Mental Flex

You know that tightening feeling in your throat when your emotions come rushing out of nowhere?

The feeling of your blood getting so hot it almost feels cold inside of you?

Is that anger? Impatience? Frustration?

EMOTIONS MAN.

They're tricky to figure out because in doing so, we're forced to really look at US, our inner selves. And sometimes my inner Tash annoys me. The part of me that is reacting, that is hearing, that is feeling - sometimes she can't be trusted right away because I know how easily influenced she is.

In these moments of instant fluster, I tell my inner self to BREATHE. Calm it down, pull it back, figure out what's actually happening and not what narrative I'm spinning within seconds. It's crazy how quickly our brain can create a story that isn't true, but think about it through the scope of absolute conviction.

I wonder how many bad decisions have been made because of false narratives. How many bad decisions I'VE made because of fictional conundrums my brain has conjured up.

Nay and I have a rule in our house that no decision, big her small, can ever be made when we're having an emotional "episode". An episode for the sake of this piece is anything that causes us to FEEL outside of our current range of emotions - a spike of anger, a pang of confusion, a misstep in communication.

We seek to hear & understand one another - there aren't points to be made, just lessons to be learned and effort to be made in the future. And sometimes all of that is much easier to do once the inner Tash inside of me has a second to cool down, ground herself in reality, step out of the emotion tornado.

But to step out of the tornado means to first make the realization that you're in one. Making self-realizations is a mental flex, a muscle that has to be worked out - but once you're in the habit of flexing this muscle, your life changes. Things are always going to happen around you, every single day, but we get to choose how these things affect us.

Writing this today was my inner Tash cooling herself down, thank you for hearing out my thoughts.

xo