3 Goal-Killing Emotional Habits
And the two infamous words they start with…
It starts when you’re feeling a little…
Fill in the blank. Angry, tired, pissed, resentful, hopeless, intimidated. Anything.
Any time you say “I feel” without the intent to understand and deal with that emotion, it’s just an emotion. A pool of feelings in your head you’ll marinade in until it either blows over or you act on it.
Does that mean the feeling’s bad? No. It’s not good or bad, actually, it’s just a feeling. Not trying to be callous here, but your goals don’t care about your feelings.
My goals certainly don’t.
Feeling and emotions are rich sources of information, and it’s important we treat them as such. If we get into the habit of saying “I feel blank” lightly, we’ll eventually numb ourselves of their potential: to get us where we need to go.
Some context.
I feel like I want to hug my wife isn’t really a pot-stirrer, it’s just something I want to do. Good to go there. I feel tired, I think I’ll sleep in on the other hand…you might as well backhand your goals if it becomes regular.
We all know the ripples from sleeping in…then you miss your workout, rush your morning and skip breakfast, which increases your already intense cravings. A shit show waiting to happen, you could say.
And it all started with the conscious or unconscious prefix: I feel…
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”
Eckhart Tolle
And that’s the theme of this article.
Emotions are rich sources of information, both good and bad. Positive emotions give shape and depth to our human experience and the I feels typically enrich a relationship or situation. I happen to love giving my wife hugs.
But this article is ultimately about knocking down obstacles to hitting our goals. And using your feelings as an excuse to dodge the work — even if it’s justified — is what we’re going to navigate here.
If you take nothing else from this article, though, take this: you have to acknowledge an emotion before you can do anything with it.
Alright let’s work.
#1 Over-identifying with the emotion
Let’s keep this simple: feeling like shit doesn’t mean you’re a piece of the stuff.
When we begin to intertwine how we feel with who we are we can get into some trouble. This is especially the case when we’re in a rough patch of our lives. When the circumstances aren’t dire, we could reflect and get some good information, such as “I normally enjoy X”, which could give us a peek into our true personality.
But what about when things are hard?
If you don’t love your job, the kids are screaming all day and you’re on the rocks with your spouse, I feel exhausted can sneakily turn into I’m a failure.
This habit is an informal cousin of something called overgeneralization, a goal-killing cognitive distortion that basically says you take one negative thing and blow it out of proportion until it wraps around your life.
While it’s a common observation in therapy, it’s something the general public — including perfect humans like ourselves — should be mindful of.
In simpler terms, here’s the gist: even a string of of bad events doesn’t mean you are the cause of everything bad.
Can you recognize this in any aspects of your own life?
Maybe a pet project that fell on it’s face or perhaps a week of blistering arguments in the home… We’ve all got something.
If we don’t learn to detach from this habit we’re going to act out our “new” personality in unhealthy ways. “I’m a failure” leads to less confidence, more arguments, drinking, and Lord knows what else.
While it doesn’t get a lot of love in the fitness community, cleaning up your thought patterns is one of the strongest investments you can make.
#2 Runon emotions
Also called “bleeding emotions,” these sneaky little bastards are responsible for that hangover feeling you sometimes wake up with when you weren’t drinking.
Here’s the scene: you go to bed in an emotional state (again, pick your emotion), and while you thought a good night’s sleep would shake it off, you wake up in an amplified state of last night’s feelings.
The unhealthy emotional habit is not that you experience this — we all do — but it’s unhealthy when you allow this to dominate your day.
Barring any extreme circumstances, these emotions can usually be dealt with pretty easily. Using a therapeutic muscle called cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, you can get rid of your emotional hangover.
If you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through the emotion — you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid.
Mitch Albom
Essentially, here’s the three step process to crush this: acknowledge, accept and take action. 3 A’s…easy enough to remember, I hope.
Acknowledge: have a little real talk with yourself — you’re emotional because of something that happened yesterday, or maybe a series of events that built up. Don’t fall into the “I’m fine” trap and fool yourself into things are all good. After all, you need to acknowledge you’ve got a cut before you put on the BandAid.
Accept: You can’t change what happened but you can absolutely influence what happens in the next chapter of that experience. Your decision to accept it rather than reject it matters a whole lot for how things ultimately turn out.
Action: If your goal needs some creative juice (writing, art, entrepreneurship, etc.), you can let in some emotion during certain parts — but be sure your lingering emotions aren’t sabotaging your decisions. Your goals matter, and they need you to show up to work. And while nobody tells this to you, meaningful action is usually the antidote to shitty circumstances.
Nobody likes to be walked all over, and that includes yourself. Stand up to any part of yourself that you didn’t bargain for.
#3 Untrained emotions
Type fitness into any search bar and you’re guaranteed to get a flood of exercises, half-naked humans and 12-week programs. While all three are good to go, what’s always missing is how your emotions influence your training. (I’ve got a funny feeling it’s because “training your anger” isn’t as sexy as Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine regimen.)
Here’s the deal.
If you’re living in a constant state of emotion, your ability to execute on logical goals takes a hit. Again, trained emotions that you’re aware of can be a powerful ingredient to your goals, but untrained emotions are of little help to anyone.
Here’s a quick example. An early observation in social psychology found that competitive cyclists typically performed better when competing against others than a clock. In a nutshell, they felt the competition when squaring up with others, and the ensuing emotions cranked up their performance.
A theory called social facilitation grew from this, and it’s an often-cited example of how emotions and feelings can be amplified in a healthy manner when those emotions are used properly.
At a different point on this spectrum — where untrained emotions chronically hurt your performance — we have things like over-indulging in comfort foods, drinking too much to impress others, going for a “quick meal” like McDonalds rather than a slower but healthier meal.
All of these behaviors are rooted in untrained emotions that can be turned around with some work and consistency.
Here’s the cure: if you plan on exercising and dieting, be the one who knows how prominent emotions are in your health goals. And the next time you see an ad for something health related, know that it’s only as good as your ability to remain emotionally centered.
Then go train like Hugh Jackman.
Rogue Therapy
If you’re interested in what the application of all this looks like, shoot me an email and we can chat. I built a personal training company called Rogue Therapy on this single premise: get uncomfortable, it’s where the growth is. Our hybrids combine fitness, psychology and a sprinkle of military discipline into a uniquely-yours transformative process.
Cheers,
roguetherapy@gmail.com
