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I’m David The Optimist and, in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the importance of feelings and emotions when we’re trying to especially solve a problem.
I would like to start this episode with a short paragraph that I found in a research paper or a study and I’m going to link it in the footnotes of the episode.
And the paragraph goes like this:
Dr. Armour, in 1991, discovered that the heart has its “little brain” or “intrinsic cardiac nervous system.” This “heart brain” is composed of approximately 40,000 neurons that are alike neurons in the brain, meaning that the heart has its own nervous system. In addition, the heart communicates with the brain in many methods: neurologically, biochemically, biophysically, and energetically.
That was the paragraph.
I believe this is really, really, really important because if you look at emotional problems, we are trying to solve them in a cognitive way.
Personal reflections on effort and outcome
I was having recently a coaching session, and the situation that my coachee was struggling with, was that there were situations in their life where they were trying to do something and it was working out, and then exactly the same efforts were put into a different situation and then no results whatsoever.
I was resonating with that specific situation (with what my coach was sharing), because it happened to me in the past as well.
It happened to me in the past that I was trying to do something and get some results from my projects, and I was having zero results.
And then, at the same time, when I was doing the same thing for a client, then there were some results.
There is this kind of unbalance when it comes to doing the same thing in different environments or through different channels or with different variables in mind that you can do the same thing and have different results.
The garden of emotional understanding
Going back to the paragraph that I shared with you, when we’re trying to solve something or when we’re trying to address something, the thing that we’re trying to address is different based on how we look at that thing.
Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that you are trying to take the seed of an orange, the fruit orange, and plant it somewhere in a garden.
The seed is going to be the same, the garden is going to be the same.
What’s going to be different is you in raport with the seed and you in raport with the garden and you in raport with the seed and the garden at the same time.
If you’ve been raised by parents that value gardening, then you’re going to know how to take the seed from the orange and then put it in the soil and then water it so it can grow and so on.
But if you’ve been raised by parents who don’t give a shit about gardening and who don’t really care about healthy foods or don’t really care about having a green environment around you, then you’re going to look at the seed and maybe don’t even understand what that seed is and don’t even know how to put it in the soil or how to water it and so on.
From that perspective, it means that it all goes back to you.
When you’re trying to plant the orange in the ground, in the soil, and then water it, then the water is going to be the same, the soil is going to be the same, the seed is going to be the same.
You are the variable that’s different.
You are what makes the seed grow or you are what throws the seed away.
I was coming up with this hypothetical situation because you are the variable when it comes to solving your problems.
Whatever situation you’re going through is always going to be the same.
I’m saying this because it’s what I’ve been dealing with for the last, I think, 15 years or something like that. I was able to solve it only recently as in the end of last year, and I’m still struggling with it.
My situation was like this: because my parents didn’t give me any emotional support or any… they didn’t nurture me emotionally when they raised me, then the more I grew up, the more I needed that kind of emotions in my life (and nurture) but it wasn’t there.
And I was not really able to recognize it.
The missing piece of the puzzle
I realized that the more time passed, the more I needed that kind of emotion in my life, the nurturing kind of emotion.
I believe since I was 16 or 18, something like that (and I’m almost 33 right now) I tried to solve that kind of thing. I tried to solve the problem that I had, and I didn’t know that I had that problem because I didn’t know the importance of emotions, I didn’t really know what it would be like to be raised by parents who nurture you and invest resources into raising you healthy emotionally.
I didn’t know that, and I really didn’t know what to look for.
The limits of logical solutions
I was always trying to solve the problem using my brain in a way. Trying to solve the problem with another two or three steps.
So I was thinking about a strategy, I was thinking about the method, a way, to solve whatever I was going through, and then I was putting it to practice, and when I was reaching the last step, I was having this sort of, “Hmm, I grew some parts of my life, and I got some more skills, and I know a few more things, and so on, and I had some results, some achievements, but the problem is still here.”
“So what am I going to do then?” This is what I was thinking.
This process of constantly thinking of strategies and thinking about steps that I could go through to solve the existential problem that I was having, (that problem was connected to the lack of nurturing from my childhood) this constant effort put into strategies and steps on trying to solve it, lead me on a path of personal development, where I got to use my brain in ways that are so creative and so vast and so complex, that I developed the strength of coming up with ideas for any kind of problem that you may have.
If you’re trying to solve something in your business, and you are not creative enough, and you are consulting with two or three people, and then you get stuck. Okay, what do you do there?
Then I have ideas.
If you’re trying to write a book, or you’re trying to create some design for some event, or you’re trying to create an alternative for a hiking group, or whatever. I’ve got the idea.
In all these 15 years that I’ve been trying to solve my existential problem, I got to train my brain to come up with ideas for anything, basically.
But the problem was that I didn’t solve the problem.
My need for nurturing was still there, and in a way it still is, but now I’m aware of it. I was always looking for this solution, for the solution, to the problem, because it was a big and single problem, and that was that I didn’t get the nurture that I needed as a child.
I was trying to do this using my brain, using my brain and only my brain, as in, “Okay, what are the next steps? What should I do physically with my body to get to my solution?”
There was nothing that I could have done, because I’ve tried so many things and nothing worked.
Harnessing the heart’s wisdom
Going back to the paragraph that I read at the beginning of this episode, there are 40,000 neurons in the heart that are like the neurons that we have in the brain that are helping us think, but in an unconscious manner, in an unconscious way, because you don’t really think with your heart the way you think with your brain.
You don’t get to have these thoughts or thinking experiences with your heart – you have it with your brain.
But at the same time, when you’re going through an emotional situation that results into a trauma, like I did, if you’re trying to solve it with your brain, then yes, you’re going to be aware of your emotional trauma, you’re going to be aware of maybe how you got there, you’re going to be aware of how it’s holding you back, you’re going to be aware of all these things, but the emotional problem (because being aware is a cognitive solution to a cognitive problem) but then there’s the emotional problem which is connected to the heart and the neurons of the heart, then how are you going to solve that?
That’s the million dollar question.
Discovering inner harmony
The way I got to solve it was in this through meditation, because all these things that I did in the past, none of them worked as in to solve my problem.
They got me closer to understanding what happened and to be more aware of the problem that I had and I still have in a way – that’s how all these personal development exercises from the past helped me, but they only got me so far.
I still struggle emotionally with some situations because I didn’t get the nurture that I needed to get when I was a child.
The way I got to solve some part of the problem, and the more I do it, the more it feels like eventually I’ll be able to solve it on my own, without getting the nurturing that I need from someone else (because I could still do that in a way if it’s the right person and understanding the situation and so on) but the way I got to do it is through meditation.
I mentioned the meditation that I’ve been doing lately in a previous episode and also in some articles.
This meditation is the guided meditation sessions from Joe Dispenza called Blessings of the Energy Centers. There are five of them.
I started in November, 2023 and I meditated up until the middle of March and recently I started again. So around five or six months.
The things that changed the most and that bring the most value in my life is that I am not impulsive anymore, I don’t feel like I need to react in a negative aggressive way towards people when they do something negative to me.
I’ve had my fair share of bad experiences with people and I don’t react negatively to these experiences anymore.
At least this year until now (it’s been four months) I haven’t reacted negatively to any person and I had a few bad experiences and I also don’t feel like these experiences are as bad as they used to be.
They don’t reach my end, they don’t come into my life with the same intensity.
These meditation sessions from Joe Dispenza are amazing, I’ve been doing many kinds of meditations until now and I have a whole episode where I talk about meditations and I’m not going to say all the things again.
But just to give you a small idea of what kind of meditations I used to practice:
- I used to meditate on my own without knowing anything about meditation, but I used to think of something that happened in my life and then break it down until I was getting to the core of it just to understand from where it started
- I tried all kinds of guided meditations with apps, without apps, with voice without voice and just sounds and so on, I tried so many of them
- I tried trauma release exercises that helped me a bit
- I tried Hoponopono: it’s a specific meditation, it’s not guided, but it’s really specific and it helped me a bit with being able to forgive some people from my past
Then, after that, I discovered the meditations from Jodie Spencer and I used them intensively.
I also sometimes combined them with a meditation that is called I AM and puts me into a state where I’m the center of everything. I also experience some, I would say, behavior meditations when I’m trying to correct some behaviors that I have, I don’t want to have anymore.
Exploring paths to healing
When I’m looking at all these different kinds of meditations that I did, the ones from Joe Dispenza brought me the most results.
After 15 years, I truly feel like I got to solve the problem, the existential problem that I had.
It’s been crazy, I’ve had so many frustrations with what I was trying to do before discovering the meditation sessions from Joe Dispenza.
Going back to the topic of today’s episode, I think these meditations from Joe Dispenza helped me because they helped me focus a lot on my emotions without involving my thinking at all.
I got to a point after these five or six months where during the meditation I don’t see myself in my body anymore and I’m just floating through space, somewhere in the universe and discovering things.
It’s like what I’m living right now when I’m recording this podcast is a simulation that you get to experience maybe as a metaphor: when you are an actor on the stage and right before starting your play and right before having the curtains open, then you are behind the simulation. And as soon as you step on the stage and you see everyone in front of you and you start your play, then that’s the simulation.
The same way it feels right now.
It feels like as soon as I go into the meditation sessions, the curtain closes and then I go back to my roots and I get to explore the things that are happening at the cosmic level, let’s say, which is a really deep experience.
And I got here after these five or six months.
Going back to the topic of the episode, I believe we as a society are stuck in believing that solving our problems is done only with the help of our brain because we are so focused on finding the right strategy to get the most out of what we’re doing, so we can get the best results and just have the solution and move on to the next thing, to the next problem, that we get stuck in this process.
The more we think like that, the more we get to the lack of understanding of what it means to live your life.
Your life is not just your brain, you also have emotions and don’t even get me started on how much society is encouraging you and everyone around you to ignore your emotions and to just do things because doing things will get you somewhere – to the success that you want… bullshit like that.
Embracing emotional intelligence
I truly believe that solving these big problems that you’ve been stuck with has to involve in a way or another your emotions and you staying with your emotions without involving your brain or your cognitive functions in any way.
I’ve managed to do that through meditations. Maybe there are other methods, but I don’t know anything about any other method.
If you are in a situation where you’ve been dealing with a problem that’s been for too long in your life, then maybe there’s a trauma there that is stuck on some emotions or at some emotional level and trying to solve it with your brain won’t work.
If that’s your situation, I encourage you to go to Joe Dispenza’s website (if you Google it, you’ll find it) and just search for Blessings of the Energy Centers.
Purchase the first one and make it daily for a month. Then get the second one and do it for another month, and then the third one and do it for another month and so on.
That’s how I’ve been doing it and it feels like the missing piece of the puzzle – of my puzzle.
An announcement of travel
Before closing out this episode, I would like to share some news with you.
Starting next week, I’ll be traveling to Japan for one month and then to Italy for one week and I’ll be back with the podcast on the second or third week of June.
But at the same time, I would like to record one podcast from where I travel. Or maybe two, or maybe three. I don’t know.
So if you don’t see any podcasts for the next one month and a half, just don’t worry about it because I’m traveling and I am fully engaged and present with my travels and I will probably won’t think about recording any of the episodes.
So there’s that.
If you want to learn about my journey and see what I’m doing while I travel, just follow me on Instagram and I’ll be posting their pictures and stories and videos and everything about my experience.
Thank you for listening
I hope you found value in today’s episode.
If you want to become more optimistic and learn what optimism is all about, join the Optimistic Tuesday Newsletter. Go to davidtheoptimist.com/newsletter and I’ll send you one newsletter every Tuesday, with insights about optimism.
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To stay in touch, subscribe to The Optimistic Perspective Podcast or follow me on Instagram at davidtheoptimist.
Thank you for listening.
With love and optimism,
David
Episode’s footnotes:
- Research paper: Pain: Is It All in the Brain or the Heart?
- Listen to the episode about meditation: 2. Make Your Morning Routine Feel Effortless
- Blessing of The Energy Center Meditations
- Follow David on Instagram if you’re curious about Japan and Italy