#8 How To Turn Down the Volume On Anger, Stress, Worry, Sadness and All of the Other Bad Vibe Emotions By 50% or More Within a Matter of Seconds
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If I were to tell you that the next time you’re feeling anger, stress, worry, sadness, or any of the other bad vibe emotions, that there is a tool that you can use to turn the volume down by 50% or more within a matter of seconds, would you be interested?
I hope so, because that's exactly what I've got on tap for you in this week’s episode of The Grit, Growth and Gratitude Podcast.
It’s one of the fastest and easiest methods to dissolve stress and anger. There's no counseling, journaling or anything like that required.
It’s low-hanging happiness fruit.
And if you’re thinking, “I don't have a lot of stress, anger, worry, fear, etc,” then please hear me loud and clear:
You definitely have some of them or all of those things going on at different times in your life, whether you're aware of it or not.
You're a human being, which means you've experienced difficult circumstances, been disappointed, and suffered losses.
With those experiences come negative and complex emotions like grief, fear, embarrassment, sadness, shame, etc.
And avoiding the exploration, processing, and healing of your emotions is like being an ostrich who sticks his head in the sand.
That little hole in the sand is nice and cozy because the ostrich doesn't have to cry, express, feel, heal, share, etc.
But eventually a lion comes up and bites that ostrich right in his plump, feathery ass.
Sadly, I learned this the hard way, but you don’t have to!
With the right tools, you can flip the script and become that lion! And “Name It To Tame It” is one of those tools.
Let’s Connect!
For more bite-sized happiness tips, follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejoespector
Resources to increase your inner peace and maximize your happiness:
Download my free mental & emotional fitness eBook, Your Guide to Grit Growth & Gratitude: https://www.thejoespector.com/opt-in
Check out my free meditations to shut off the monkey mind and crank up the good vibes: https://www.thejoespector.com/meditations
MORE FREE STUFF ALERT!
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Email me a screenshot of your review to joe@thejoespector.com (or DM on IG), and I’ll send you some free super dope stickers! You can check them out here: https://www.thejoespector.com/merchandise
Episode #8 Transcription
If I were to tell you that the next time you were feeling anger, stress, rage, worry, sadness, anxiety, or any of the other bad vibe, emotions, that there was a tool that you can use to turn the volume down by 50% or more within a matter of seconds, would you be interested? I sure hope so, cuz that's exactly what I've got on tap for you today.
So stick around. Just because you are struggling doesn't mean you are. Remember that. Remember that. Welcome to the Grit, growth and Gratitude podcast with Joe Specter, where we teach hardworking and growth oriented people, how to maximize their happiness and master their minds and emotions and emotions.
And now your hope. He's a retired firefighter and mental and emotional fitness teacher. After sustaining a career-ending injury, the loss of multiple loved ones and a very near miss with suicide, he rebounded his wellness with a vengeance to gain unshakable inner peace and ridiculously unreasonable.
This is Joe Specter. Ladies and gentlemen. I am so excited to share with you the newest sponsor of this podcast. Me This episode is sponsored by my free ebook, which I wanna ask you to download. There's a link in the show notes, and I'm not really selling anything here. Like I said, this is free and it is a game changer.
And to illustrate this point, I'd like to read you a testimonial, which made my heart swell up and was so humble. It's from Shauna in Clearwater, Florida, and she said, this is incredible. I wasn't sure at first what to expect, but I feel like I just learned more helpful tips than the last couple of months of my own counseling.
I devoured this ebook and now I've got some incredible exercises I'm implementing in my daily life, so thank you so much for. No, Shauna, my very dear friend, thank you so much for that. You are a freaking rockstar. And here's the deal. I created this book so that you can turn your inner critic into your biggest cheerleader and crush your goals and maximize your happiness so that you can live a kick ass life that you thoroughly enjoy because you deserve.
And speaking of living a kick ass life that you thoroughly enjoy, one of the most powerful tools in order to do that is beefing up your muscle of emotional intelligence, which is what we're working on in this series. If you've been following along, then you know that in our last two episodes, we learned that you have this badass muscle of emotional intelligence, and it's basically the single biggest variable in how happy you are.
And if you haven't been following along and you didn't listen to those two episodes, then shame on you. How dare you? Just kidding. But seriously, please do go back and listen to the last two episodes because this is a really awesome series and each episode builds off the last. But just to do a quick catch up, beefing up this emotional intelligence muscle, which really is the key to having a happy life, even though we rarely talk about it, involves mastering two different skills.
And we learned about that in the last two episodes. The first skill is radical self-awareness, and we master this by understanding the complex nature of how emotions work in general, and then also by practicing and observing our own minds and really getting in tune with what our repetitive thought patterns are, what emotions we're feeling, what situations trigger those emotions, and a whole bunch of stuff like.
So that's the first skill. The second skill, which we're gonna start covering today is learning how to take that information and then process and regulate your emotions so that you can release stress, anger, rage, burnout, sadness, fear, shame. All the difficult, challenging emotions and how you can create space when you feel those emotions so that you can respond in the way that you choose and not be at their mercy and be super reactive and lose your temper and regret your actions or sit in sadness or otherwise feel shitty.
And speaking of feeling shitty, I apologize, I should have said this earlier. I have to throw out a disclaimer that I use profanity in this episode, so it's not appropriate for all audiences. And when you heard that, if you were thinking like, man, I don't have a lot of stress or anger or rage or anxiety or worry or fear or shame or trauma, all those things you mentioned, then please listen to this message.
Those are all part of the human experience. You definitely have some of them or all of them going on at different times in your life, whether you're aware of it or not. And so here's the deal. You're a human being, which means you've experienced difficult circumstances, you've had trauma, you've had challenges, you've had losses.
And with those things come negative and complex emotions like grief, fear, embarrassment, sadness, shame, and so. But sometimes your mind tells you that those emotions aren't actually there and tricks you into moving past them. And then you're like an ostrich with your head in the sand. You don't know what's actually going on.
And in that little hole in the sand, it feels nice cuz you don't have to cry or feel those feelings. But eventually a big old lion comes up and bites you right in the ass. And the truth is, I don't know if ostrich's live near lions or if they really put their heads in the sand for that matter, but I'm sure you get the.
These things can really sneak up and bite you in the ass. So if you don't make a practice of investigating your mind and your emotions and processing your experience, you're putting yourself in a vulnerable position. Because the mind is a pesky dick and it's always trying to take your very real pain and challenging circumstances and difficult emotion.
And amplify that pain into suffering with repetitive thoughts, fears, worry, anger, and so on. And all of those negative thoughts and experiences are very sticky to the untrained mind. The brain will rarely sit and repetitively ruminate on the beautiful sunset you just saw, or that compliment that somebody gave you, or the person who held the door for you.
But you better fucking believe that it is hanging on to every insult thrown your way and every idiot who cuts you off in traffic. And that freaking sucks because it inhibits you from meeting your happiness potential, which is the goal of this podcast. And hands down, the most effective way to shutting those repetitive a-hole thoughts down and stopping them in their tracks.
Is a daily meditation practice. Even if that doesn't sound like your thing, I strongly suggest you give it a try for just five or 10 minutes a day and see what magic unfolds in your life over the next few months. It is incredible. And if you don't know where to start, don't worry. I got you covered. I created a few free meditations.
They're fun, they're easy to do, and the link is in the show notes, so check those. And that's step one in the process, turning the volume down on the repetitive thoughts that we have in our mind through a daily meditation practice. And then step two is taking all of those negative emotions and challenging experiences and learning how to release them and let that shit go like we've been talking about.
And how do we do that? Great question. I'm glad you asked. Those negative emotions and challenging experiences, demand processing. In order to be released, you have to feel them to heal them. There's no way around it, and there's a million ways to do this. There's no one size fits all or right or wrong way on.
It's like physical fitness. You might be into lifting weights or yoga or running, or any combination thereof, but you've gotta do something to stay fit, right? Well, the mind and the emotions are the exact same way. So let's take ownership of your mind and your emotions and get your power back with these exercises. The first one I'm gonna give you is the easiest and fastest one to do when you're feeling a challenging emotion like sadness or anger or anxiety.
And it is a 100% surefire psychology and science backed way to turn the volume down on any negative emotion by up to 50% within a matter of seconds, and you don't have to do a lot of work. This is low hanging happiness fruit. There's no counseling or journaling or anything like that required. It's called name it to tame it.
And all you have to do is properly label and name your emotion and then say it out loud. And when you do this, the brain will automatically turn the volume down on that negative feeling by up to 50%. But here's the challenge with this. Without the radical self-awareness that we talked about in the last two episodes, most of us aren't even aware of the emotions we're feeling.
And then even if we are, we don't have a large enough emotional vocabulary to make this exercise effective. Seriously, pop quiz, can you rapidly name five human emotions? How about 10? And the reason I ask this is because before the brain is willing to turn the volume down in those feelings, it requires that you use the proper and precise word and check this out.
This is so important. When you feel those negative emotions, your kids are screaming at you and you start to feel rage or whatever it is you're having anxiety or worry. Well, this part of the brain called the amygdala. Uses those thoughts and those emotions like a warning system. It's like your brain smoke detector and coming from a fireman, trust me, that's a good thing.
And you wanna be aware when you're in a situation that's dangerous or toxic to your mental health, but just like the smoke detector in your house, sometimes you're just cooking and it goes off and it's so loud and chaotic, and you gotta hit that silence button. Well, if your kid is melting down and you take space and go to the other room or some idiot cuts you off in traffic and he hauls ass and he's gone, there's no more danger to you.
But the amygdala doesn't realize that, so it keeps you in this fight or flight state, which then evolves distress, anger, worry, anxiety, suffering, basically. But when you find the right word for that emotion and you say it out loud, that's the silence button for the smoke detector in your amygdala. Most of us don't have a large emotional vocabulary or the ability to be aware of exactly what we're feeling at all times.
And why is that? Well, it's certainly not your fault. These eight holes never taught it to us growing up. They force like standardized testing and spelling BS and algebra and all this stuff down our throats. It doesn't even really help us, but they never taught us how to process emotions and increase our happiness and reduce stress and navigate conflict and all that important.
But that's what we're doing here. So here's what this looks like. Let's say your relationship is going sideways. Your kids are melting down, or some a-hole just cut you off in traffic and you're starting to have an uncomfortable feeling. What you say is, I feel blank. I feel rejected. I feel anxious. I feel insecure.
I feel embarrassed. I feel rage. And this sounds kind of silly and really simple, but it is so powerful. Practice it and you will see for yourself. I guarantee it. And the most helpful way of learning this process is looking at what they call the emotions wheel. And in my ebook on page 23, You'll see this exercise and that emotions wheel and how it slices all of these feelings up into different categories like sad, angry, scared, peaceful, and then subcategories and deeper subcategories.
And the more precise you are with the word you use to label the feeling, the more effective this exercise is at turning down the volume on the stress and discomfort. And if you visually scan this wheel while you're in the middle of feeling a hot emotion, your brain will direct you to what the right feeling is to say, to turn the volume down and create space, and give you a break from that emotion so that you can have clarity and determine what the best way is to solve the problem you're facing.
Maybe you need to take space from the loved one you're fighting with, or go meditate or vent to a friend. There's lots of different methods, but there's no way to gain the clarity and the insight when the smoke alarm is ringing in your head. And so to close out today, and also to illustrate how powerful this exercise is when you use it in real life, I wanna share with you a very personal and true story when I was right in the middle of creating this ebook that I've been telling you.
I had the opportunity to practice this exercise with my son. He was so pissed off at me. I don't remember exactly why, but I had given him some directions that he did not like and he was being super argumentative and usually I'm so calm in these situations and I'm really patient when I'm redirecting him.
I seriously pride myself on. But I'm also a human. And before I knew what happened, I was pissed off and I snapped at him. And that was like putting fuel on the fire that instantly triggered him. And now all of a sudden I'm fighting with my best buddy and I hate that. And so I took a deep breath and I was like, Hey dude, can we take a time out and try this exercise that I'm literally writing about right now?
And he's nine years old and he's a stubborn, crazy little bastard, but he's also got a super big heart and a huge growth mindset. And so he was like, all right, dad, let's try it. And we sat on the couch together and I showed him the rough draft of the ebook, and we looked at the emotions wheel that I want you to take a peek at two.
And before I even looked at the wheel, this one was easy. I was like, dude, I feel. And right when I said that my anger dissipated a little bit, but I still fell off and I was still feeling some sort of irritated emotion. So I scanned the emotions wheel with my finger on it, which is what I'd also like you to do the next time you're feeling stressed.
And when I saw that word sad, and my finger hit it, It hit me like a ton of bricks, which is crazy because I had no idea. I was feeling sad. But if you listen to the last couple of episodes, you'll see that emotions wear disguises and anger is almost always caused by something underneath the surface. And so anyways, I saw that word sad.
My finger hit it, and my grief just hit me like a ton of brick. Because two weeks prior to this incident, my mom had just passed away, and your brain and emotions are very tricky. It's so much easier to feel and express anger than it is to process sadness and grief. So, like I said, I wasn't even aware that I was sad or grieving until I saw that emotion on the wheel, and then my brain instantly pieced together with total clarity what I was actually feeling.
And so I told my boy, I was like, dude, I am so sorry. I got angry and I snapped at you not because of anything you did, but because I'm actually feeling sad about Grandma and that caused me to be irritable and angry. And then I kept scanning the wheel of emotions and my finger hit the words embarrassed and ashamed.
And my brain was like, bingo, dude. And so I told my son, man, now I feel embarrassed and ashamed that I took my big feelings out on you buddy. And this is why this exercise is so effective because I'm super in tune with my emotions, and yet I was not even aware that I was feeling any of those feelings except for the anger.
And when I looked at that wheel and put my finger on it, Within just a second or two, I was able to name all of those feelings and then tame them just like the title of the exercise says, which is badass. And there was like five different feelings going on that I was not in tune with because like I said, emotions are tricky and they're very rarely singular.
They get all muddled up together and this causes a cluster fuck of unhappiness. And so then my son looked at the wheel and he started pointing to the words, and he said, I was feeling angry in the kitchen when you wouldn't give me what I wanted. And then I was feeling sad when you snapped at me and I was like, Ugh.
More shame and embarrassment. I made him feel sad. That sucks. But I was also so proud of him for the way he was processing and explaining his emotions and doing this exercise like a mature warrior. And then his finger slid over to an area of the emotion wheel on the positive slices. And he goes, now that you just shared that with me, dad, I feel peaceful.
And then he pointed to the word connected. He said, I feel connected. And I was like, oh, this is so good. That's awesome, buddy. That's exactly how I feel now too. And just like that, after two minutes of sitting on the couch and looking at the emotions wheel and correlating what we were feeling and experiencing with the right labels and the correct words.
We both felt so much better. Plus we reframed a negative experience into a positive parenting bonding one. It's just so effective and amazing and it has helped my family out so much. So shout out to Dr. Dan Siegel who created name It to Tame, and I think this is a good stopping point for today. I've got a few more really powerful exercises to help you process and release negative emotions, but I'm gonna have to save 'em for next.
And so to close out, my challenge for you is this, don't let your emotions run amok in your life. Download my free ebook from the show notes. Head to page 23 and start practicing, name it to tame it. It's guaranteed to turn the volume up on the good vibes and turn the volume down on the stress. And it's a great way to teach your loved ones how to process and regulate emotions.
And so here's my takeaway for today. Grow your emotional vocabulary. Name it to tame. Have fun and be happy until we meet again. Thank you so much for listening today. Stay calm and stay strong. Peace. Thanks for listening. This has been Grit, growth, and Gratitude with Joe Specter, your source for mental and emotional fitness.
