Ryan, what a beautiful and helpful post! As you say, and I totally agree, "Increasing my emotional vocabulary has been life-changing." I spent the majority of my adolescent and young adult years learning what I should have learned as a child, and I feel that doing so saved me years of my adult life.
I'm glad you wrote about it, as I've observed this "lack" of emotional identification in most adults I meet and work with.
I believe that as we collectively work to identify our own emotions, we implicitly help others in the process, as you did by sharing your own journey.
Thank you for mentioning the importance of writing, kindness to ourselves, and self-grounding.
I appreciate your feedback, Katerina. You know how rare emotional identification is in adults. Sounds like you still learned it fairly early on. It wasn't until I was 41 and divorced that I learned about emotions, and I'm still learning daily.
I started early, but I'm a slow learner because I go in depth, sometimes too deep, and I'm still learning. I think this will continue throughout my life as I discover new shades of emotions with every interaction, dynamic, or situation.
The best time to rebuild yourself doesn't exist; if we look at ourselves kindly, we'll see why it wasn't possible before and now we're ready to experience something we may not have had the chance to before.
I'm inspired by your work and wish you lots of energy in your emotion exploration!
I love hearing that you're a slow learner who goes deep. I recall Eckhardt Tolle saying that Einstein was supposedly a slow learner. 'You have to be slow if you want to go deep,' he said.
The feeling is mutual. Wishing us both energy in our exploration!
Thanks for giving us a window into your life. I appreciate the honest journey you have been on. Your actions steps are very practical. I personally have found self talk to very powerful!
Thanks for your words, Wayne. Feels good to hear. I have mixed feelings about writing prescriptive articles. I tend to prefer descriptive, but at the same time we’re all looking for greater understanding and practical solutions to our challenges.
I know that my men’s group that meets every Saturday morning at 7 AM is a priority. You’ve described so much for me that I want to be able to articulate better in the future when I describe the value of my men’s group meetings.
Thanks for sharing this, Bryan. Your ongoing appreciation, gratitude and humbleness are a few of the qualities I appreciate about you. Enjoy the men’s groups.
I love this. About 20 years ago I came across a discipline called "morning pages". I believe it came from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, early in the morning pull out a piece of paper and just write whatever comes to mind stream-of-consciousness style without ever stopping your pen for (if I recall correctly) 20 minutes. Doing that practice for just a couple of months during a tough time was very powerful for me.
Mmm, that resonates loudly, Bo. While I have the book but haven't read it, your memory is good—Julia is the source of Morning Pages. This is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the article. Appreciate you taking the time to comment.
'...articulating what was happening inside me could transform my emotional state.'
I'd say one main reason why such articulation is so powerful is because the act of writing or talking about our strong, disturbing emotions enables our minds to better process as well as come to terms with such emotions.
Ryan, what a beautiful and helpful post! As you say, and I totally agree, "Increasing my emotional vocabulary has been life-changing." I spent the majority of my adolescent and young adult years learning what I should have learned as a child, and I feel that doing so saved me years of my adult life.
I'm glad you wrote about it, as I've observed this "lack" of emotional identification in most adults I meet and work with.
I believe that as we collectively work to identify our own emotions, we implicitly help others in the process, as you did by sharing your own journey.
Thank you for mentioning the importance of writing, kindness to ourselves, and self-grounding.
I appreciate your feedback, Katerina. You know how rare emotional identification is in adults. Sounds like you still learned it fairly early on. It wasn't until I was 41 and divorced that I learned about emotions, and I'm still learning daily.
I started early, but I'm a slow learner because I go in depth, sometimes too deep, and I'm still learning. I think this will continue throughout my life as I discover new shades of emotions with every interaction, dynamic, or situation.
The best time to rebuild yourself doesn't exist; if we look at ourselves kindly, we'll see why it wasn't possible before and now we're ready to experience something we may not have had the chance to before.
I'm inspired by your work and wish you lots of energy in your emotion exploration!
I love hearing that you're a slow learner who goes deep. I recall Eckhardt Tolle saying that Einstein was supposedly a slow learner. 'You have to be slow if you want to go deep,' he said.
The feeling is mutual. Wishing us both energy in our exploration!
Thanks for giving us a window into your life. I appreciate the honest journey you have been on. Your actions steps are very practical. I personally have found self talk to very powerful!
Thanks for your words, Wayne. Feels good to hear. I have mixed feelings about writing prescriptive articles. I tend to prefer descriptive, but at the same time we’re all looking for greater understanding and practical solutions to our challenges.
I know that my men’s group that meets every Saturday morning at 7 AM is a priority. You’ve described so much for me that I want to be able to articulate better in the future when I describe the value of my men’s group meetings.
Thanks for sharing this, Bryan. Your ongoing appreciation, gratitude and humbleness are a few of the qualities I appreciate about you. Enjoy the men’s groups.
I love this. About 20 years ago I came across a discipline called "morning pages". I believe it came from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, early in the morning pull out a piece of paper and just write whatever comes to mind stream-of-consciousness style without ever stopping your pen for (if I recall correctly) 20 minutes. Doing that practice for just a couple of months during a tough time was very powerful for me.
Mmm, that resonates loudly, Bo. While I have the book but haven't read it, your memory is good—Julia is the source of Morning Pages. This is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the article. Appreciate you taking the time to comment.
'...articulating what was happening inside me could transform my emotional state.'
I'd say one main reason why such articulation is so powerful is because the act of writing or talking about our strong, disturbing emotions enables our minds to better process as well as come to terms with such emotions.
Good insights, Raveen. Makes me wonder how cavemen and women survived before language.