Strong Feelings Do Not Mean It Matters More

Years ago I went through a break-up with a woman I loved dearly.

It sucked.

It was an extremely emotional time for me trying to balance a large amount of work, personal life struggles, and on top of it, now relationship struggles.

One of the reasons it was so difficult was that much of the time we spent together was fantastic.

We laughed and smiled a lot and overall just had a good, fun time.

But there were consistently becoming more and more moments of stress, seemingly out of nowhere.

The reality was that we had different versions of what we wanted life to look like.

In general, many things that we valued overlapped,

But when it came to our priorities, they didn’t.

The way we viewed the world was substantially different.

And that can be okay in certain relationships.

For us it caused a significant stress due to what eventually showed up as a deep yet underlying misalignment between what each of us imagined our ideal lives looking like.

Which was brutal.

I mean I can’t sugar coat it and I’m sure you’ve felt this before,

Where you look at someone and genuinely love who they are as a person but also recognize that you’re likely going two entirely different directions in life.

I spent a decent amount of nights in that period of time lying on the carpet in my room staring at the ceiling thinking about this:

How do I make it right?

Is this what compromise looks like?

Etc.

Lots of thoughts and lots of intense emotions.

And I realized when that was happening that I was spending so much time thinking about this relationship, that other parts of my life were falling off track.

My workouts were less intense and consistent.

My focus started to become fickle and my work kept getting interrupted by my mind and heart.

You’ll probably hear this and know exactly what I’m talking about.

The anxiety or sadness or embarrassment or any of the other strong emotions that tend to show up during the end of a relationship

Or any other anxiety provoking experience, for that matter.

It feels like it can take over your life.

And it feels that way…

Well, because it does take over your life.

It was hard for me to think about other things, because I wanted to make the situation right.

But making it “right” would have required her or I to dramatically change our views of the world or our visions of what we really wanted in life.

Fortunately, during this experience, I was more prepared than I was in my past.

I remember breakups in college and immediately after where I was far less resilient.

My life would actually start to spiral around that anxiety provoking event in my life.

I would cope by wasting my time.

My studies or work would fall behind because I wasn’t able to handle the intense emotions.

Part of me also thought that because I was having these intense emotions meant that I should invest all of my time on them.

I hear this often:

Well, the emotions wouldn’t be so strong if this wasn’t clearly really important. And since it’s important because of these intense emotions, it must be worth putting in this level of work to fix it.

I get it.

It sounds convincing.

It’s also irrational and wrong.

Just because you feel strong emotions, doesn’t mean the thing evoking those emotions is important.

If a stranger came up to you on the street and punched you in the throat for no reason, would you think:

“Oh wow, that hurt a lot, I can barely breathe, this must be important.”

No, you’d (hopefully) think:

“That was fucking dumb, why am I now barely able to breathe for no reason at all, what a prick I hope he goes to jail”

Not, “wow, what an important experience.”

And you might be convinced to think this example is somehow different from a breakup with someone you love.

But just because it’s more comfortable to act as if an experience was worth it, doesn’t mean it was.

My point here being:

The intensity of your emotions does not decide how worthy an experience is. You do.

This doesn’t all of the sudden mean that a breakup that is causing a lot of pain isn’t important.

But it doesn’t have to be important enough to derail your entire life.

Nor does it have to be important enough to make you engage in shitty ways of handling your emotions, scrolling your phone and YouTube, drinking, porn, or whatever your vices are.

Look, I know this is all easy to say out loud.

My 20 year old self would probably flip me off and say “you don’t know what I’m feeling, it’s not that easy.”

And he would be right.

The long texts and conversations and tears and the time spent spiraling over the situation and the late nights and the high stress coming out of nowhere with someone you like so much that it almost doesn’t even make sense.

It isn’t easy to rationalize all this.

But if you have big goals in life that require you to take lots of consistent action, it is necessary.

And to be honest, it’s actually quite simple too.

The reality is that whenever we are going through an intense experience, we likely have a series of stories that we are telling ourselves behind the scenes.

These stories usually end with large, conclusive statements about our lives or ourselves.

“This would be the worst if we broke up.”

“I’d never find another her.”

“Maybe my story doesn’t end with love. Maybe that’s just not the life I received.”

“I’m just not capable of attracting a person like her”

“I guess I’m just not lucky.”

The undesirable result ends up being a life-sentence of pain and misery and sadness and loneliness.

But here’s the key part:

Only in your head.

Just because you think or feel those things, doesn’t make them true.

However, the more I thought them, the more true they felt.

And the more they made me sink into the beige carpet on the ground.

The more heavy my limbs felt and clouded my mind got.

They felt so true after spiraling on them for so long – how could they not be true?

Even worse than those thoughts, were the ones that were under the surface.

The thoughts I couldn’t even really verbalize.

There were more intense emotions that my subconscious couldn’t put words to, but I knew they were negative.

And, once again, we get to that recurring theme:

“Because I have intense emotions, it must mean that they are important, and that the thoughts they invoke in me like my lack of worthiness of love or luck or how my future will be lonely must be true. How could they not?? These emotions could never be so intense if they didn’t signify truth! Right??”

Bullshit.

They’re fake.

Sorry!

But they’re fake, they’re imaginary, they’re made the fuck up.

By you.

They’re irrational, bullshit thoughts caused by your spiraling mind, not by the evidence provided by the real world.

No matter how many breakups you’ve had in your life, there is evidence that you aren’t sentenced to a life without a partner if you want one.

Namely:

1. You are capable of changing and growing, and

1. There are about 4.5 billion unique people on this planet of the gender that you are interested in, unless you’re interested in both of them which makes you even more irrational because now you have 9 billion options.

Obviously point 2 is a bit exaggerated, but you get my point.

The reality of this world almost always disproves our irrational, concrete, negative life-sentencing beliefs that show up when we have negative experiences like a break up.

And this brings me to the point of all this, which is I actually want to show you part of how I handled the intense negative emotion of this breakup a while back.

It’s a little vulnerable on my end, but hopefully it’s helpful for you

In order to do this, I just need you to accept that the following pattern exists.

1. Something in the world triggers a thought or an emotion

1. There is a moment of time in-between when we experience the trigger and when we react to it

1. We then react to the trigger

Pretty simple.

If you disagree with this, you’re just being argumentative, get lost.

Kidding, stick around.

This pattern manifests, generally in 1 or 2 different directions.

Either:

A. It leads towards negative coping mechanisms and back into the spiral, or

B. It leads toward positive behavior and away from the spiral

Important!: Direction A doesn’t imply that you are permanently stuck in the spiral and direction B doesn’t imply that the spiral ends immediately.

The most important thing we can recognize here is that if we can be more conscientious of when pattern point 1 occurs (when the trigger occurs) then we can prepare ourselves with tools to create more space in pattern point 2 (the space in-between trigger and reaction) in order to have a higher probability that the way we react in pattern point 3 leads in the positive direction and not the negative one.

I’ve already told you in this story information that helped me be more aware of the triggers:

These are the emotions I felt.

During this period, I recognized that many of the times I was feeling sadness, anxiety, embarrassment, or frustration, I was subconsciously or consciously thinking about the relationship.

Which means I could use those emotions to determine when I was getting triggered to start to spiral over those irrational beliefs I brought up.

So, since I now knew that these specific emotions have a high likelihood of showing up when I am getting triggered to think about and possibly spiral over the relationship, I just now need a tool or resource to use when that happens.

This is where I have a specific tool that reliably helps me move through intense emotions more efficiently.

It’s a tool I actually support my clients with in order to alleviate emotions just like the ones in this story so that they can get back to their priorities in life.

This isn’t about healing or solving the experience, it’s just about spending less time spiraling in it so we can spend more time on the things that matter in life.

Because, remember, we decided that just because our emotions are strong and that this is important – it is NOT important enough to let the rest of our lives go to shit because of it.

Let me be clear about one insight that usually fucks people up:

Just because you react emotionally, does not mean you are treating a situation more seriously or as more important.

If you break down in tears or throw away your entire life in order to try to solve your relationship issues, you are NOT demonstrating that this is more important to you than if you were to still take care of your priorities and dedicate intentional time to figure that out.

People hate this, because it means that the time they spent spiraling wasn’t necessarily a good use of it or, if we’re being honest, it also didn’t mean they were right or worthy of having their opinion being more important because they were reacting more emotionally.

We want to believe that because we are willing to feel so shitty and spend all of our day spiraling over that thing, that it means we are trying really hard and doing our best.

“You have to be willing to work on it”

Right?

No.

Just another bullshit irrational belief:

“If I don’t spend all my time fixing this relationship or breaking down in emotion, it means that it’s not important to me.”

Nope.

Sorry.

Taking care of yourself and your priorities does not mean that you don’t value your partner or relationship.

I would actually say letting go of yourself and your priorities is a demonstration of the opposite, because when you started dating this person and they fell for you…

You were taking care of yourself and your priorities, so if you let those things go you are showing them that the things they liked about you aren’t important.

Now that we have that settled, and we have decided that just because I don’t spiral into the depths of my psyche spending all my energy trying to fix the relationship and feel like shit while I do so and throw away my positive routines and behaviors and priorities in life in order to prove my love, we can implement this tool.

It’s called The Rational Reset™.

It’s a structured way to break out of spiraling thoughts and compulsive reactions.

And it’s simple.

The basic premise is to build a quick checklist of mostly yes or no questions that alleviate the emotion when you are triggered in order or lower the emotion or anxiety to a point where you are able to think more rationally.

The following is literally copy and pasted from my notes when I was going through my breakup.

Whenever I started to feel one of those emotions showing up during my days, I would pull this out and go through it.

And the majority of the time, it would allow me to get back to what I was doing.

It didn’t mean I all of the sudden felt happy and jolly.

It just helped me remind myself that the intense emotions I was feeling in that moment didn’t need to decide how I would act.

Because if I am going to succeed with my goals (and my goals are fuckin massive), I need to be able to regulate my emotions and continue to take action regardless of them, while setting aside time to handle them in a healthy, dedicated way.

Not just randomly spiraling out of control because I feel bad.

Here’s my checklist along with some of the answers I gave:

• Do any decisions need to be made right now at this exact moment? No, obviously not, it can wait a couple hours or days.

• Does this pain prevent from living my life or does it just make it uncomfortable to do so? No, it’s just uncomfortable but doesn’t PREVENT me from living my life.

• Does this thought need to have a conclusion right now? No, and it likely won’t anyways, it can wait a bit.

• Is life going to end if I have an issue that I’m curious and/or stressed about with her but don’t immediately get the answer to? Haha of course not, I have had plenty of moments in my life where I didn’t get answers immediately and continued to live on.

• Can I still have a loving wife and family even if this continues for another year and then doesn’t work out? Yes, of course. Might not be optimal, but doesn’t prevent that.

• Am I locked into a situation or commitment that prevents me from doing things that I want (not EVERYTHING I want, but at least some things that I want)? No, I’m not contractually locked into anything that prevents me from doing some things that I like.

• Does dating for another several months and doing my best to just have fun and see what happens prevent me from having a fun fulfilling life and from pursuing the travel and adventure and business that I want? No, it might be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t prevent me from continuing to build the life I want.

• Have I made a long term commitment that requires this relationship to succeed? Nope, only the commitment to continue being respectful and honest and putting in effort where I can.

• If I were to spend all day trying to make things right and thinking about and taking actions to help this situation, would it guarantee her happiness? Are her emotions under my control? Of course not, I can’t guarantee any result, I can only influence it. And I am not responsible for anyones emotions, nor can I control anyones emotions. Nothing I do here can guarantee another person feels any specific way.

• Even if this relationship ended and I was deeply sad about it, could I stand that emotion or would it be absolutely unbearable? I’ve been sad before, I could handle it. It would be painful but bearable.

• Does the result of this relationship define who I am as a person? No, only my actions and their alignment with my values determine who I am, not how others view me or the result of my relationship.

• If this were to end, and life went on, even if it wasn’t desirable, would this likely affect my life in a year or 10 in the future? No, I would continue to live on and have a happy life, even if this moment didn’t go in a happy way.

And just like that, the emotion surrounding each trigger that came up during this breakup would alleviate a little bit.

It wouldn’t necessarily go away, but it would allow me to think something more rational:

“Okay, yeah, I’m not feeling super happy right now, but could I continue to get my work done instead of focusing on this? Yeah, I could. Maybe I won’t be as 100% productive as usual, but I can still do my things.”

Or

“Ah yeah, do I really need to scroll my phone right now? Wouldn’t that just be avoiding the discomfort I’m feeling that I just reminded myself I am completely capable of handling? Yeah, I could go do something better with my time.”

That’s it.

That’s what we want.

You might think:

“Wow, you did that every time the emotion came up? Isn’t that a waste of time in its own right?”

Yes I did and no it was not.

By spending 60-90 seconds going through this checklist even up to 7 or 8 times during the peak days of the emotions, I likely avoided losing hours or even entire days to scrolling my phone, youtube, spiraling, etc.

And as I practiced this, I went through this heavy period of time and continued to maintain momentum with my priorities.

I continued to work out and take care of myself.

I wasn’t perfect, but I continued to make good progress.

No spirals out of control or complete stops.

It wasn’t the happiest, jolliest period of time where I was skipping and singing around.

There were plenty of nights I went to sleep sad.

But I went to sleep a bit sad or uncomfortable while still having made progress toward my personal goals and having taken care of myself.

My weight didn’t fluctuate out of control and my clients didn’t stop hearing from me.

And we did break up.

And it was sad.

And I was sad.

But I continued to act the entire time in a way that made me proud.

I spoke with as much honesty and compassion as I could.

I did my best.

And it wasn’t perfect.

And that was okay.

But best of all, my life didn’t stop because something difficult was going on in it.

Because at the end of the day you only get a good 80 or 90 years on this planet.

And if an event causes you to spiral out of control and lose track of all your priorities every other year or every year, you might spend a good half or three fourths of that time you are so privileged to have here off track.

That’s just the brutal truth.

Things will continue to happen in my life that will cause me anxiety and grief and sadness and embarrassment and frustration.

It is my responsibility to support myself to continue to act in a way that would make me proud regardless.

Meaning, my emotions cannot dictate my decisions or my actions.

And the tools and reframes mentioned in this story are exactly the type of resources that can help you make sure that your values are what determine your actions, not your emotions, just like they’ve helped me.

P.S. If you want an actual copy of the Rational Reset™, just respond to this email “reset” and I’ll send you a free copy.