So Don't

Preface:
Please understand, I do not typically compare myself to anyone but myself. When I say that I feel proficient at something it is merely because I am better at in than I used to be.
When I am referencing my friend’s statement and then writing a blog about it, I am only using what I read into his words. I have no idea of his present emotional state, nor am I comparing myself to it. I’m simply using a statement to shed some light on who I used to be.
Thanks.



“What a waste of time, energy & emotion.”

I had completed my daily task of getting into a minor spat with someone on Twitter early on Thursday morning. The person went away frustrated, leaving this as their final farewell.

It was rude to my Twitter buddy but I chuckled to myself.

I mean, why invest energy and emotion into a tiff, especially on the internet? What a waste of perfectly good (undisturbed) energy and emotion.

It remains to be seen (at least by me) why anyone would bother. Why don’t you keep your sensational tendencies out, leave your emotions in a safe place and come out to “fight”? It makes more sense than just your mental capacities being involved. Please, for the love of yourself, leave your emotions out of it!

Emotions are highly overrated. In fact in our culture, people live by them entirely. This to me is pathetic.

You have control over your emotions. No one can dredge them up but you. No one can hurt them unless you allow it. Sure stuff can sting. But if it takes more than 60 seconds to get over, you need to reconsider where you place your emotional armor.
The nice thing about emotional armor is that you can build it over time. You don’t have to let your emotions just run around willy-nilly wherever they want (and get trampled on in the process).

Please, for the love of yourself, leave your emotions out of it!

A few weeks ago someone said to me “I like your brother way better than you.” I quickly answered, “I hope so!” He was one of my brother’s best friends. I’d never spent any time with him one on one and don’t know that I ever will. If he didn’t like my brother better than me that would have been… weird.

The funny thing about this incident, the reason I remembered the off-handed statement at all was because I notice how well I’d handled it.

Confession: I was hyper-emotional for the majority of my life.

A few years ago I would have been pretty distressed. I would have thought this person was actually rude and would have been annoyed whenever I saw him.

Confession: I was hyper-emotional for the majority of my life. I had my emotional feelers spread out a mile in every direction. So you can imagine how frequently they got stepped on!

I would say the cruelest things to people but when they would come back at me with an offhanded comment, I would fall to pieces. Literally. I would start crying and ask my mom to tell whomever it was to leave me alone.

My mom reminded me about ten years ago that I consistently made scathing remarks about people’s character and intelligence almost constantly and that if I couldn’t take it than I shouldn’t dish it out.

Thank God for mothers. I was about as aware at that point in my life as a rock at the bottom of a cave. I could have competed with the Matterhorn for density.

But I came around eventually. (Thank goodness.) Now I am the boss and my emotions listen to me. I’m actually to the point where I can and do shut down my emotions when they get to a certain level.

When I have real conversations I get pretty passionate. And I tend to be loud when I’m with my best friends and my family. (When I’m not with them, I’m really quiet. I’m sure you don’t believe me yet, but it is true.) When I’m really excited about stuff I swear. A lot, actually. Even in front of my mother who plugs her eyes and says in her most irritating voice “I don’t like to hear those words”.

Something I have noticed is that I have to keep all my emotional levels really low.
I would guess they have to stay below 20% and if they get close to 30% alarms start going off me to cool down, walk away and reboot, so to speak.

This can all be done in a matter of 60 seconds and doesn’t actually require that I physically walk away. I’m actually getting really good at this control thing… for me.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it when I realized that I grieve for things before they are gone so that I have less grief to wade through when it actually is. Maybe the best description is that my emotions are a flood, but I managed through hard work and some hard lessons to build a dam. And when I know that the dam needs to be released at some point in the near future, I open it a crack and let some of the emotional overage spill out. That way there is less of a back up when I might actually be tempted to upset.

Condolences to my friend who wasted energy and emotion in an epic Twitter battle. I actually had a lot of fun. My heart started to beat faster for about 10 seconds but I think I have a nob to turn that down, too.

So I did.