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  • Emotion.

  • It's sometimes referred to as the spirit or the breath of life.

  • It prescribes our actions and colors our world.

  • The one who can master the emotions can master actions,

  • and the one who masters actions, is the master of all future realities.

  • Today we look at the stories of 2 different men, 2 different world views, 2 different

  • 2 different goals, and, ultimately, 2 different paths.

  • This is Alexander.

  • He belives that there are two kinds of people in the world: the conquerors and the conquered.

  • If you want to be great, you have to become a conqueror.

  • It's a dog eat dog world, and only the fit survive.

  • You have to determine who will conquer with you and whom you must conquer.

  • Alexander read a lot as a kid.

  • He fell in love with Greek heroes who displayed the highest virtues: courage and bravery.

  • They were leadersnot followers.

  • He didn't have much as a kid and had to work hard for everything he had.

  • This led him to believe that a persons life is the outcome of their actions and that they

  • must take complete responsibility for what happens to them.

  • Physically and intellectually, he held himself to incredibly high standards.

  • There's no one he wanted to conquer more than himself, each and every day.

  • One day, he encountered a homeless man.

  • The man asked him for some change.

  • Alexander knew what he was seeing: a conquered man.

  • How could this man let himself be conquered so badly?

  • How many mistakes must he have made to end up in this position?

  • Why doesn't he take steps to dig himself out of this hole?

  • Instead, hes taking the lazy way out.

  • He's trying to take from those who worked hard for what they have.

  • Those who made good decisions should not be punished by those who made bad decisions.

  • Alexander knew that if the man wanted to eat, he needed to learn how to get fish

  • and not have fish given to him.

  • He became enraged by the mans weakness.

  • This man won't get a penny from me”, he thought to himself,

  • that would only enable his destructive behaviors and poor attitude towards life.

  • By suffering he'll learn or he'll die; that's the way the world works.”

  • This is Joseph.

  • He believes that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who can help and those

  • who need to be helped.

  • His father taught him that the highest good is to serve those who have nothing,

  • and to lift them up.

  • Life is difficult, and those who have should serve those who have not.

  • Joseph read a lot as a kid.

  • He fell in love with various spiritual leaders who loved all and lived to serve.

  • He grew up quite well off and always felt indebted to those who didn't.

  • He felt lucky to have everything that he did.

  • One day, he encountered a homeless man.

  • The man asked him for some change.

  • Joseph knew what he was seeing: a completely underserved man.

  • This man had been abandoned by society.

  • Joseph felt like weeping.

  • Imagine how much we have failed as a society to let someone get to this point,” he thought

  • to himself, “life is so difficult and full of suffering and based on luck,

  • that anyone of us could end up in his position.”

  • He grabbed all the money he had in his pocket and handed it to the man.

  • And so, both stories end here.

  • Both men had unique worldviews shaped by their past experiences.

  • They both percieved the same man in a different light.

  • Where one saw a weak man, the other saw a forsakened man.

  • Their perceptions led them to feel different emotions.

  • There emotions were heavily affected by what they thought they were seeing.

  • In actuality, both men knew nothing about the homeless man,

  • and they have no idea what led him to his position.

  • This is often the case in real life.

  • From a young age, both men were surrounded by an invisible structure

  • referred to as culture or environment.

  • The knowledge they grabbed from this structure allows them to navigate the world.

  • Alex grew up in a structure of personality responsibility, of strength & weakness.

  • He can only see people in this way.

  • It's all he knows.

  • Joseph grew up in a structure of collective responsibility, of the needy & the fortunate.

  • He can only see people in this way.

  • It's all he knows.

  • For both men, emotions are tools.

  • In Alex's world, anger is a useful tool that allows him to become strong

  • his highest ideal.

  • In Joseph's world, compassion is a useful tool that allows you to become a giver

  • his highest ideal.

  • One might wonder, if you could change the invisible structure that surrounds these men,

  • if they reversed the books they read or the family that they had,

  • would they perceive the world differently?

  • If they percieve the world differently, would they feel differently?

  • The master of emotions, then, is the one who can alter the invisible structure around them.

  • This allows them to gather a diverse set of concepts which allows them

  • to see the same scenario in different ways.

  • They would be neither Alexander or Joseph.

  • They would be both.

  • They could become either one depending on the circumstances.

  • Take a look at this image.

  • What shapes do you see?

  • You'd probably say a bunch of 3/4 circles and a square.

  • Technically, there's actually no square there.

  • It's simply a byproduct of how the 3/4 circles are arranged.

  • But that doesn't change the fact that you'll always see it there

  • because you're familiar with the concept of a square.

  • If you never learned what a square was, you'd never see it there in the image.

  • There's a layer of meaning hidden in the negative space.

  • Emotional mastery is about perceiving multiple layers of meaning in the negative space of life.

  • It's about seeing all of the potential realities that could exist.

  • It's about looking at a homeless man and seeing that his position could be a byproduct

  • of his personal decisions or the byproduct of a cultural failure.

  • What I'm not saying is that these men can think different thoughts

  • and change their emotions in the moment.

  • But, they can experience a different worldview now, so they see differently in the future.

  • They can find new ways of seeing or interacting with old things

  • and all they need to do is listenlisten to the world in its many forms.

  • Had they listened to one anothers perspectives, or asked the homeless man for his perspective,

  • they might have seen the whole situation in a new light.

  • As we conclude, let's return to this image.

  • You probably think that there's nothing more to this image than the 3/4 circles

  • and the square.

  • But what if I told you that this is actually just one shape:

  • a rectangle with 4-3/4 circles removed from it.

  • It's called a fit rectangle.

  • Just by listening, you now have a new way of percieving these patterns

  • which was invisible to you before — a new layer of meaning.

  • So, how does one master the emotions?

  • By listening, but more importantly, listening to points of view

  • that they haven't heard before or that are contrary to their own.

  • To feel differently, they have to see differently.

  • To see differently, they have to gain knowledge that they don't have.

  • To gain knowledge that they don't have, they have to experience new things.

  • I think Joseph Campbell said it best,

  • "The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for."

  • This video was based on my best understanding of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's “theory

  • of constructed emotionwhich I talked about in another video.

  • I put a link to it in the description.

Emotion.

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