#12 The Framework You Need To Respond To Emotions and Challenges Rather Than React
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Today I’d like to share a framework that you can use the next time you’re feeling intense anger, stress, anxiety, or any other sh*tty bad-vibe emotion (courtesy of my friend Eric Wal).
It’s called the “R.I.D.E. It Out” method, and it gives you the ability to control how you respond to a challenging circumstance or feeling rather than being reactive and at the mercy of events or emotions:
Relax: Take a few deep breaths, relaxing your jaw, neck, shoulders and hands on the exhale.
Investigate: Ask yourself; “Can I put a name to this feeling (rage, sadness, frustration, etc)?” “What set this feeling off?” “What’s making it better or worse?”
Determine: What’s the best plan right now? Ie: take space from the loved one I’m fighting with, call a friend to vent, meditate, cry, punch a punching bag, write in a journal, go for a run, etc.
Engage: Now that you’ve done all of those steps and created some space, perspective and a strategy, engage with your plan, mind, and emotions to feel, heal, process, release, and get back to the good vibes.
I share a bit more detail and specific examples of how to utilize this tool on this week’s episode of The Grit, Growth, and Gratitude Podcast and you don’t wanna miss it, so tune in here:
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Episode #12 Transcription
Hello Joe here and over the last several weeks we have learned a lot as we've been beefing up our muscle of emotional intelligence. Which is one of the major keys to being happy, and this is a series which started at episode number six titled How to Ditch Stress Crush Your Goals and Be Happy Af and I definitely suggest that you go back and start there if you haven't been following along.
But if you have been following along, first of all, you're an awesome, loyal listener. Thank you very much. And secondly, you now have a really deep awareness and understanding of how your mind and your emotions work, and also how to turn the volume down on amplified stress and repetitive, unhelpful, negative thoughts.
Plus you have a bunch of different exercises that you can use in the heat of the moment when you're feeling stressed out, angry or otherwise overwhelmed. And today we're gonna tie all of that together by learning a framework that you can use easily anytime that you want to amplify the good vibes or turn the volume down on the stressful ones.
But before I get into it all, I gotta throw out a disclaimer that I always use colorful language. So use your discretion while listening. And just to recap a little bit over the last several weeks, we have. That the negative things that happen in your life and the challenges and pain that you experience are very, very real.
But we've also learned that if untrained, our brain is a pesky dickhead, and he wants to take all of that very real pain and stress and convert it into suffering with amplified negative emotions and increased repetitive negative thoughts about the pain and stress on top of it. This pesky bastard tries his hardest to ignore all of the beautiful things that are going on in our lives.
That's the bad news. The good news is that we have learned a bunch of tools to stop that motherfucker right in his tracks and no longer let him bring us down in a negative town. And so to integrate all of these tools that we've learned over the last few weeks into your everyday life, we're gonna put them into a framework that's easy to remember and that you can use any time you want to flip the script and turn the volume up on the good vibes and the volume down on your stress.
And this method is called Ride it Out, R I D E. You're gonna ride those feelings out. And by the way, I didn't come up with this. Shout out to Eric Wall. He's one of my yoga instructors, and he wrote an amazing book called Waging Inner Peace, and I strongly recommend it. And this is my spin on an exercise that he taught to me, and it really is so powerful. So here's how it works. The next time you have a stimulus, either good or bad, like for example, somebody cuts you off in traffic or your kids are screaming at you. Or on the flip side, you get some good news, like you're getting a raise at work or one of your kiddos just wraps you up in a bear hug when that stimulus happens.
Your brain and your body and your emotions are gonna start automatically doing their jobs and throwing signals at you so that you can interpret what's happening. But then if you don't check them and take over the wheel, they're gonna start doing stuff automatically, and that's when everything gets wacky.
So the minute you realize that you've had a stimulus and you're starting to feel either good or bad, I want you to remember this. Write . It out. And the very first step is R.
Relax.
Take just a few. Nice, slow, deep breaths.
feel the air filling up your lungs,
And on every exhale, relax a different part of your body, starting with your face, and then your neck, your shoulders, your heart and belly. And finally, your hands and your feet. This step is crucial because Warriors don't go into battle tense and stressed out . Warriors go into battle alert, relaxed and composed, and make no mistake, you are a warrior and this is fucking warfare for your happiness and your wellness.
So take that first step and relax. The next step is the letter I throw on that badass Sherlock Holmes hat. Grab your magnifying glass and begin investigating. Start asking questions in your mind. What just happened to cause me to feel these feelings? What emotions am I feeling? And for assistance with this part of it, you can check out the Emotions wheel in my free ebook.
The link is in the show notes and it's badass. You can just scan this wheel. It has all these words on it, and your brain will associate a label to what you're feeling, and that will automatically make you feel better. So anyways, investigate. What am I feeling? What just happened? What's making it better and what's making it worse?
And then the next step is d i. I feel like I'm on Sesame Street, brought to you by the letter D. Determine now you're gonna determine what your plan of action is with the objective of either amplifying and extending the positive emotions and experiences or mitigating the negative emotions and experiences so that you can calm down, get back to feeling happy.
Not do a regrettable action, solve a problem, et cetera. And as far as those plans of actions go, you have a playbook full of them now that I gave you over the last few weeks, like I just mentioned, scanning the emotions wheel so that you can name it to tame it, you can activate the different pressure relief valves that we went over so that you can vent your big stressful emotion.
You can do expressive writing in a journal, or you might just need to take space. Like let's say you're in the middle of a fight with your loved one and you can't solve the problem because you guys are both so heated up and so you know that the best thing to do right now is just to cause no further harm and take a timeout.
That might be your plan of action, or if you got some good news, you might need to call a friend and share it. Just be like, Hey, I'm so stoked, and squeeze that happiness lemon to get a little bit more juice out of it. Maybe your son just gave you a big old bear hug and you want to go tell him like, Hey, when you did that, it made me feel so good.
Can I have another hug? And then you duplicate the experience. There's a lot of different plans that you can execute depending on whatever you're experiencing. And I've offered a bunch of them in that free ebook that I mentioned and in the last few episodes, and so we're writing it out, right? First we relaxed, then we investigated our feelings and our circumstances.
Then we determined our plan of action. Now we're on the letter E and we're gonna engage with our mind and our emotions and implement our plan. You see, the body and the brain want you to engage, right? And that's called being reactive instead of being responsive. Being reactive is emotional, rookie stuff.
Being responsive is mature warrior stuff, and we know by now that you're a mature warrior,
so don't forget to ride it out, relax, investigate, determine, engage.
And that's gonna be all I have for you today. Short, sweet, and simple. But very powerful. Make no doubt about it. You don't need to be at the mercy of your mind, your emotions, and other people's jerky behavior and external circumstances that you can't control.
You can ride that shit out and be a total boss. So use this method and any of the plans that I've shared with you over the last few weeks, and if any of this stuff is helpful for you. I would love to hear about it. Drop me a line on Instagram and let me know, because I am telling you nothing brings me greater joy than connecting and learning that people in my tribe are feeling happier and less stressed out and having less conflict and owning their minds and their emotions.
And so just a recap in episodes number six and seven. We learned exactly how our minds and our emotions work. And then over the last few weeks, we learned a bunch of different exercises that we can utilize to mitigate our challenging emotions and negative circumstances and turn the volume down on the stress and all that noise that the mind creates.
And get back to feeling the good vibes. And then today we put all of that information into a framework called Write it out. And starting next week, we're gonna be getting to the good stuff. We're gonna be talking about what happiness actually is, and then we're gonna spend several weeks discussing how we can foster and amplify the good vibes so that you can meet your happiness potential and enjoy your life as much as humanly possible.
So stay tuned for. And that's a wrap. Before you head out the door entirely, I want to ask you to do something. Hit the link in the show notes and download my free e-book that I mentioned a few times in this episode. It's called Your Guide to Grit, growth and Gratitude. It's got all of these exercises plus some other beneficial content.
It's easy to use and it is guaranteed to maximize your Happys. And turn the volume down on the stress, anger, and anxiety, which you definitely deserve. And to illustrate just how much it's already helping people, which brings me so much joy and humbles me. I wanna read to you some feedback that I've gotten. Mike, a fire captain and paramedic said, as a 20 year firefighter, I have a lot of baggage weighing me down and affecting my ability to live in the moment and enjoy every day.
This book is amazing. I have been applying many of the techniques and practices, and it's making an incredible difference in my life already. Thank you. Oh my gosh, how amazing is that? download it, start crushing life and being happy. It's free. And that's gonna end our show for today. Thank you so much for listening.
Go out there and have fun, meditate, ride your emotions out like the boss that you are. Stay calm and stay strong. Peace.
