Happier Emotional Management

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

Hi. Today, I want to help you build a happier life. We're in the midst of a series that I'm calling Happier, and the purpose of it is to help us understand how to build happier lives. It's based off of or inspired by the book called "Build the Life You Want" by Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey. It's a great book and really helpful.

They tell us that four things will help us build a happier life more than anything else. Faith. Family, friends, and meaningful work. One of the tools or the tips that they offer along the way is that we have to be, we have to gain the skill of emotional management in order to fully live into those four things.

And so that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to do it through the lens of a letter that Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica.

In 1 Thessalonians 5, he tells the people. To rejoice always, to give thanks in all circumstances, to seek to do good for one another and for all. And in this little short section, Paul sketches out for us some of the same ideas that Arthur Brooks has discovered in his research, that these are the things that can really help you.

And so if you want to be happier, you need to learn to do three things. One, you need to learn to recognize that your emotions aren't you, that you can manage them. Two, you want to build some habits that help you be happier, and that there are some things that work better than others. And finally, what we want to know is that to care for ourselves, the best thing we can do is actually care for others.

So let me give you a few quick tips. First, emotional management. So the other night, I'm preparing for a presentation that I'm giving to a room of 120 people. And in the midst of it, I feel like I'm unprepared and I can feel myself emotionally starting to spiral. And that's because my limbic system is telling me that it's going to be a failure, that I, that I am going to make a fool of myself in front of everyone. And so I had to grab a hold of that. I had to shift that emotion from my limbic system to my prefrontal cortex. So I could make a decision about how I wanted to act. And so what I determined is that I was overtired. I certainly was nervous about it, but what I needed the most was a good night's sleep.

And so I went to bed in hopes that in the morning I would have an idea of how to complete the presentation and be ready for the day. And so here's the funny thing about our emotions is when we're feeling them, it feels as though they completely overtake us. And so the idea of rejoicing always feels really hard because we're in the midst of a situation that doesn't feel like we can rejoice at all.

Or to give thanks in all circumstances, how, how does one do that? Well, one does that in what psychologists and scientists call metacognition. It's essentially thinking about thinking. And so one of the things that we need to do, if we want to give thanks in all circumstances, if we want to always rejoice, then we have to think about our emotions.

And we have to accept that our emotions are there to teach us. So when we feel sad, when we feel angry, when we feel upset, they're a signal telling us some things. But it doesn't mean that they consume us. What we want to do is we want to separate ourselves from them. How do we do that? Well, Paul also says pray continually, and I think this is sort of a form of metacognition.

We can identify our emotions, we can try to understand them, and then we can determine or choose how we want to act. So the scriptures say things like, in your anger do not sin. It doesn't say don't get angry. It says, but make a choice of how you want to live that's in line with virtues and goals, opposed to just doing what you feel.

What science has discovered for us is that writing down, journaling our emotions is one of the tools that really helps us separate ourselves from them. So my encouragement to you is if you're struggling and feeling stuck with some negative emotions, take a moment, write down all the things you're feeling.

Second, analyze those feelings, say, well, what parts of them are helpful and trying to guide me? And then what parts of them are unhelpful and probably me ruminating on them?

So we'll take my example of the presentation I have to give. Well, what's helpful is I'm having some level of anxiety and nervousness because it's sending me the signal that I'm not quite prepared yet. Now the idea that I am not worth anything and that it's going to be a great embarrassment and I'm going to be, make a fool of myself, that's me ruminating. That's too much. So what I do is I say, okay, I'm feeling nervous. Okay, that's healthy. These things, that's unhealthy I'm going to ignore them. But what do I need to do? Well, what I need to do is I need to get a good night's sleep, be fresh, ready in the morning. Perhaps overnight my brain will come up with the idea to tweak the presentation to make it work. Sure enough, I make the decision to go to sleep. I wake up in the morning, I feel better about it, and I have an idea that syncs it all together, and it goes well.

So what we want to do, if we want to be happier, is we want to identify our emotions. Observe them, analyze them, and then make a choice of how we want to act and go forward.

The next habit we want to do is we want to build habits that help us be happy. And what the research shows is things like gratitude, hope, humor, and caring for others do more for our happiness levels than anything else.

They are chief among all the choices we can make. Now, when you think about this, often when we are stuck in a negative loop, we don't make those kinds of choices. Instead, we're like, hey, I'm feeling really bad and sad, and so I'm going to sit on the couch, and I'm going to try to self soothe with some food, and I'm going to watch a sad show, and I'm just going to get stuck. I'm going to ruminate in my sadness.

It turns out, what would be better for us is to make choices, like... Writing down what we're grateful for. So Paul says, to be grateful. To give thanks in all circumstances. Is this because all the circumstances are great? No. It's because it separates us from being clouded fully by a negative emotion.

Because even in the midst of negative circumstances, we still often have things to be grateful for. I can remember that when my mom passed away, that's a super negative circumstance, but I was super grateful also for all the people that loved me and cared for me in the midst of that. And life often has more than one thing, doesn't it, at the same time.

And so we want to pick up these practices. We want to practice gratitude because that'll help us be happier. We want to choose hope, not optimism. Because what hope does is it lets us believe and gives us faith that the future is positive. That there's a future that lies out ahead of us that has resurrection and restoration in it. And humor. We want to allow humor to fill our souls. It's hard to feel sad when we're laughing. And so humor breaks us out of our negativity rhythm.

And finally, we want to care for others. We want to have compassion, he says, because compassion is the combination of empathy and action. And that's a really powerful, because when we are able to both connect with and care for another, it makes us happier and snaps us out of our negative rhythms.

The last thing that Paul says in this passage, and it's something that again is affirmed by Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey in their book, is that we are to care for others. If we want to care for ourself, the best thing we can do is care for others. Now, a couple of caveats on this. It does not mean that we become martyrs or that we live our lives as people pleasers. That's actually codependence and that's not all that healthy. And in that, in those times, we're most often just thinking about ourselves and trying to get self identity from the way we care for others. That's not what this is about.

This is about us finding our life in our relationships and this in our common humanity. And so if we want to care for others, they did this fascinating study where they had one group spend their whole week caring for others doing moral good deeds. They had another group that spent the week just thinking about moral good deeds. And then they had a third group. They got to go out and do whatever they wanted to make themselves happy. So they went out and they got that massage that they were hoping. And they had a good old fashioned me day where that all the things they wanted, they got pampered. Well, you know what the research showed is that the group who did the moral good deeds for others, they got the largest happiness boost.

The second group, the one who just thought about good ideas, got the second highest happiness boost. And the third group, the one who just took care of themselves, they did in fact get a happiness boost, but it was not as high as the other two. Well, the lesson there is, for sure, what you want to do is you want to schedule a massage for yourself and then think about doing good things while you're getting that massage. And maybe that'll get you close to the same boost as doing good for others. Or you could just go do good for others.

Because, see, what happens is when we care for others, when we seek to do good for all, as Paul says, is it connects us to one another and our humanity. And it turns out we were designed to care for others.

And so we feel better in the midst of that. Here's the reality. You and I cannot choose how we feel, but we can choose how we respond to our feelings. Both positive and negative emotions are very important. They are signals to us about our environment, about our own internal life, and so we want to pay attention to them.

But what we don't want to do is get stuck in a negative loop. And if we want to be happier, we want to do three things. We want to think about our feelings and choose how we respond to our feeling. We want to do practice metacognition. We want to rejoice always, as Paul says. We want to choose how we respond.

Secondly, we want to build happiness habits and have a plan. We want to know what helps boost. So we want to figure out how do I give thanks in all circumstances. We want to practice gratitude. We want to laugh with our friends because humor helps us. We want to choose hope that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and his promised restoration of creation is something that we can lean into.

And finally, we want to give our lives to others because that's going to build it out. I hope this was helpful for you and I hope that this week as you practice emotional management, as you add these happiness habits, and as you care for yourself by caring for others, you in fact feel happier. Thanks.

Looking forward to next week. Take care.