Maybe there is no greater threat to our collective health than living in a world where we are constantly exposed to each other's emotional turmoil.
Pastor Ashley Wooldridge says, "when emotions are high, wisdom is low." We are all capable of saying and doing things that aren't our wisest choices because our emotions get the best of us. Just a few decades ago, those poor choices had limited reach. The ripple effect was a few yards. Today, those poor choices can race across the ocean. Literally. And they can virally drag hundreds of thousands under on the way. Our brains are constructed such that when we are experiencing high emotions, our ability to think logically is restricted. That's a brain function that is supposed to protect us. High emotions feel like a threat, so our nervous system wants us to react - fight, flight or freeze - not think. With social media, we are daily invited into emotional pools that are NOT threats on our lives, but we go into them anyway fighting as if they are. We enter into them without our thinking brains. Without wisdom. The latest example of this is the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce relationship. I've stumbled into many online spaces where people are ripping people apart that they do not know over a couple they will never know. Strangers tearing each other apart over strangers. How often is that the social media storyline? Just a few decades ago, a room full of people could go to war over such a relationship, assuming they even knew about it. Today, a whole world goes to war over it. The thing is, Kelce and Taylor go about their lives kissing and holding hands and doing concerts and playing in Super Bowls. The emotions they experience with each other seem to be working out just fine. The emotions many of us experience fighting about their emotions, however, well that's another story. These emotions have consequences. We say things that inflame our emotions and other's emotions. And there's plenty of science today to help us understand that inflamed emotions have significant health consequences. Diving into each other's emotional turmoil and engaging in the related interpersonal attacks; it's killing us. I love social media. It's personally given me a platform to give and receive inspiration and goodness in my life. But I have taken steps to minimize the risk of drowning in someone else's emotional turmoil. If someone consistently triggers my emotions in ways that aren't healthy for me, I disengage from them. And we are all pretty good judges of emotions that aren't good for us. If I find myself tempted to dive into emotional pools that have no real relevance on my life, I move on. You read one comment in an inflamed emotional pool, chances are you're sticking around until you're inflamed. And peeing in that pool. And maybe most important, no matter what opinion I ever have about something, I will never attack someone else because of theirs. We can experience high emotion opinions about something without saying unwise things about someone else in the midst of those high emotions. Things said that I have personally found I often later regret. Life offers enough emotional challenges in the circles we walk in without us needing to dive into emotional challenges we'll never come within a bazillion miles of. Even if social media does make them feel like they ARE our circles. Protect yourself. Protect those around you. Protect those thousands of miles away from you. Let's all stay rooted in the emotions that really are trying to watch over our lives, not the ones trying to destroy it.
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Without being aware of it, we are often singing songs written by the emotions of our past.
Maybe we're watching a movie that makes us unexpectedly sad or emotional. Chances are it wasn't that particular scene at all, but the movie drawing on emotional scenes from our past. Maybe someone says something to us that makes us feel like we haven't measured up. It's possible they didn't say anything demeaning at all, we were simply triggered by our lifelong battle to measure up. Maybe we're afraid to draw close to people. And that fear has nothing to do with the people we're afraid to draw close to, but more so the people in our past who made people something to fear. We often hear about the power of being in tune with our emotions. Part of that tuning is realizing some emotions have nothing to do with the here and now. They are emotions that have become a part of us and insist on being a part of every waking moment of our lives. And for some of us, even our sleeping moments. Sometimes it's helpful in life to ask, where are these emotions coming from? It's helpful to pause and to reflect and determine, the emotions of this moment don't make sense for this particular moment. This person in front of me is not out to get me. Why do I feel like this person in front of me is out to get me? Sometimes, maybe even often, the emotions of our past are writing songs about our future. They want us to sing them. They insist on being the soundtrack for every moment of the rest of our lives. There is power in discovering that. There is power in saying, I am not going to sing that song you have written. In fact, I am crumbling that one into a big rejected ball and throwing it into the trash. Life is hard enough singing the emotions of the life we have without our songs being contaminated by the music of our past. It starts with knowing that. Knowing that not all emotions we feel right now are right now emotions. They are squatters living in the basement of our brains. Sometimes it's as simple as saying you don't belong here anymore. I need you to leave. Sometimes it's prayer or meditation that can quiet the mind and let emotions attach to the proper time zones in your life. Sometimes it's helpful to talk with a friend. Or a counselor. People you can express these emotions to who can help you come to see you are actually in tune with emotions of your past and not emotions of this moment. However you get there, it's helpful to get there. To get to a place of knowing my emotions write a lot of songs, but I don't have to sing them all. In fact, many of us are in great pain because we are TRYING to sing them all. Life is always best when we sing the emotions of right now. Don't let the emotions of your past convince you otherwise. The Kansas City Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl.
Again.... It's Patrick Mahomes' sixth year in the NFL, and it will be his fourth trip to the championship game. Many great quarterbacks play their entire careers without ever making it once! This was the year, folks were saying, that the Chiefs wouldn't make it. They had injuries and contract disputes and receivers dropping balls like they were trying to catch hornet nests. And let's not forget, they also had the whole Swifty thing going on. But while the rest of the world was captivated by all the external stories, cameras panned to the guest suites, and one by one experts and non-experts alike began predicting the story this year would be the coming back to earth for Mahomes and crew, Mahomes and crew stayed captivated by their purpose. Their purpose: getting to the Super Bowl. Again... I'm not a big Chiefs fan. Like I don't own a Jersey or one of those fancy Travis Kelce jackets. But I do love the way that they win. Not THAT they win, but the way they win. The way that no matter how many predictions start piling up to the contrary, no matter what or how loud the noise is, they stay captivated with their purpose of piling up victories. If you watch the Chiefs and don't recognize that, you're missing a chance to adopt a valuable ingredient of their success into your own chances for success. Because that is what holds a lot of us back. We are captivated with our purpose until we start hearing predictions we'll never successfully live out that purpose. That's when we often become captivated with pleasing the critics instead of doubling down on our purpose. The Chiefs doubled down this year. Shoot, even I said no way to the Chiefs this year. Several times. They didn't hear me. They didn't hear you. They didn't hear anyone. You no longer hear other people's predictions when you understand predictions don't measure your chances of success, commitment to purpose does. What's you purpose this week? Be captivated with it, and I promise you, you'll care much less about anyone else's predictions. Way Maker is one of my favorite songs. There are lyrics in the song that say:
You are Way maker, miracle worker Promise keeper, light in the darkness My God, that is who You are Those words encourage me. Until they don't.... I have listened to that song in the past. And in the moments of listening, I felt hope. But often when the music was done I found myself wondering, out loud, as if asking, where is my way, God? Where is my light and my miracle? Lately, God has been driving home an answer to those questions left unanswered at the time. Or maybe they were answered and I just refused to hear them then. But lately, God has been telling me that just because I'm not willing to get up and follow the way he has made, that doesn't mean the way hasn't been made. Sometimes we don't see the way God has made because we're still clinging to the way WE made. Or we're too busy feeling sorry for ourselves over the way we made. Or too busy mourning the loss of some way we made that is now lost. God has been reminding me lately, he can make the way but he can't make me take it. It's hard to see any new way when we're still stuck in an old way. And as long as we blame God for not paving a new way, or as long as we blame anyone, really, we are going to miss the new way that has more than likely already been paved. God is an understanding God. God deeply feels for our past. God mourns it with us. God will even absorb the bitterness or heartbreak or anxiety that comes with that past. But what God won't accept is being rejected as a miracle worker - a way maker - simply because we are unwilling to move on to the way he has made. How many miracles does God NOT get credit for because we're sitting around caught up in ourselves instead of getting caught up in the miracle God is drawing us into? If you're like me, and you get to wondering where your miracle is, if you get to wondering when the way is going to be made for you, maybe consider it's already there. Consider that it's already there but you can't see it because you're hanging out where life has died and not where life is begging you to come alive. Today, come alive in a new way. A new way created by the way maker. Consider letting go and cling to that new way. Because. You are Way maker, miracle worker Promise keeper, light in the darkness My God, that is who You are Brene Brown says, "true belonging doesn't require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are."
Belonging. It's a primal need. We can't survive, at least in any healthy way, without feeling like we belong. This is especially true of the felt sense that we belong to others. The thing is, the true value of belonging, the reason it is such a need in our lives, is belonging is where we should be able to feel most at peace with who we are. Nothing makes us feel more at peace than sitting with people who reflect, I see you; I know who you are, and I am so grateful you are here with me. I am grateful not in spite of who you are, but because of who you are. Sadly, many people don't feel that in the relationships they want to feel most seen and known and accepted in, so instead of feeling at peace with who they are, they go about changing who they are. Changing to comply with the model of themselves they perceive will be better accepted. And instead of living in peace, they live in constant pressure to be someone they are not. And this world, it seems committed to aide us in our pursuit of fitting in more than it wants to nurture our level of self-acceptance. Go through online photos of people. Chances are you are looking at layers of filters and AI generated compositions of how good one theoretically COULD look, all to satisfy the folks who theoretically don't believe the way they look is acceptable. Even the stories we tell, the groups we join, the causes we get behind, many times they aren't OUR stories. They are the stories of people jumping into a current that will sweep them along with it, never tempted to spit them back onto the shore, as long as they go with the current. There is a comfort in that, knowing I will never be spit back to the shore. Often times a comfort worth being a current person and not an authentic person. I write this with some ownership. Ownership of the truth that much of my life I have struggled to find this felt sense of belonging. And most of my life I have produced and lived out characters that DID find a form of belonging, but almost always at the expense of NEVER finding myself. That is changing. You can wake up one day and realize that the true pressure of trying to live up to being someone you are not really isn't pressure at all. It's betrayal. It's waking up and facing another day of you betraying you. There really is no belonging to others until you can crawl into bed with, and wake up with, a self you feel like you belong to. How do you find peace within the acceptance of others when you haven't ever found peace within the acceptance of yourself? There are parts of ourselves we have a hard time accepting. Some of those parts we have to be brave enough to change, others of those parts we have to be brave enough to say this is who I am, and if you can't accept that I'll walk to the shore, you don't need to spit me there. I suppose I've been doing a bit of work in both of those categories the last several years. There is a formula at work in my life. The more I've worked to be true to who I am, the more I have found myself in circles with people who accept who I am. The more I've worked to be true to who I am, the more I've come to experience a felt sense of belonging. Brene Brown says, "in the absence of love and belonging, there is always suffering." Thankfully, more and more, I do feel an absence of suffering. Me. The real me. More and more, the real me. An absence of suffering. Pastor Ashley Wooldridge says, "wisdom is caught more than it is taught." His point is, it's hard to become wise if you're doing life alone.
I felt this truth yesterday. I led a trauma informed leadership workshop for 50 leaders. I was there to teach people things about trauma and human emotions and the implications of those emotions on human relationships that maybe they didn't know. I'm sure, indeed, that many left with knowledge they didn't already have, but I assure you that I, the teacher, left with wisdom that I didn't already have. When you teach something new, people often share how that missing principle has impacted their lives. Or, positively at times, how practicing a piece of that knowledge has bolstered their lives. Either way, you get to share in stories. You get to hear and see and feel how what people know is experienced in their world. It's the human emotions attached to knowledge that drives home its value. Drives it home to a space where wisdom takes root. Even in the teacher. Quite likely, MORE SO in the teacher. I think our declining mental and physical health is the greatest consequence of our loneliness epidemic, because plenty of reliable research DOES suggest we are lonelier than ever. But right behind those health implications might just be our collective decline in wisdom. If wisdom can only be gained in each other's company - in each other's shared stories - how wise is a world that spends increasing amounts of time alone? There is so much information at our disposal today. Full confession, AI created several of my slides for the presentation I delivered yesterday. And so, more and more, we can be convinced that everything we need to know can be found in our phone or on our laptop and with nary another soul in sight. But it begs the question, what is the value of being the smartest generation ever if we are the unhealthiest generation ever? What is the value of being the smartest generation ever when so much smart research suggests we might just be the unhappiest generation ever? I think we are completely overwhelmed with information we have no idea what to do with. And we have no idea what to do with it because we aren't sitting in circles or at dinner tables or in classrooms with fellow humans talking about how to live life with all that we know. We don't get to hear the stories that come from people living out lives according to what they know and don't know, and then together, gain the wisdom to make healthy adjustments to our lives one way or another in response to the stories. It's very difficult to change the direction of our lives based on SOMETHING we know, at least in comparison to the possibilities for change that come from sitting with PEOPLE we know. It's wisdom far more that intelligence that changes directions, and only one of them requires human connection. We all DO need each other, a wiser and healthier world is depending on it. 1/25/2024 0 Comments A Victory centered prayer lifeI heard these words in an Aaron Williams song called Abide:
"I depend on you for the victories still in front of me." Those words reminded me that my God is a God of victory. Yes, he came to help us overcome our wounds and our challenges, but in the end, God came to promise victory. God came to become a dead man walking out of a grave to give us an everlasting impression of victory. Only often, when we talk to God, we are talking to him about our defeats. We are seeking his assistance to get through something and not TO something. To the victories still in front of me. I'm reminded of a beautiful opportunity that prayer offers us. Maybe the biggest opportunity. The opportunity to be assured that we are living lives of victory, not defeat. Maybe it's in our moments of feeling defeated, of feeling overwhelmed and overcome, that we need to assure God we are absolutely depending on him for the victories we KNOW are still in front of us. In this life and beyond. Yes, God, I know you can get me through this, but I'm even more sure you can get me to that. To that victory. Winners mindsets focus on the victories still ahead. God is the greatest victor of them all. So, I'm quite sure he wouldn't mind us setting aside the talk about challenges every now and then to have a chat or two about the victories. Maybe you don't feel so victorious today. Maybe it's because you're spending more time talking to God about the challenges than the victories. Take time today to let God know I depend on you. I depend on you for the victories I KNOW are still in front of me. Because they surely are. I watched the Chiefs vs Bills playoff game Sunday night. Maybe Kelce has a Swift look these days, but Mahomes clearly still has THAT look.
I will likely always share this one when it pops up in my memories. I guess because I don't see a day coming when I won't need to be challenged to carry THAT look on to the field of my challenges. From January 24, 2022 *** I'm tired this morning. The result of back to back nights of watching some of the best NFL playoff football I've ever watched. Games coming down to the last minute. Or in the case of the final game of the weekend last night, the last 13 seconds... There's a lot of talk this morning about the ending of the Bills and Chiefs game. Overtime rules. Monday morning quarterbacks second guessing the Bills coaches about a kickoff. But I'm going to tell you what won that game for the Chiefs. It was a look. The Bills had just scored what looked like the winning touchdown. The Bills coaches and players were celebrating, while the Chiefs players faces were overcome with the agony of defeat. Well, all but one of them that is. As the camera found Patrick Mahomes on the sideline - the Chiefs quarterback - they found him picking up his helmet and headed for the field. And it struck me as I watched him - this crazy fool still believes they are going to win this game. There are only 13 seconds left on the clock. He needs to drive his team way further than anyone should be able to go in 13 seconds. And it's written all over his face, that's exactly what he's going to go out there and do. His look wasn't forced. It wasn't painted on because that's what the leader of the team's face is supposed to look like. No, his look said he actually believed it. His look said this game isn't over until those 13 seconds are gone. Any of you who are tired this morning know that's exactly what happened. Mahomes did lead the team down the field. He did lead his team to overtime and eventually to victory. Patrick Mahomes is an athletic freak of nature. Both quarterbacks on that field last night are. But his athleticism would have been no more helpful to the team than mine if he didn't believe 13 seconds was plenty of time. And yes, trust me I know, the thought of me at quarterback is a scary thought!! Maybe your life is up against a situation that feels like there are only 13 seconds left on the clock. But as the camera finds you ready to tackle it, what is the look on your face? Maybe look in the mirror and answer that question. What will we see as you walk on to the field of that challenge? It starts with that look. Every time. It's a look that's either overwhelmed with the agony of defeat, or it's a look that says the clock doesn't say zero yet, and that is all the heck I need to know... March down the field of that challenge. You can't see me, but my look says I absolutely believe you can. No matter how much time is left on the clock. Our culture spends a lot of time living out a pursuit of happiness experiment. A lot of evidence suggest that for many, the experiment is failing.
In a lot of cases, it's failing miserably. Maybe it's time for a new experiment? The pursuit of living. In a recent podcast episode, Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about a region of the brain called the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC). Huberman focused on scientific data suggesting that when we do things we don't want to do, this region of the brain grows. He goes on to talk about the discovery that this region of the brain is larger in people who see their lives as challenged but then overcome them. And with great enthusiasm he tells us, the aMCC is larger in people who live a very long time. Huberman calls this one of the greatest neuroscience findings ever. He says the research suggests the aMCC is not the seat of human willpower, but more, it's the seat of the will to live. The conversation was especially timely and powerful for me. There are several things I've given up this year, things that used to bring me happiness, yet in doing so have caused increasing havoc in my life. Huberman points out that NOT doing things we want to do but feel like we shouldn't is equal to doing things we don't want to do. I do a lot of work in resilience. I also consider myself hyper-resilient. Most of my life has been spent fighting to overcome challenges. Challenges I've created for myself, others life created for me. But it seems the sum of that battle has been increasing the size of my brain that has, until now, unknowingly increased my will to live. It's this will that scientists are beginning to believe helps regulate our emotional response to stressors, and contributes to coping mechanisms that keep us moving forward. That keep us living. I often reflect on times in my life when I didn't want to be alive. There are times I wonder how on earth AM I still alive? This podcast conversation went a long way to helping me understand the answer to that. Because day in and day out, I often got up and did things I really didn't feel like doing. I have a long way to go, but how hopeful is it to know that it's our will to live that might contribute to living a long life more than anything else - including happiness. How encouraging is it to know that when I go take that long run after work that I have NO interest in doing, the impacts of that may go well beyond the cardio workout? How encouraging is it to know that when I write on a particular morning when I DO NOT feel like writing, I am doing more than pouring life into the world, I'm literally building life into me? How encouraging is it to know that when I'm not happy, when I'm depressed and feel like doing nothing, just doing something is building longevity into my life. And you know, for many, I SURE know it's true of me, the more you come to know that life will keep showing up for you as long as you keep growing your will to show up for it, happiness follows right behind. Maybe you won't suddenly go out in the world today hunting down things you don't want to do. Even though the science is beginning to suggest that would be a really good idea. But many of us don't have to hunt. There will be things on our plate today we don't want to do, but will. I hope it's helpful to know that doing those things is growing a very important part of your brain. The part that many are coming to believe is the seat of your will to live. Add a few things to your life this year that you don't want to do. Then do them, and keep growing that will to live. I've come to know this about many of the fights that are happening in our lives. Whether it be fights we see playing out in public, or the fights we don't see that are going on behind closed doors. Many of those fights have nothing to do with the fights taking place at the surface.
In fact, when two people in a relationship of any kind are in a fight, many times those two people themselves have no idea what the fight is about. Because the real source of a fight, its real roots, is often hidden. Do you realize how hard it is to put out the flames of a fight, to bring peace, when even the fighters don't know what's fueling the fight? It's hard. Trust me, it's very hard. Steven Furtick says, "you would rather create an enemy than deal with your insecurity." He's right. Creating enemies is also a great way to avoid dealing with fear, with shame, with guilt, with resentment. Often times, the things that have been left in the wake of challenging childhoods. A wake so deep within us that it becomes a hidden fight. The fight is not so hidden, though, that one doesn't feel the urge to fight. It's an enemy constantly begging for a fight from the shadows, without ever daring to come into the light to provide even a glimpse of the fighter. And so we, accepting the fight, pick something in the light - or someone - and we make them the fight. For at least a moment, fighting something we see feels less confusing and daunting than fighting something we've never seen. It's the nature of our traumas. They go into hiding initially to protect us. They feel like they are doing us a favor. They recognize we are in no position to handle them in that moment in a healthy way. They give us time knowing we will come back to them another day. But if we don't go back to them, if they are left to hide, if no one ever recognizes them for what they are, wounds, then wounds become infections. Hidden infections, rendered untreatable only because no one is curious about, or remotely searching for the wounds. The untreated wounds, over time, begin to feel like a fight. Only the fights rarely look like the wounds. How can they if no one has ever seen them? They are strangers even to the wounded. So the wounds start to look like people. Relationships. Breaking and broken relationships. And from the outside, people come to believe, and often judge, that breaking. Something they really are ill-equipped to do. Because the broken themselves, it's very rare that even the broken themselves know where the fighting came from. They got so busy thinking it was about them when it was always about the wounds. The hidden wounds. There is so much fighting going on in the world. So much breaking. I just wish as a starting point toward peace we'd all come to know that very little of the fighting is about the fights we see. It's about the wounds. The unseen wounds. |
Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
November 2024
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