Emotions Archives - Page 17 of 20

January 21, 2017July 16, 2016 by Pete Wiley

Ticket

For me, one of the most interesting times in life is buying a plane ticket. Seems pretty straightforward, but to me that’s an exciting moment—one filled with the promise of adventure.

When buying plane tickets, many people buy the nonrefundable kind because they’re cheaper. When we click that button, we’re making a commitment to the trip and all it entails. We’re taking a leap of faith. We have faith that our seat will be there, that the plane will get us where we’re going, that the 1,001 arrangements we made will pan out. Maybe it’s commitment to having a good time or to achieving a goal.

In all of our lives, we don’t personally handle all the details. In the simplest transactions, we take many things on faith. When we do something as basic as buying milk, we assume that it was properly handled, that it was processed correctly, that the date stamp is right. We don’t check each of these things. We are making a leap of faith, and we are leaping every day.

December 24, 2016June 26, 2016 by Pete Wiley

Alone

How comfortable is your relationship with yourself?

People are, for the most part, social beings; we love to interact. If we spend too much time alone, most of us feel a strong need for the company of others. Aside from the most extreme introverts, all of us rely on our relationships to some degree or another.

Most of us work on those relationships. We buy each other presents, we laugh at each other’s jokes, we are polite, and we give compliments. But how many of us put in the same effort for ourselves?

November 26, 2016May 21, 2016 by Pete Wiley

Anger

Have you ever been so angry that you’re shaking? So angry that rationality goes right out the window? When you get angry, how do you handle it?

Angry people can be rational or irrational. Anger itself doesn’t have consequences, but acting on that anger does, and the consequences of those actions can be positive or negative.

Anger is designed to be a survival mechanism. When bad things happen to us, anger provides us with adrenalin along with a drive to overcome it. But how we define “bad thing” and what we mean by “overcome” is where we can run into trouble. When acting in anger, it would help to ask ourselves, “What do I hope to achieve?”

in Emotions / Mindful 1 comments

November 12, 2016February 26, 2021 by Pete Wiley

Desperate

Have you ever been truly desperate?

We all have had times in our lives when we’re desperate—feeling a longing so strong, it seems we will die if we don’t get what we want.

But desperation can come in many forms and for many reasons.

Someone who is about to die of dehydration is desperate for water. This kind of desperation is black and white. There’s no middle ground. There’s no way of interpreting the desire in any other way. It is desperation in its purest form.

Then there is the other extreme—those who feel they are desperate for material possessions or the latest technology. Although this may feel like desperation (and our brains can actually turn it into desperation), with a little perspective and soul searching, we can discover the true nature of these feelings.

in Emotions / Open Mind 1 comments

October 1, 2016March 26, 2016 by Pete Wiley

Knowing

As I learn more and more, I feel like I know less and less. But to me, that is a positive thing.

Learning new things keeps life fresh, but it takes an open mind and a willingness to let go of our egos. So many of the problems in the world exist because one group of people thinks they know better than another group of people.

It’s OK to not know. In fact, “I don’t know” is a very underused and underappreciated expression.

In saying “I don’t know,” we’re not saying that we don’t have opinions or beliefs, or that we don’t know certain facts. We might be very well educated on an issue. But there’s always more to learn, and in learning, our perspective may change. We have to be open to that.

in Emotions / Open Mind 1 comments