because we resist
that life. We resist that half of our life. And what happens when we're resisting it,
we're not allowing it to happen. Alright? When you're not allowing it to happen,
you're actually
putting more energy
into the
circumstance that you're, that you could be
going on about. Maybe it's,
having a difficult discussion with your wife
and you don't wanna you keep avoiding it. You're, like, worried about what's gonna happen. So you're adding you're compounding
more pain, more suffering.
It's taking twice, if not more energy, to actually
go through that process because you're worrying about it. When you worry about something, you're doubling the effort.
You're going through the circumstance before you've even gone through the circumstance,
And that's the big problem that you're gonna run into.
You've got it takes more energy. You're were you're worrying about stuff. So that worry is going to be
doubled up if not more.
And so you're making your life
even
harder
simply because you don't wanna face
the pain that you're actually
supposed to face in life.
Yeah. We would love to have our life just be full of joy and happiness, except for the fact that as we feel,
if we were to be in a land
that was nothing but nothing but joy and happiness,
then eventually joy and happiness would just become
the norm.
It would be the
your typical
meh type of day. If you're worried about how
how are you supposed to
feel happy all the time? You're not.
That is evident with the 5050 life. You're going to have those days,
that are just absolutely
crap.
And then you're gonna have other days that are just amazing.
And the low parts of your life, those deep dark valleys and those trenches and those pits of despair that you're in, you could actually start looking at those as a,
as a blessing
because
you're so far down that makes those peaks of, of joy and pleasure
that much higher, that much grander.
You wanna have a a wonderful life,
allow yourself to experience the pain
and the pleasure. So what do you do? How do you simply,
what do you do? Just start ignoring the fact that it's pain? Not not exactly. Not exactly. You don't just necessarily go, oh, I'm not gonna worry about this at all and turn a blind eye to it and walk away from it. Now
you life, like I said, you have to you're you have to be able to process it to go through
the pain that you're feeling.
A lot of guys they do. They turn a blind eye. They turn their back to the pain,
and this is why they start drinking all the time because they don't wanna have to face the pain. It's easier to buffer
and to do have other indulgent emotions
instead of
facing
the the emotion that you're needing to experience that moment.
The fear, the uncertainty
of talking to your wife about whatever
is a scary thing
because how is she gonna react? We don't know how she's gonna react. We gab that no control over that.
What if she gets mad? Well,
you have to be okay with the fact that she gets mad.
You avoiding trying to control her emotions
by not having the conversation with her means that you're not going to be growing
relationship wise as you want to have. So you have to do the hard thing. You have to have the hard discussion.
And lot of times you'll actually go off and be worrying about, oh my gosh, I'm, this is gonna be so terrible. She's going to just not
go for this, whatever the idea is.
And she's not gonna talk to me for a couple weeks
And come to find out, she comes on board with it. She's like, yeah. Yeah. This kind of sounds like a good idea.
All that pain, all that suffering was for nothing. Instead of if you had allowed
the initial thought, the initial worry,
the initial
concern
to just be there, to feel that emotion and process it and go on down the road and actually have the conversation with her, step up and do the hard thing,
the pain would be a lot shorter, wouldn't be near as bright, and would be a lot easier on you. You wouldn't have as much,
as many gray hairs if you if you step back and allowed the emotions that you're fighting against to happen,
because you see pain
in our life, that emotional pain that we go through is
what you make of it. We often
avoid things like sadness.
All right. It's like, oh my, I don't wanna, I don't wanna feel sad. Well, tough. You there's times that you're gonna go through life and you're gonna feel sad.
So what do you do about that?
You
process those painful emotions,
Those those times that you really don't wanna
maybe you're you have some regret
that,
you didn't
didn't get to spend as much time as you would love to have spent with your with your dad before he passed, and you keep shoving that regret away instead of allowing just allowing that regret to wash over you. When you process the emotions, there's several
key items that happen to you. 1,
you start to realize
that first, the emotion is nowhere near as scary as you wanted it to be.
It was just
a vibration.
That's all it is. An emotion can be viewed however you way you wanna view it.
If you wanna make
your have a life that is
as fulfilling as possible, you have to step into those
painful portions of your life.
Realizing that, yeah,
you,
you regret
spending time with your dad. You regret
what you said to your mom or your wife or whatever.
But knowing that the thoughts you have around that circumstance
are just your thoughts. They're not your mom's thoughts. You're not your dad's thoughts. You're not your wife's thoughts or nobody else's thoughts, but your own. And that the vibrations
of that emotion
just don't feel good,
but they're not gonna hurt you. If you're feeling sad, you're not gonna drown
in sadness.
You're not going to you're not going to
die
of of anxiety.
All right. What you're gonna end up doing is you're gonna have
a unpleasant emotion. You're gonna have a vibration that doesn't feel the greatest,
and that's gonna be whatever you determine is great or not great. Because you see pain is what you make of it. Pain is what you
have is what your thoughts about it
are going to be.
You think it's gonna be terrible. It's awful. It's gonna suck. Then guess what? It's gonna be terrible. It's gonna be awful and it's gonna suck.
But yet
as
with any type of emotion or any type of, of of event,
it takes a bit of skill
to, like, process. How do you process emotions?
It takes a a level of skill to be able to just first recognize that you're feeling a bad emotion,
then step through that emotion,
experience it,
let it live its life, and go away. Now when I say live its let it live its life, a lot of people kind of wick you at, but that's like, oh my god. You it's gotta live. I've gotta live with this thing.
It's not gonna last long. It's life. When you allow
an emotion to run its course,
minute and a half, 2 minutes,
typically. Now there are times, I will admit,
that there are times that, yeah, you're gonna have an emotion that lasts all day, maybe even longer. You're gonna have some more complex emotions that come about
that it takes you
days to process.
And the reason why it takes days to process is because you're not actually processing
the emotion itself.
You're processing the thought that created
that emotion.
You have to figure out how do you come about
turnaround
and process the thought. So you have a clean,
fearless
emotion, but we wanna make emotions mean something. And this is what really,
most of the time causes us to avoid it. We see sorrow and grief as these terrible emotions. We don't wanna feel those because we're supposed to be happy all the time.
Well, my first question is when I hear somebody say, well, I I wanna be happy all the time. Why? Why do you wanna be happy all the time? Why do you wanna go to your grandmother's funeral or funeral of a friend
and be happy?
Well, you know, I don't really wanna be happy at my at my grandma's funeral.
No. You actually want to be sad. There are times that our pain
is actually a good thing. Being able to feel grief and sorrow for the loss of a human being is one of the most beautiful acts that we could do as a human
for another human.
Yet so many times,
we don't wanna
feel that emotion, especially when we get home. It's like, oh, well, I don't need to. I should be over it. According to who? It's gonna take you a while to process and accept the fact that your grandma is not gonna be around anymore.
You're not gonna be able to go into her kitchen
and see her cooking eggs and bacon in the morning like you used to. I mean, I still miss
my grandpa. She's been dead
coming up on
25
years or so. 25, 30 years now. I still remember when I was young
waking up,
going into the kitchen, and she had bacon
sitting on the counter
for you to
eat when you,
as you wanted it. And it was there pretty much all morning.
You'd walk by snag a piece of bacon and
now we'd, me and my cousins would go. It was there's a lot of greatness in that. And remembering that isn't something you should shy away from. Remembering it is great.
All those wonderful times, those feel good emotions
crop up when
you remember
the loss of a family member. How do you keep a family member alive
is by telling the stories of them. You have to tell the stories. You're it's going to hurt a little bit. It hurts a little bit to remember back when my dad, before he passed in 2010,
how he used to,
he would be
watching a little bitty box television
in the kitchen. He'd be sitting at his table and he'd be
tinkering with something. And it's always something different, but he was always tinkering with something.
And
from time to time, you would hear
a crash
of wooden blocks and and metal pins and everything else. So there'd be just this
And it was it was just my dad's frustration that he was trying to get something to put to get put together, and it didn't wanna go to get them together or that or you'd hear if you go back there and you'd see him messing with something, he
he would screw up his face in a weird way, and he go, well, it came discombobulated.
In the way, he would well,
it it it
became discombobulated. And the way it but the whole
scene there brings up the fact that my dad's not around anymore, but I still love him enough
that I have processed those emotions. I don't shy away from the sorrow and the
and the
the regrets that I have that I
don't feel like I was the
greatest of sons
to him, or at least not the as great of a son as I now think back and believe he deserved.
And a lot of guys would take that emotion,
take those thoughts, take those regrets.
And instead of stepping into them and feeling them, it's easier to drown them, to numb them with alcohol,
with drugs of some sort, when instead
of playing small, because you don't wanna feel
embarrassed or feel bad,
you would rather not do anything. You would rather sit and
play the law, play your life small because you messed up somewhere along the way. You didn't weren't the greatest son. Well, what would the greatest son be like? Start being that.
Honor your dad in, you know, in that way.
Often, we want our pain
to end
instantly right then. There. All right. Fine. I am tired of this. I'm tired of feeling bad.
Boom. We're done.
It would be nice if it was that imp that easy, but our brain does not do that.
Our brain
is not about to just let
something go, especially an unfinished loop. We need
to have completion in one form, fashion, or another. You have to find the completion
to finish a scenario,
and that completion
is what
the thought process is. You're thinking of the of the time,
and you have to allow yourself time to process.
One of the things I recommend people do is
choose an activity that becomes your thinking activity.
There are 2 I have 2 different instances
of what types of thoughts I have when I'm doing
specific things.
1, when I am
unstrapping a a truck, which if you know, I'm still drive a truck from time to time,
and
I haul a flatbed, and so there are straps that you have to take off of the cargo
so the people can take it off. So the load doesn't just fly off the back of the of the truck as you're going down the down the road.
That normally takes about
30 minutes to get unstrapped,
un bungeed, pull the tarps off. If you haven't got tarps, roll the tarps up and all that. It takes 30, 45 minutes or so. I allow myself
to have
thoughts that
considering different topics, and it can vary. Sometimes it is
my my thoughts on
where I'm going with the business.
Sometimes it's thoughts on where I'm going with,
with a certain friendship or a with a relative. I will have
very specific thoughts about that. I will allow
the thoughts that can become consuming
to
be processed at those times. Another time is whenever I'm walking the dog. Whenever I walk my dogs, I got 2 of them. Got a Great Dane and a Sheep A Doodle,
and
we walk about mile 2 miles at a time. And the way and while that's going on,
that's my processing time. I that's when I get a chance to think about the thoughts, what is bothering me right now?
Look, think it through why. And it thinks, I go through it time and time and time and time and time again,
a couple
about
a year,
2 years ago.
No been about a year.
I had
a opportunity that didn't work out.
I was out of the truck. It was exactly what I wanted. I wanted out of the truck. I got out of the truck and it lasted exactly 6 months
and the money dried up and I had to get back in the truck.
And during that time,
I wanted to
hate on myself.
I wanted to
avoid talking to the people that I was involved with. I wanted to
just shut down and step back, but you can't.
I couldn't.
So I had to do the processing
of the thoughts of the emotions
and deal with the emotional pain
that I failed
at that first attempt. And why did I fail? Because I honestly, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't have the froggiest clue.
I stepped into it and tried winging it and I fell on my face. It was a
good lesson. I learned
about life, about business,
and
I'm good about it. There's no hard feelings anywhere
in that whole event,
And that is because I've chosen to not let pain feel bad,
but just let pain feel.
I can feel
the pain. I can feel
the, the sorrow,
the frustration.
I want this relaxed smell to take off so damn bad
that a lot of times that pain gets strong enough to where I wanna just say, never mind.
I'm not going to do this crap no more.
And then my little brain goes,
do you really not wanna do it? Well, no, I love doing this. I love helping men like you. I love helping men see holy smokes. Life can turn around
in a heartbeat
and become
grand
if you allow it. And that's probably the biggest challenge that I have right now is how do I explain
allowing
of a
of an emotion,
allowing of
a of a circumstance,
accepting that circumstance
as what it
is so that you can move on. Because that's the ultimate plan. When you are when you are processing
these unpleasant emotions,
you are actually
finding
a reason
and a why
to allow an emotion to come
do its thing,
and fade away. So how do you deal with those emotional pains? How do you handle the emotional
upset
upsetting
aspects,
the bad vibrations
of emotional pain?
Well, it's really it it's,
as a whole, it's not hard.
In practice,
it's a challenge
because you're gonna be in your head. And it like I said, it's a skill.
You first have to notice,
holy crap. I am pissed about something or holy crap. I am sad about something or
I am
I am angry. I'm frustrated.
Why did that? Why did I get mad at the guy who cut me off in traffic?
Well, if you really sit down and think about it and you process the thoughts, you're gonna notice that
because you were afraid. You were afraid you were gonna run into this person. You were afraid you were going to kill yourself,
afraid you're gonna kill the guy who pulled out in front of you. You're afraid that you were gonna damage your car and you were gonna drive around in a wrecked car for a while. There's a lot of fear in that.
So, yeah, when that fear came up, all of a sudden you had no control over your life and that lack of control really pisses you off. So, yeah, you got angry, man.
I know. I get angry
every time I go through Dallas.
It's like, goddamn.
I mean, come on, man.
Can you not step on the gas just a little bit more? You've got a 4 wheeler. It takes you 0 to 60 in 10 seconds, you know, while it makes takes me 0 to 60 in 10 miles.
But to
to process an emotion,
you first have to describe, what is it you're feeling?
What is it that you're what emotion are you, experiencing
right now? Is it
fear,
anger, uncertainty,
disempowering
thoughts,
forewarning.
You know, are you feeling a bit forewarned?
Are you lonely feeling burnt out? Maybe it you're feeling bored. Maybe the restlessness that you're feeling is the fact that you're feeling bored. Maybe that's the reason why you keep grabbing that phone and looking at your phone
and looking at Facebook or any other social media pay,
app
instead of seeing
how you can best serve your wife.
Because you're bored and you don't wanna be bored. You're afraid to be in board because you're not getting this serotonin, dopamine, and, and,
and and oxytocin hits that you would if you're looking at your phone.
You have to describe
what that emotion is
and then act like just imagine. Play play imaginary that you've taken that emotion out of wherever it is you feel it. Where do and that's something you can also describe where on your body do you feel it? Is it on the top of your head? Is it in the front of your head and the back of the head? Is it in your neck or even your shoulders? Does it feel like it's a weight hanging on your shoulders? Does it feel like a bunch of metal band wrapped around your chest? Does it feel like a fist is in the middle of your gut?
Does it feel like it does it make your legs hurt? Where do you feel
the pain that you feel that that
emotion
is being felt somewhere?
Because an emotion is nothing more than a vibration felt throughout the body. Where's that vibration originating at?
And as you look at it, you can describe it.
Is it big? Is it little? Is it heavy? Is it light? Is it
soft
or is it hard? Is it
smooth? Is it solid? Is it dense?
You can start describing this.
Is it fluffy? Is it scaly? Is it
hot? Is it cold? Is it warm?
Is it pulsating or is it just a steady
sensation?
If it's vibrating as it's, if it's pulsating, what what's the frequency of the pulsating
Examine it and every little minute detail you can think of. And before you know it, you're gonna be trying to examine it and you're going, well,
it's
it's not really there anymore. I don't feel it that much. And that's when you've processed the emotion. And then if you'll notice, I said motions last about a minute and a half, 2 minutes tops.
And when I said that,
well, you all go, no. I have motions that last all day. You're right. Sometimes, you will have emotions
that were gonna last you all day, last more than all day, and that's because your brain
is ruminating over that idea. Now sometimes, you're not. You I've had times where I've had emotions
just sit with me. I just felt sad for the rest of the day.
I just felt ashamed
for the rest of the day.
I just felt uneasy,
full of anxiety
because I know that my boss is about to yell at me. And those are times that you just have to accept the fact that, you know what, I'm gonna be
walking around with, with anxiety hanging off my shoulders.
I'm going to have to just deal with the fact that I'm feeling sad for whatever reason.
I am uncertain
about what my future is. That is okay. I can
accept
that. I will just have to do my job
while feeling
anxious, uncertain,
sad,
angry,
whatever.
Because sometimes we get those stubborn emotions
that don't wanna just
quickly turn away.
They wanna hang on. And that's usually because we have a more complex thought that we need to break down. We have to find the why
and believe
that why,
as to why we don't need to worry about
that circumstance
anymore. As we break it down, as we look at it and as we process
it, it gets a little easier as the months go on, as you're talking and, and working it through
with yourself,
you'll notice that things get better.
Now,
if you
find that you're struggling
with that, especially emotionally
speaking, and you're trying to process something that happened in the past, say in your childhood or something,
and you're running into problems of being able to get past whatever that, that harm was that happened to you,
whatever the,
if you're struggling with
emotional issues
that
are because of the past, There's nothing wrong with going to talk to a counselor.
Counselors
come in very handy
when dealing with
past problems.
While as coaches, we come in handy when you're dealing with
the emotions and you're trying to come up with a solution
to a problem
that you're facing that will
move you forward into the future. So if you are struggling with something in the past, please reach out to your counselor.
Go talk to a therapist.
Let them help you develop
a set of tools so that you can get past whatever it is that you need to get past while
if you're
running into
problems of, well, how am I supposed to get this business going? Or how am I supposed to talk to my wife? Because she's gonna get angry with me? Well, that's where we kinda sit back and we talk about it. We work it through and we come to
the solutions. That's where I
coach you
through that problem. And if you're wanting help on getting to the next step or wanting your relationship to become better, you wanna take it to the next step,
it's time to take the next step. Taking that next step is setting up
a consulting call with me. And if you want help on
having a better, more filling relationship,
please step up step up to
relaxmail.com
and hit the, the show notes, and there you will see a link that will allow you to take the next step
in whatever it is that you wanna do. And so guys with that, I wanna say thank you very much for for listening. And
if,
you're currently using a a
one of the old legacy style podcasting apps, there are some neat features that are gonna be coming to the show here soon.
There's some neat features that are gonna be coming to the show here real soon. But for those to actually work
and for you to be able to get have access to those new features, you're gonna actually need a newer podcasting app, a podcasting 2.0 compliant app. And you can get those by going over to,
over to relaxedmail.comforward/newapps,
n e w a p p s.
And there, you will you can choose
an as an assortment. An easy one to set up and be able to utilize is actually Fountain. The Fountain app is a great app.
If you're an iPhone user, Cast O Matic is great.
Podiverse is also another great
modern podcast app that will allow you to see things like when we start going live
might be happening here sooner than you think.
So if you are interested and have questions,
you can send a question over to me at brian@relaxedmail.com.
And I would love to hear what you have to say. So, anyhow, guys, with that, thank you all very much for listening. Y'all take care. See y'all next week. Till then.
Bye.