Turn Life's Emotional Roller Coaster into Your Greatest Asset: Embrace the Power of "Life Equals Emotions

What if you could turn the emotional roller coaster of life into your greatest asset? Join us as we unpack the transformative concept that "Life Equals Emotions," a revelation from my first book that uncovers the deep-seated emotional threads woven into our everyday actions. From the thrill of receiving a long-awaited package to the disheartening sight of bills in the mailbox, our daily routines are teeming with emotional responses. By sharing my personal battles with bipolar disorder, alcoholism, and anxiety, I illustrate how avoiding emotions only exacerbates the struggle. Instead, embracing our emotions can empower us to rise above life's challenges and become mental health warriors.

Emotional mastery is not just about overcoming the lows but also about savoring the highs and finding joy in the ordinary. This episode delves into the importance of self-help and self-empowerment in managing emotions. We discuss the significance of personal tokens, like a coin, that serve as daily reminders of our progress and achievements. By reflecting on our journey and recognizing our growth, we harness the power to change our lives one day at a time. Tune in for an inspiring message that champions the power of emotions and encourages you to embrace your role as a mental health warrior, illuminating your path with newfound strength and appreciation for the world around you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Life Equals Emotions
• 8:02 Power of Emotions
• 16:04 Finding Strength in Personal Achievements

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everybody, bruce Shooter here with the Mental Health Warrior Program podcast, no Surrender. Now, today, I want to talk about three words and I want to talk about how, sometimes, these simple answers, or simple set of three words, can be some of the most powerful ideas and a path we can follow. Powerful ideas and a path we can follow. Yes, we're going to talk about three words, and those words are life equals emotions. Now, I put this at the beginning of my first book because this is one of those awareness moments and it's also something that takes a little work, though, to get to. So I thought today, in today's podcast, we would go over one, showing you and proving to you that life equals emotions. Then, once we accept that, once we've firmly cemented that idea in our mind, we will understand the power we get from becoming a mental health warrior. We can understand why a self-help approach to becoming a warrior and to our mental health is so powerful, because, again, it is based on that premise life equals emotions. So let's get excited and let's jump into this because, funny enough, there is so much to talk about and, as I mentioned, it's just three, and you'd think, boy Bruce, that does not sound like it has a lot of power. Let's start with proving it Because, again, I like to prove this to people by asking them a simple question Is there anything you did in the last day, or even the last week or you can name a time where you didn't have any emotions, when you did something in your life even the whole day worth Think about it for a minute? I'm taking a little pause here just to give you a second to think about it. And you probably say, well, there was a lot of boring things I did. Yes, okay, let's talk about those. Because going to get the mail no, that doesn't sound too exciting. Where can there be emotions? Or maybe running an errand Is there really emotions in that? Or am I just running functionally, going to get gas in the car? Well, let's break those two down, because those are perfect examples. They're everyday events, everyday things, and we're probably saying there's no emotions involved. But let's think about it.

Speaker 1: 2:23

You go to get the mail. You're walking towards the mailbox and you're saying, well, I'm going to pick something up and I could be excited. Or I could pick something and open the door and see a pile of bills. Now I'm going to be challenged. I could be even a little depressed. Oh, those bills all came in today. So right away we can see just opening the box, going in to look at the mail, there's emotions. Now let's just say we start pulling the mail out Now we start to see what we got in the mail.

Speaker 1: 2:54

Now, again, as I mentioned, emotions. We have tough emotions, negative emotions and then we have the positive emotions. So, going through the mail again, we could find fantastic things we ordered that arrived and now they might be something for a project or, in my case, I love to cook. So we get some ingredients I ordered on the mail. Tough to find things. When they come in and they show up in that mailbox, I am excited. There are emotions. If the bills come in with them, I'm not so excited. There are some negative, tough emotions. So you can see, just going to get the mail is filled with emotions. And here we thought it was just an action Walking out, opening the box, bringing the stuff in.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Nope, everything in life or life equals emotions is the case. Now let's also talk about we're going to get gas in the car. Well, need to drive over, fight traffic, fill up the tank, make sure we get a good price and move on. But it doesn't happen that way, because the journey over to get the gas could be exciting. We could have the favorite song we love, pop on the radio or on our satellite radio, and at that time, all of a sudden, the trip becomes more exciting. We could be fired up because it's a beautiful day and we roll down the windows. We could also get there. Gas went on sale, the price went down, all positive emotions, all things from an everyday experience. Now you're starting to probably see what I'm saying. There is nothing is the answer to that question. I asked you Nothing in life that doesn't involve emotions.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Now, on a more serious sense, I want to bring this up because what happened in my life when I tried to avoid my emotions because of my mental health challenges? So, with my bipolar disorder, my alcoholism, which was definitely trying to hide from my emotions and using it as a crutch, also the anxiety disorders, ptsd, now all those coming together, I didn't know how to handle the emotions that came with them. Or again, I turned to some of those things as short-term solutions to just get through the emotions, just get through the day. That's certainly how I used a combination of drinking to deal with my anxiety, which in turn made more anxiety. Of course, you can tell, none of this worked well, and the reason it didn't work well was because every day is filled with emotions and as I hid from them, as I further gave up my power to my life's challenges, well, I was in a pretty dark place, to where I didn't even want to live anymore.

Speaker 1: 5:31

And that's the power that our emotions can have over us. At that point I wanted to bring this up, not to depress you, but to show you, to prove to you that this is the power of our emotions and left unchecked, it is not a good path to be on. But anything that has that much power also has a positive side, because if it has that much power to bring us down, it has the power to lift us to new heights, and that is a fact. You get both those things. I'm sure there's a scientific principle to explain it, but you can't have one without the other. You can't have that amount of power and only have it negative. So we can learn from those negative emotions and then apply them to make the day even brighter. And I will tell you, having been in a dark place for a number of years, for a long time in a dark place, for a number of years, for a long time. Today, each day seems brighter and filled with more excitement, because I was in that dark place and learned lessons from that and I've applauded him today.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Now I know we veered off into a little bit of seriousness, so let's jump back into some of the excitement. And we're back on those three words, because I think at this point you understand what I'm saying, that life equals emotions and there isn't anything out there, like I showed you and I'm sure you found by thinking, there is nothing you do in life that doesn't involve emotions. Again, the last example I want to put in. That is if you can ever imagine if you've driven through the desert or maybe through, like the Midwest, in a cornfield After a while, with the landscape not changing and I'm talking when you can't even all you see is the sun in the distance. You never get to the horizon, nothing changes as you're going through endless fields or the endless desert. Now picture that as you're driving along and all of a sudden you pretty much lose all sense of direction. You don't know if you're making any progress. You kind of lose all sense of excitement because again, there's nothing to look at. It's the same old thing. This would be the path with no emotions in life. This would be what life is like if there were no emotions. But that is not the case and, as we've established, everything is filled with emotions, even those tough ones. So what can we do with this knowledge? What can we do now? I said those three words were so powerful. Okay, let's jump into the positive, let's jump into what we can do.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Well, the path of being a mental health warrior. Again, I build it. So it's a self-help approach for self-empowerment, and the reason I did that was, as we learn to grow and handle tougher emotions, we can control the direction of our life and we can move forward in the direction we choose. And it is all based on that fact that if life is filled with emotions, then if we can manage the emotions, we can triumph over any challenge that life puts in our way. Yes, we can challenge over the ones that come from my mental health challenges, my mental health disorders, because I can't control sometimes when bipolar is going to throw me into depression for no reason, and a lot of times that can happen if you've talked to people with bipolar or even just depression itself. Sometimes it occurs for no reason, and that is it trying to gain control. It is trying to tell you that there is no hope. It is lying to you, but we have tools as a warrior and we know that it may do this, but we are prepared, which means no longer are we powerless. Like I mentioned, when I got to that spot where I no longer wanted to live, it was because I was powerless.

Speaker 1: 9:20

But today, knowing that emotions are the secret, or ie, mental health if you like to call it that, we're both talking about the same things here. But what we're saying is emotions are the key. They are the power to bring us to the heights. They are the power to show us some tough lessons and things, and that's how we learn. They are the power to show us some tough lessons and things, and that's how we learn. So, again, we can see the power of the warrior comes from those three words.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Now, get ready here, because at this point, this is where it will blow your socks off, because at this point, when we take those three words and we apply that knowledge well, all of a sudden we can gain a new path that is full of power. We can be mental health warriors. That self-empowerment word comes into play. All because we have learned to work with and are learning to work with your emotions. And remember this is a lifelong process because as you grow, as you go along, today I'm doing things in my life I couldn't even imagined I could do before because my challenges had limited my scope of life. And I want to put my hands together in this little tiny spot that was my life, but that, if you're there, you can expand it.

Speaker 1: 10:37

And again, all of this comes from those words accepting that life equals emotions and knowing, as a mental health warrior, you tap into that power and that power allows you to manage them. It allows you to use that power to triumph over your challenges each and every day, because a lot of our challenges my bipolar alcoholism, I can't just erase my mind from things I saw when I was in EMT with the PTSD, but what I can do today is take back control by not letting those challenges or those memories, experiences they do not control me. I can process the emotions, I can accept the emotions. I can accept the emotions and let me tell you there are some tough emotions, especially things with PTSD and accepting life or death that you see right in front of you. Again, I apologize for going into such a deep level, but if you can handle things like that and learn from those emotions which I have and you can learn life lessons from I have, and you can learn life lessons from those things and you can apply them to today, well, you can make today amazing. You can bring the light into today that is so bright and shining so brightly because you've been through those dark places, because you've been through those tough lessons that life will teach us, and those are the lessons we can learn Now.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Again, I apologize if we're bringing this down the tone, but it's important to show you that the mental health warrior path is filled with that full spectrum of emotions. And so when I say life equals emotions, I do not mean as a warrior, you're going to spend all your time and everything's going to be perfect and everything's happy land, because, again, that is not reality or how life works. But what we can say and what we can do is remember that the full spectrum of emotions, all those emotions, they are what make life so interesting and so amazing Because, again, as I mentioned, if you've been in dark places, the light can be even brighter, the successes you have today can be even more over the top, more powerful to you, the accomplishments you make of everyday things. Again, this is one of those subtle things I like to bring out, because those three words life equals emotions.

Speaker 1: 13:05

By embracing my emotions today, I find success in doing everyday things. I find in true enjoyment in doing a lot of the simple things that I gave no credence to. I didn't give any fun to just a movie night and having some basic snacks, but today I have learned to cook, I make some interesting little basic snacks, I go with my streaming services, I pick out some movies and the entire experience is amazing, and not just because before I'll throw this in as a little bit of humor not just before, when I was drinking. Well, there was a lot of problems with that and, let me tell you, a lot of times I didn't remember the end of the movies. So there's a big win right there. Now that's kind of a funny one.

Speaker 1: 13:50

But what's really amazing to me is I didn't appreciate the things that were right in front of me, and you're probably missing out on those too, because before we just didn't equate life with equaling emotions, and now that we're embracing them, well, everything we do can really hit home and it can be really exciting, kind of like the example we used at the beginning and we said go into the mail, go into the mailbox. Well, this can turn into quite an adventure today, and you can have that too, because things that come in the mail probably represent your interest, your passions, and if you get things in the mail, it could even be a simple map that you're going to go for a new bike ride or a new hike, or a map of a park, or even just some simple thing that you ordered. You will find an amazing excitement in that and you'll be able to go out and do it and you will be living life. And that again, is the end result of being a warrior. Today we are living life Now. I don't know anybody who would be excited by that. So let's jump into where do you get started? Because you may, and hopefully at this point you realize well those three words, bruce. I certainly agree with them. I know it's a little bit longer to prove things on three words, but I hope you had some exciting times in thinking about it, because it unlocks a lot of power.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Now to unlock that power further, go to BruceShootercom. Check out the Mental Health Warrior Program. You could type it in the search engine and find it. You will find I have nine books out there. That's so. We are fully armed as warriors, because there's lots of ways in life and lots of areas and tools that we can use every day to triumph over our challenges.

Speaker 1: 15:35

There's also this podcast. There are also blog articles. If you like to read the articles, take it more in bite-sized pieces, and then there are plenty of other free resources to read the articles. Take it more in bite-sized pieces, and then there are plenty of other free resources to get you started too A free book that will introduce you to the Mental Health Warrior program, the concept, but also give you some tools to get started and you'll see things like the Mental Health Warrior Challenge Coin, which is a tangible reminder that you are a warrior, can carry with you every day.

Speaker 1: 16:04

I even have one here. Of course, it's not in front of me so I'll pretend like I'm holding it up, but that coin helps me remind myself every day of my achievements. It helps remind me that look how far I've come today from where I used to be before I became a mental health warrior and my life's challenges control the direction of my life. That is a fantastic thing to have in your pocket to tap into at any time in the day. When you're struggling is to remind yourself look at where I am today and look at where I can go.

Speaker 1: 16:35

So, with all those resources there, I hope you'll go check out the site. I hope you get excited and I hope you really get jazzed up, let's just say, by the three words that I find so important and are such a secret to the warrior power Life equals emotions. Thanks for joining me today and I hope you enjoyed it. I can't wait to talk to you on the next podcast and I know you're going to have a great day, for you are a mental health warrior and that means the power to change your life is within your grasp every day. That's exciting Talk with you more later, bruce signing out.