I cannot tell you how many times in my life I have felt like my emotions take over the control of my mind. I know logically that things aren’t a certain way but I have moments where emotions will flood in and take control.
Often these moments will happen without a moments notice. Emotions are powerful things, and if we let them they will play tricks on our own minds.
You’ve likely felt the effects of your brain jumping to a conclusion when you don’t have all of the information. You start filling in the narrative of a story that you don’t fully know the details of with the information that you have. This can be quite damaging to yourself or your relationships.
Dokkōdō Principle #3: yorozu ni eko no kokoro nashi (萬にえこの心なし) English translation: Do not, in any circumstance, depend upon a partial feeling
What I have understood that Musashi is trying to say is not that we should appear cold or distant from our emotions but rather that we should have an attitude toward all things and all persons that is neither dependent nor partial nor egotistic.
I have a realtime example of me having my emotions try to take control and play tricks with my mind.
I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Phoenix, AZ while I am writing this and back home I have a recovering dog. It was a tough decision to continue on my trip plans when I knew he was still recovering from an illness, but I had such a peace about the decision while I was still in Seattle, WA.
Our dog sitter messaged us stating that they had to step out to attend to something that came up and wasn’t able to be at home with the dogs as planned for the first day that we were gone.
My emotions started going all over the place, allowing me to start thinking that I had made a mistake and shouldn’t have left and that the dog sitter wasn’t going to take care of my kids the way that I wanted them to.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we were able to talk on the phone and I was able to get that reassurance that we did pick the right person to watch the pups. There was just information that was being left out of the text messages that allowed me to create the rest of a false narrative.
Have you had moments where you let your mind run wild with partial information and partial thoughts and emotions? I am sure the answer is yes. We all do. In fact, it would appear that 400 years ago they did back then too.
So what do we do and how can we move through the world without depending on these partial feelings?
Modern thinking tells us that it’s good to feel. We depend on our altered states of consciousness to help us process life’s experiences. But our altered states are often incomplete and misleading.
When we understand our ikigai and our true authentic self we will be much less likely to embrace feelings that aren’t authentically us. When we learn who we are we can learn to depend on the ikigai feelings, our ikigai-kan to help guide us.
This comes back around to Principle #1, acceptance of our true authentic selves and Principle #2 encourages us not to chase pleasure. Perhaps when we can accept true selves and not seek pleasure that it becomes easier for us to not create narratives? I can’t say just yet, but what I do know is that after discovering my ikigai, this is a much easier thing for me.
Have you accepted yourself for who you really are? Want to learn how you can discover your ikigai? Visit my website here to learn more about how I can help you:
https://stevebeauchamp.com/ikigai-2/
#ikigai #ikigaikan #authenticself #lifeharmony #flow
Steve Beauchamp 
18 thoughts on “Want your unlock your emotions so they stop playing tricks with your mind?”