To be successful, you’ve got to think.Well, yeah….So what?
Here’s the problem with thinking: Thinking’s great. I do it myself, lol. I couldn’t have written a dissertation and gotten through grad school without it.But…
When it comes to marriage – or any relationship – thinking your way through problems is absolutely the wrong way to handle them.
You see, our brains are about 95% emotional. We react because of how we feel and then we search in our minds – as quickly as possible so it sounds reasonable – for a rational explanation for why we do things or feel the way we do.But there was no real reason.
The reason was emotional.
That isn’t to say the reason wasn’t worthwhile, but it was not a reason. It was a feeling.
Let me give you an example of that and then I’ll tie it back into my point for this post.I’ll make up a place; let’s call it Talabank. Sally grew up in Talabank and she hated it. She suffered with her parents not understanding her.
She suffered with being bullied because she didn’t wear the latest designer clothes.So when her husband signed and said the cold weather was getting to him and he wanted to vacation in Talabank, Sally had a visceral reaction of, “NO!”
But if she just shouted that out, she wouldn’t look very rational.
And successful people have to look rational.
To themselves, to each other, to the world. It’s an unspoken rule. No one questions it.So she couldn’t just say, “No, I hate it!” If she did, she’d sound like a child.
Admit it! That is the way we think.
Instead of respecting her emotions and possibly the trauma she suffered growing up, all that gets swept under the rug.If she did admit she hated it, her husband would say, “Why? What’s wrong with it?” And she’d have to remind him of how she hated it growing up.
But even if she did that, he’d say, “Well, that was a long time ago. What’s wrong with it now?”
And she wouldn’t have a good answer.
Because no one appreciates the way old pain stays with us and continues to hurt us. So Sally would just feel misunderstood and she would also feel kind of stupid. After all, it wasa long time ago. What’s the problem now? She herself has pooh-poohed her own pain, minimized it, dismissed it.That’s not right! That’s not respecting her own feelings.
Reason only gets you so far.
The reality is that we do not respect the power of our emotions. We do not honor and value the messages our emotions send us.That is one reason we live under so much stress in today’s world and why successful couples have that added stress of not appreciating their emotions when they’ve relied so much on their brains. So those unappreciated emotions will wreak havoc with their internal organs, their hearts, and their circulatory systems.
They will get their messages out one way or another.
Even then, successful people will never give due credit to the role those emotions play.In this group, we are getting familiar with IFS (Internal Family Systems) – see the replay library for a pretty thorough into to it. (Check your LinkTree list for the url. If I put it here, Facebook will consider this post spam.)
And the most basic thing we can take away from the many posts I’ve written here and that replay is that we really function by our emotions, not our logic.And we absolutely need to take care of those emotions; we can’t ignore them or bury them because we do so at our own risk. They will come out in other, unwanted ways – like addictions, rage, escape, anxiety, physical ailments, or depression.
But highly successful people don’t want to hear any of that. They got to where they are through the strength of their logic and reason. They consider that their best asset.So it’s tough. They have that challenge. But I’m now inviting every one of them – you – to consider the power of your own and your partner’s emotions.
And it surely is. No doubt about it.
But….
It shouldn’t be their only asset.
If they don’t feel their feelings they will never understand Sally. And Sally will never understand Jim.For some people, “What were you feeling when X happened?” may be the hardest question they could answer. Yet, I guarantee you, it’s the most important one.
Agree or disagree with me?