Ysiad

todo::
* Day six of journaling about Anger/ Hate/ Aggression
* Social health – Figure out travel schedule for the next week and a half.
* Mental health – sign up for boxing gym next to my house.

habits::
* Meditation – Day 707
* Journaling – Day 49
* Yoga – Day 49
* Cold shower – Day 22

reflections:: 8:15am Woke up just before 7am, long shower + shaved head, yoga and meditation, now journaling. Made sure to postpone checking my emails and text messages so I could stay focused and it worked.

While I was doing yoga I found myself noticing how the reframes that I’m doing around anger are giving me permission to feel more of it, and that an aspect of anger – as well as all these other emotions – are that to truly feel them, you need to allow your identity to include the entity that is feeling hurt. And now as I’m typing, I’m realizing that the views of emotional maturity that my younger self had were incomplete in spite of being well-intentioned.

The younger version of me thought that it was a sign of maturity and therefore desirable to have a small ego, and to not let things bother me. The most efficient way to get there was to be apathetic and tell myself that nothing mattered. What I’m realizing now is that with that view, one is connected with nothing. Instead of seeing and feeling how everything is connected, you get to a more ego-centric view where you think that nothing matters because you have a wall around things and your senses get muted. The view I’ve now adopted is that emotional maturity is having an ego so large that it starts to dissolve, and being able to feel not just your emotions but those of others. And to let things bother you. And to feel a wide range of emotions at any given instant. So I can feel angry that someone is quitting and also happy that they worked with me at all and also sad that the relationship is ending and also excited to see who I recruit next – and can be aware that the other person is feeling a similar mix of emotions and know that they’re all ok. A past version of me would not have been able to feel such a wide range so easily and openly. As I go into the day, I’m smiling thinking about things I can choose to be angry about. It’s making me feel light to have permission to be angry whenever I want. There’s a sense of freedom from knowing I can choose to be angry or sad or happy or however I am curious about feeling at any given moment. 8:30am