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Detaching from Your Emotions----By Dr. Joe Rubino

For the vast majority of people, each day presents another opportunity to ride the emotional roller coaster. When things go our way, we are happy. When they don’t, we react with anger, sadness, fear, disappointment, frustration, resignation, or any variation of hundreds of other emotional responses. In fact, we are typically so accustomed to experiencing these emotions that we take for granted that our lives will always be marked by emotional reactions to the challenges that life throws our way. We mistakenly believe that this is “normal” and everyone does it.

This belief that we are emotional beings reacting to situations and circumstances beyond our control that are not to our liking is so ingrained in us that we usually do not even see the possibility of living without these immediate varied emotional responses to situations. How many times have you heard people speak their belief that “We’re human beings and we’re entitled to our emotions?” These emotions are indeed juicy!

By coming from the perspective that we will always be at the effect of things that others say and do, thus provoking our emotional responses to these situations, we forfeit our ability to retain control of our emotional well-being. Our spouses say something that irritates us and we lash back. Our bosses criticize our work performance and we fear losing our jobs. We are left off the guest list for a neighborhood party and we react with sadness. We are unjustly accused of something we did not do, and we respond with indignant rage. You get the point. Life is full of opportunities to react in an emotional way that does not support our happiness, sense of peace, and our personal power.

So if our knee-jerk emotional responses do not support our happiness, peace of mind, or personal effectiveness, why do we continue to react automatically to the least little stimuli? If we hate being in such a state of constant low grade anger, why do we continue to find reasons to revert back to this state or to seemingly relish the opportunity to take our ever-present chronic state of low grade anger to a higher, more acute level? In the same way, we hate feeling sad but somehow, we find no shortage of opportunities that “make us” sad. Consider the person who is petrified of horror movies. The spooky scenes, bloody violence, and killings leave him agitated, feeling uncomfortable, and unable to sleep. But despite an aversion to these emotional responses, the horror movie addict continues to seek out the next, scarier, more gruesome movie that is guaranteed to stir up these same unpleasant emotions!

Clearly, we are emotional addicts. Although we may protest that we do not like feeling scared to death, down in the dumps (maybe even despondent), or filled with rage or vengeance, we seem to be at the mercy of these feelings. After all, we might argue, it’s usually not our fault. The other guy is usually provoking us and we just react to these provocations with righteous indignation. The blame is over there, rarely with us. We are the victims and to blame us for such natural reactions is unfair! Even such an accusation would likely make most us angry!

However, when we explore the nature of our emotional responses more closely, we may uncover some very interesting findings. Although we protest that we dislike feeling this way, our emotions make us feel alive. Within the anger we muster is a sense of personal power. Our angry response to a situation may allow us to regain control over some aspect of the situation. Perhaps, through our anger, we get to dominate the other guy who is likely out to dominate us as well. Perhaps our sadness provides us with a measure of consolation. We might feel sorry for ourselves and bask in the “poor me” sensations earned by most victims. Or perhaps our fear may prevent us from acting boldly and risking in some manner. By keeping us afraid and defensive, we stay safe. We may not have to deal with uncomfortable situations or the possibility of failing if we stay home and hide under the bed rather than face our fear in the cold, cruel world!

Although we may have become conditioned to feel that our emotional reactions are totally normal, (after all isn’t everyone else reacting emotionally all around us?), we have the option of training ourselves to look deeper within when we feel the emotional warning - whether it be the adrenaline rush of anger as we get red in the face or the hollow sinking sensation of sadness in the pit of our stomachs.

Perhaps we might explore the true reason for our emotional reactions. Is there some label we fear or way of being that we are determined not to be associated with causing us to take the offensive? Is our anger truly at the person we lash out at or could our response be an attempt to conceal our own fears? Are we reading the situation in a manner that drives our emotional reaction? Might there be a better way to interpret what was said or done so that the emotional charge was absent? Could we give the other guy the benefit of the doubt or assume that his intentions were honorable? At the very least, could we assume that she is doing the best she can do considering her background experiences and how she has become accustomed to viewing the world?

When we are in personal development, we might take each opportunity that an emotional trigger offers us to stop for a moment and analyze the situation. What lies beneath that feeling of vengeance? What is the true source of the sadness we are feeling? How might we be avoiding responsibility for our part in the current state of affairs?

Rather than reacting with emotion to the circumstances, might we instead look upon the event as an opportunity to better understand why we are prone to act as we do? Might we instead welcome the chance to look at the situation without our typical attachment to an outcome or to being right? If we put ourselves in the other person’s world, how might our perspective change? How would this shift in how we see things influence our emotional response?

Emotional awareness is the first step in changing your world and supporting others to transform theirs. It takes two people to dance. Once one changes her step, it is much more difficult for her partner to continue with the same dance he was previously doing.


------The questions I have for you today are these:
 

------Detaching from Your Emotions
 

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To Your Best Life,

Joe

Dr. Joe Rubino

Please note: For those who may be unaware of my story, our commitment to others and the reason behind the personal development work we do, I have decided to share it below in all the emails we send out. If you are already familiar with this, please feel free to ignore it or forward it to someone you love.
 
To Your Best Life,
Joe Rubino
The Center for Personal Reinvention


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This is Joe Rubino. Thank you for being a valued member of our online community. We at The Center for Personal Reinvention are committed to supporting you with a wide range of personal development, health and other gifts and programs to assist you in living your very best life.

I have personally been involved in championing people to elevate their self-esteem, be happy, fulfilled, and empowered to believe in themselves and achieve their fullest potential since 1991. My vision is to impact the lives of 20 million adults and 20 million children to live their best lives by following the same life-impacting principles that I, myself, followed to reinvent myself at the age of 35.

Many have asked me to share my story with you in the hope that it may inspire you to realize that if I was able to embrace personal development and change my own life which was far from rewarding as you will soon lean, then you can as well. So, please allow me to share a bit about my story with this intention…

My earliest memory of an upsetting event happened at the age of 5 when I was playing at the house of a teen-aged neighbor. My parents trusted this group of teen-agers who had a long history of playing football with us little kids. Well, on this particular day, perhaps, they forgot their football at home, so they decided to use me as their football. One kid tossed me to another who tossed me to another who dropped me. I hit my head on a rock and went home crying at the age of 5 with a big egg on my head and likely a concussion.

As a result of this episode, I decided that I was small, insignificant, and too weak to defend myself. I further made up that there was something significantly defective about me that would cause a group of much older kids that I admired and looked up to, to want to treat me with such rough disrespect. I further interpreted that these teenagers and people in general were careless, heartless, mean and cruel. And this is when I decided that the world was a dangerous place and that if I were to survive in such a place, I would need to find a strategy to protect myself from further harm.

The survival formula that I created involved avoiding people whenever possible. I became an extremely introverted kid, having few friends and avoiding most events and interactions with others. For example, if I was walking down the street on my way home from school and I saw someone I knew approaching, I’d put my head down, make off I did not see them and cross the street. As you can guess, I soon worsened my situation and became known as a big snob and a target for bullies. The greater the number of bad experiences I encountered, the more my self-talk reinforced the need to hide and protect myself. And, of course, the worse my experiences became. This vicious cycle continued throughout my high-school and college years.

My addictive background emotional mood or reactive state was “indignant anger.” I unconsciously looked for reasons to be angry with the mantra that guided my life being “How dare you!” It took very little to tick me off. If someone might cut in front of me while driving, I would react with anger and indignation – swearing at them and gesturing to them to show my upset. If I smelled smoke in a restaurant or public place, it would likewise tick me off and I would react thinking “How dare they! Don’t they know that second- hand smoke kills!” In short, I was a walking upset waiting to happen.

While living in this perpetual state of anger and indignation allowed me to justify my bad behavior, dominate others and avoid being controlled by them, it cost me my happiness, my personal effectiveness with people, destroyed many relationships and diminished the quality of my life.

While contemplating which path to take regarding my career, I decided to pursue a career in dentistry. I unconsciously choose a profession where people would be unable to talk back to me and I could dominate them. Now, there is nothing wrong with being a dentist – it is an honorable and noble profession. But I had chosen it unconsciously for the wrong reasons. Again, I was unaware of the many ways that I sought both consciously and unconsciously to protect myself from getting hurt.

So, at the age of 35, I had been in practice for 11 years. Although I was successful by many of society’s standards – I owned two large practices that employed 7 full time doctors and 8 additional employees, made a significant income, had the respect of my peers and patients, I intuitively felt that I was playing small but like the proverbial frog who sits in a pan on the stove and fails to jump out of the pot as the heat under it is slowly increased, my life was mired in deep resignation. I incorrectly assumed that I was who I was and there was little I could do about my unhappiness and disappointments in life.

Well, there are no accidents as I was soon to learn. The Universe presents us all with unending opportunities for growth and expansion. We always have the choice of seizing any of these opportunities or we can maintain the status quo and continue along our familiar paths of convenience, protection, and resignation… or we can decide to risk boldly and take a new path that better honors our values and supports our inherent greatness.  

When I was 35 years old, my dental business partner who was also an extreme introvert like me, was invited to attend a personal development weekend seminar.  Although neither of us felt comfortable attending an event that was way outside our comfort zones, we both took comfort in going with someone else. So reluctantly we booked a spot at the course, knowing that we sorely needed to break free from the many limitations and negative self-talk that had ruled our lives.

To make a long story shorter, that 4-day course changed my life! I learned that my life was being run by decisions made by a 5-year-old and that I possessed the ability to break out of the self-imposed prison that I had created for myself. I discovered that I could identify my life purpose and step into that purpose while developing the many gifts that lay dormant inside me. I learned that I had the power to transform into a person that I could be proud of by taking my focus off of the many petty concerns that had run my life to this day and focus instead on something that would make life an exciting adventure by committing to devote my life to contributing to others!

By the end of the seminar, I decided to take the plunge and enroll in a 1-year rigorous program that involved being coached for 30 minutes daily, 5 days each week for a year and attending four 4-day intensives over that time span. During that year, not only did I learn the principles that would transform my life in every area but I decided that to fully honor my core values, to fully develop and share my gifts with others and to live my best life would require that I totally reinvent myself… So I committed to another 10 years of immersing myself into personal development. That 10-year commitment would soon be replaced with a lifelong commitment to learning daily the distinctions that would empower my own life and allow me to best serve others.

With this commitment to playing what I now recognize as “The Master Game” of impacting the lives of others by transferring “the power to succeed” I founded The Center for Personal Reinvention and began the process of creating structures to champion people to live their very best lives.

Over the course of the past three decades, I have created courses in self-esteem elevation for adults and children, life-optimization coaching and advanced life-optimization coaching, relationship coaching, self-confidence coaching, business coaching and abundance coaching – all with the intention to support anyone willing to see life differently by accessing the areas of what they don’t know that they don’t know, and learn the tools that have the awesome power to transform lives. Although I have personally paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn and develop these principles, my commitment has always been to make them ultra-affordable so that anyone willing to move their lives forward would have the knowledge of exactly how to do so.

As part of this commitment to champion people to be their best, we are now in the process of turning the three personal development fables that I wrote (The Magic Lantern, The Legend of the Light-Bearers and The Seven Blessings) into feature films that will share love, self-esteem and empowerment with the world thereby changing the state of our world which I fear is filled with hatred, violence, scarcity thinking, and despair.

As I approach my seventh decade on this planet, I decided to include my story in every email that I send out in hopes of inspiring like-minded people interested in either transforming their own lives or in sharing my vision of impacting the lives of at least 20 million adults and 20 million children with others.

It is only with your support that I will have the ability to impact the lives of this many people by sharing the principles that champion people to believe in themselves. The future of our world can indeed be marked by the soaring self-esteem principles that spread love to others, help them realize that scarcity is an illusion, and that the more we do to contribute to others, the more we will receive in return.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you.

I wish you peace, love, happiness and every blessing!

Joe Rubino
CenterForPersonalReinvention.com