I thought to give this the title “letter to the kids” but I remember being 12 years old and getting treated like a “kid”. It feels condescending. And when adults chuckle and give you that dismissive look you want to growl like an animal. Ha! At least, that’s how I felt….
Now, I’ve grown into that sneering A-dult, who calls eighteen-year-old’s, kids. Dunno why.
Is it an ego thing? Is it the human condition, whatever age we’re at we imagine we’ve figured it out? Is it a way of looking mortality in the eye, and envying the distance between you and old age? Or is it a bad habit I’ve picked up from everyone else? And now it’s payback time for every time someone dismissed my viewpoint as a young person.
Regardless of the nuances involved, one thing I know for sure. When I was twelve, I was smart enough to learn. And I didn’t have anyone in my life to teach me about emotional health. That’s what my blog is about. And my YouTube channel.
It is teaching the twelve-year-old version of myself how to feel. Emphasis on the feel. I knew how to think. I had mastered thoughts. The problem? My mind overflowed with WRONG thoughts. Or let’s state this with greater accuracy. My mind overflowed with unhealthy and unhelpful thoughts. These thoughts compounded the problems created by my emotions. Thoughts loop into emotions and feed back into thoughts. This created a tornado of unnecessary emotional pain and discomfort.
I had a serious problem. I didn’t know then that I had permission to confide my feelings with a trusted adult. No one explained to me an important detail. Certain experiences and situations I went through had also happened to other people. The human mind needs to express pent-up feelings to release and heal the pain.
Imagine breaking your arm. What if you wrap a cast around the break without resetting the bone? What will happen? It won’t heal in the proper way and will cause serious problems for the rest of your life. You need someone more experienced to reset the bone first.
So, when I was young, I wrapped up my inner thoughts and feelings with a mental cast. It took me many years to discover that I had never healed. That my homemade mental cast had only covered up the problem by hiding it from others. I would bottle things up until I exploded because I never learned that I needed to trust certain people.
Now, some people can afford a psychologist. And there are many disorders or threats to emotional health. Those are better served by a professional. Think of it this way. If you cut yourself, your parent or school nurse can apply a band aid on your wound, correct? You wouldn’t insist on seeing a doctor to check the band aid, now would you? Of course not.
Likewise, I’m not a licensed psychologist nor am I pretending to be one. I’m a communicator. I will state something is my opinion or unique personal experience. Everything else I relate I learned from people studying this field. Via books, videos, or podcasts. Do you feel you need something more than an emotional band aid? Then please seek professional help. You may not be certain if the emotional wound requires a mental band aid or stitches. My recommendation is to confide in an adult you trust. Their advice will help you make a wiser decision.
Disclaimers aside, I’m here for you. Everything I learned helped bring my emotional health from a 1 to an 8. And everything I teach, you can learn. I hold the belief they should teach these things first in school. Sixteen-year-olds enter the workforce and they can’t count back change. Yet they’ve spent over a decade in math class. There’s only a small percentage of people that need to use math daily. That is, anything beyond what calculators and computer spreadsheets do.
It’s time for schools to get an upgrade. Devote classes to teaching children about navigating their emotional maps. Until then there’s me to fill in the gap. As of this writing, one in four American adults don’t read books. That means there is a huge gap in the information they need to learn. That’s my goal. To extract the valuable information found in books. Transform those concepts into simple, digestible chunks of information. Communicate them via blog posts and videos.
And for you, my peeps, I want to encourage a love of reading. Each person’s brain works at different comfort levels. Each person has a preferred method of absorbing information through their senses. Modern technology has altered the way we consume information. And society ignores inherent dangers. The wisest people aren’t regulating social media technology. And young children need this important education to be set up for success.
Remember McDonalds? My generation grew up on McDonalds. It was fast, cheap food that tasted great. And then enough people got fed up and exposed the facts. McDonalds, Fast Food and much of our food supply is not benefiting us. It took awhile though. No one argues that cigarettes are good for you. No one claims a daily diet of fast food is good either. Well, it might take another generation to unravel all the unhealthy side effects of a social media diet.
That doesn’t mean we need to follow the crowd. We don’t choose to eat fast food three times a day. We know we’d get so sick we couldn’t get out of bed. It means each individual needs to act. Take personal responsibility for their emotional health. McDonalds still exists. There are still people who support that industry. People who overindulge and those eating there pay the price. Likewise, you may have friends who overindulge in social media, video games, Netflix, etc. But the social constructs of our brains are a double-edged sword. Because everyone else is doing something doesn’t mean it’s good for us.
I’m not lecturing. Nor do I desire to make you feel guilty. I’m not going to strong arm you or manipulate or try to trick you. If you want to eat McDonalds, that’s your free choice and I promise not to judge you for it.
All the personal changes I made came from my desire to be happy. And as Covid has taught so many of us, happiness is never a constant thing unaffected by external factors. Advertisers have swayed us into consuming constant distraction and pleasure seeking. We tell ourselves this is an acceptable replacement. But it cannot replace true happiness, inner peace, contentment and self-respect. Those lies I mentioned. When I first learned about the dangers of Fast Food, I was furious. Angry that I had never learned the truth. It’s when we gather the facts that we can make the best decisions for ourselves.
So, when it comes to emotional health there are many paths to take. I’m revealing my own. What I’ve learned about the human experience is that we are much more alike than different. During my adolescence, I imagined I was unique. I believed I was Jim Carrey in the Truman Show. The entire world was spying on me. But then I grew older and learned to listen. I discerned that everything I thought and felt was also experienced by others. This provided comfort and removed pressure. I’m not alone. These negative emotions are part of the human experience. And by saying them out loud, it takes away the thunder.
What I hope for you is not a desire to follow my path. I want you to learn how to navigate your unique emotional map and forge your own path. So much of the turmoil I experienced came from my incomplete map. I guessed. I believed I had it figured out when I hadn’t. So, I’m sharing my struggles and the tools and techniques that helped me. My desire is for you to learn at a much younger age than I did. Learn how to rewrite your map to serve you rather than hinder you.
You may hear me mention details like I stopped eating refined sugar. I’m not trying to influence you to make the same decisions I did. That’s one drawback with today’s society. Experts uncover new information. It then becomes a fad, an obsession, the new normal, and the only way to think. This is unhealthy, from my perspective. Because it removes critical thinking from the equation. I wish we all had a personal Snopes inside our head. This might end popular unhealthy behaviors from society.
During my intense focus on emotional health, I discovered physical connections. Refined sugar interrupts my body’s ability to remain in a calm state. A key takeaway from this example is that everyone’s genetic makeup is different. What is right for me may not be right for you. If your goal is emotional peace and refined sugar doesn’t hinder that process, then make the correct choice for you.
For me, though, altering habits around food was a huge component in improving my emotional map.
One thing I’ve discovered about myself is that my enthusiasm is contagious. It’s an honor to have such a gift and to hone that skill. But the danger is people might want to believe me based on our connection. Instead of evaluating current facts. That is why I will focus on this information. Studies or perceptions presented in the books, podcasts, and other sources. My goal is to provide as accurate a picture as possible.
This is how I break down the components. 1. Present official research about how the human mind processes its environment. 2. My personal experience integrating the new concept. 3. Communicating a simple technique to use for your personal emotional map.
That’s my simple summary. The overarching message is one of hope and endurance. I want to provide you with hope. Life is difficult enough and when we have an incomplete emotional map, it can seem unbearable. But I’m living proof that you can survive and thrive. And there is wise, valuable, proven information in this world to help you. It will help you experience peace, calm and joy. And you don’t NEED a million dollars to enjoy that.
What you do need to have is an open mind and heart. A willingness to learn. And the grit and determination to build habits that strengthen your emotional health. Think about it this way. Have you ever seen a person with a strong bicep? Do you think their bicep got that strong in one day? They went down to the BICEP STORE and bought themselves that strong muscle? No. We all know they lifted heavy weights every day.
Emotional health can feel too heavy at first. But, by creating the habit of lifting every day, soon you will succeed. You’ll have a strong, healthy emotional map that’ll become your source of pride. Don’t make the mistake of reading or watching one of my messages and imagine you have a big bicep. You must create and nurture the habit, show up once a day and do the heavy lifting.
If you commit to this, I promise. I promise. Yes, I promise your life will become so much better. This is the only guarantee I will ever give you.
Remember. Take it one day at a time. To steal Tony Robbins‘ line, I’m not your guru. I’m your friend—been there done that—who wants to help you. That’s it. Nothing less and nothing more.
I’m your emotional coach. Let’s get to work! But don’t expect me to bring you donuts….