Decide What You Want To Feel
Emotions are deeply ingrained in us as human beings. They are what allow us to procreate. Emotions keep us safe. They keep us alive.
But, they can oftentimes be far more complicated than necessary. Even downright harmful, when not used correctly!
Honestly, the biggest superpower might be deciding what you want to feel.
Found myself rewatching Billions here recently, and it’s been great. (Living in lower Manhattan makes it that much more real, lol) For those of you not familiar, highly recommend watching!
This specific scene really hit home. Coincidentally, it was a couple of hours after I had read something that upset me, and caused me to get overly emotional about something that shouldn’t have caused that level of reaction.
Here is the scene:
Here is what he says:
There are people that things happen to
Are there are people that make things happen
And you need to land on which one you want to be
And when you do that
When you decide what you want to feel
That is the true source of power
When you get there
People will see what you want them to see on your face
Not many people ever figure this out
Those that do - they get to run the world.
He’s right.
It immediately took me back to a random Twitter thread w/ Shaan Puri a couple of years ago. He had been talking about the ability to simply change the way you were feeling on a dime is the superpower of superpowers.
At that point in time, it was foreign to me. Honestly, when something happens and I fall into the ‘high-speed wobble’ state, my day is over. It’s going to take a night’s sleep for me to reset and move on to the next day…
But that’s a weakness.
True power is having complete and total control over yourself and your emotions, at all times.
We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we feel, and more importantly how we react.
Being in total control of how you feel, your emotions, and what you choose to show people, is indeed the ultimate power.
Much easier said than done, however. It’s going to take years of practice, and decades of mastery.
However, it’s absolute truth, the top players out there are constantly cool under pressure. They don’t get too high, or too low. Especially when the stakes are highest (board meetings, etc)
Ways to practice:
1 - Put yourself in a bunch of high-stakes situations. When you do this, lower-stakes stuff won’t elicit as much of a reaction. You’ve already been battle tested.
2 - Meditate. Being mindful and having the ability to watch your emotions come and go helps a ton. Everyone talks about meditation, but few people are regulars. It needs to be an everyday thing. Headspace is a killer app. (Andy is my guy!) Get up to 60 minutes!
3 - Familiarize yourself with Stoicism. The Daily Stoic is a good place to start.
Work in that direction.