#12 Emotions as Forces

Ep 12 Between the Ears Emotions as Forces
Welcome, I'm Arnold Beekes and I enable you to have a better life between the ears, because your inner state creates your outer reality. Today I want to talk with you about our emotions and that directly corresponds to our inner state which is so important as I said in the intro, our inner state creates our outer reality. So how can we improve our inner state? Well crucial for that is that we have to know that our emotions are really really the key driver of that and key driver I mean hopefully in a positive way rather than a limiting way.

What most of us and I've talked with people from different cultures, different genders all over the world, most of us are taught or obliged or require to suppress our emotions. Boys don't cry, girls don't do this, in the business world you're supposed to be logic, you're supposed to ignore emotions. So we have become and that is intentionally really really bad at listening to our emotions.

We have become very proficient however in suppressing our emotions and like in the examples I just mentioned that already starts in childhood. So can you imagine by the time you're 40, 50 or older and the main thing when you always have done because that's what you thought that's what most people are doing to suppress your emotions that is for instance John Sarno is a doctor who found out that the causes of many many people who have lower back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, those are not physical problems those are emotional problems because we suppress something and that something is an emotion or most likely multiple emotions and then to catch your attention it focuses well it focuses on a certain part in your body most likely your back. How many people have back pain? I think a lot of people and in most cases there's nothing wrong with your back.

What is wrong is that you are suppressing your emotions so we have to understand that our emotions are really generative forces. I repeat emotions are generative forces meaning they have a large influence on yourself how you feel and do but also when you interact with other people. For instance the most common emotion which we experience all the time is fear.

We live in a fear-based society especially the media but also look at governments and businesses, marketing. What is it? It promotes fear, fear of failure, fear of missing out, fear of getting laid off. So that fear in itself if you're afraid of losing your job that has an emotion in it like oh I don't want to lose my job because then I can no longer pay my mortgage and my kids going to school and my car and my holiday.

So fear is an inbuilt emotion and fear attracts fear. However if you choose fear, if you get your brain on a daily basis flooded with everything in fear and that is what social media is doing, then fear invites fear or fear invites what you don't want. That's the power of emotion in a negative way.

The good news is that you can use emotions also in a positive way to attract what you want. Focus on your aspiration, your ambition, your desire, your goal and be confident, be positive, be convinced that it will happen and feel it. But you have to add the feeling.

How would it feel if you get what you want? So you have to add the feeling as opposed to fear. Fear has an inbuilt emotion so that's why it's so dangerous. With aspiration you have to add your feelings like how would I feel if I create something to clean up the polluted air? How does it make you feel? How does it make you feel if you every day do some shopping for a handicapped neighbor? How does it feel if you greet people you see every day instead of ignoring them or look like I'm a bit afraid of these folks and instead of being afraid be kind to other people.

So emotions are really our operating system. That's how important our emotions are. So now can you see it's really strange that the emotions represent our operating system but we ignore it.

Well something is like compare it with your computer. Your computer doesn't work without an operating system and we try to live our lives without emotions as our operating system. That's why a lot of things in our life become impossible.

The goal of our emotional system yes of course it's number one is to protect us to scan for danger or things that might impact our safety. Yes absolutely. But secondly it allows us to investigate expand and advance our lives.

It's our navigator and it's not only me who's saying this. Emotions are foundational to logic. That's what Nobel Prize winners say and what they say is we are feeling machines that think not thinking machines that feel.

We are feeling machines that think not thinking machines that feel. The second part thinking machines that feel that is what the message which we get through our education is like we have to be rational. Yeah yeah something you feel something but ignore it suppress it don't listen to it.

But if we are feeling machines that think it shows that emotions are primary not secondary. I invite you to consciously engineer in yourself powerful emotional states. Everyday beauty.

We conclude each session with some examples of everyday beauty because beauty and especially moral beauty kindness courage compassion has a very positive influence on your inner state. Today's example is about a solar panel that turns ocean water into drinking water and the leftover salt becomes lithium. Conventional desalination has two problems.

It requires enormous amounts of energy and it produces toxic brine that damages marine ecosystems when returned to the sea. So a team at the University of Rochester has developed a solar thermal approach that solves both of these problems. Black metal panels etched with femtosecond lasers become super light absorbing and super water attracting.

Pulling a thin film of seawater across their surface and then distilling it into fresh water and depositing the leftover salts cleanly to the side. No brine, no chemical additives, self-cleaning. Remember we need your uniqueness.

Be a better maker for yourself, for others, for the world.