If I ever got something beneficial out of meditation, it was that feelings and thoughts come and go and do not have to necessarily be listened to. I didn't realise this until I was in my early 20s, and looking back, there were so many regretful moments as a result of just doing whatever feelings and thoughts dictated I should do in any given moment.

Being able to view your thoughts and feelings in an abstract, manageable way is incredibly important.

Yep meditation is great at helping you laugh at the absurdity of your thoughts and the realization they're totally fleeting along with the emotions they bring. Now, I can just think to myself that emotion will be gone in a few hours/days/etc. and I don't need to obsess about it, just let it be. It's absolutely true too.

The phrase, “This too, shall pass,” can be bittersweet at times, but also comforting. Although some feelings can be so intense that it is difficult to think thoughts that move me back to baseline, the clock keeps ticking and new experiences inevitably flood in. One thing I think about a lot is that we generally can’t “remember” what pain feels like, which helps sometimes.

Whole heartedly agree with this post. I didn't start meditating until my mid-20s and am just grateful to have discovered the practice at all.

Instead of swimming in your thoughts/emotions all day, meditation teaches you how temporary and fleeting they are. This helps you detach from them and not take your own thoughts so personally (if that makes sense). It's like you have a 50,000 foot view above your thoughts as they come and go.

"Mastering your emotions" if you mean, controlling your emotions, is not balanced or healthy. Mastering your emotions means listening to them as a critical feedback to your environment and then rationally controlling your response.

Rational thought is complimentary to emotional thought. Rational thought is slow, reflexive, and highly focused. Emotional thought is affective; it is your mind telling you how something is affecting you.

E.g. Anger tells you some boundary has been violated. It's the rational part that allows you to analyze that feeling and respond appropriately (telling someone to back off or getting a snack because your blood sugars are low)

Anger usually tells me that my expectations are too high, or that my patience is wearing thin, and that I should improve it.

This practice of self-reflection after anger over the decades has turned into a life where I am very rarely angry, and life is incredibly enjoyable.

You're making assumptions about what "mastering your emotions" mean.

Imagine a river. Controlling the river in the way you suggest is like throwing obstacles in the river trying to dam it.

But instead, imagine trying to redirect the river instead. You don't fight the flow, you just move it.

This is such an important realization. And when you have it and then think back in your life to the failed relationships you've had (personal and professional) it's usually very staggering the degree to which your caveman sabotaged you.

Learn this lesson young, and you will save yourself decades of squandered time.

Most people never appreciate the degree to which their emotions sabotage their lives.

Imo there's a strong tendency for people working in tech/business or with high ambition in general to suppress their emotions as they affect the decision making. However, I'd rather make suboptimal decisions if that means a richer life, deeper connections and a stronger sense of wonder. Trying to be as logical, rational as possible makes life dull and mechanical. In the end as Kierkegaard said, "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.".

Even if you approach life logically, and see it as a problem, the question remains: what does the solution look like? Money in the bank, active sex life, dozens of adoring grand children, popularity, achievement, status, a long life?

These ideas enter our rational faculties from below.

They are the caveman's goals, and the rational layer of our being is just a means to that end.

There's a difference between suppression and realizing you have a choice on whether to follow that emotion. Obviously, suppression is bad but so is allowing yourself to get completely wrapped up in it. You can let that emotion just float there in the "background" and continue on.

Kierkegaard's idea of "repetition" actually speaks very directly to the topic of this larger discussion. Many ways to interpret his writings here, and I am no trained philosopher, but he seems to write about how repetition is not truly possible - that encountering a once-new thing for a subsequent time is tainted by recollection - dulling the experience essentially. I think he also suggests that cultivating a certain mindset can re-novelize life but I am thinking not many achieve that.

I debated where to attach a comment and decided that here would be as valid as elsewhere in the nearby tree. But, some of my response is more broad than to your comment...

I think that the ancestor and related messages imply various false dichotomies of logical+rational versus rich+emotional, problem solving versus experiencing, or a more ambiguous "spectrum". Likewise, you somewhat conflate several: novel versus familiar, pure versus tainted, bright or rich versus dull. These are not clear basis vectors of some abstract space but more confusing and muddled aspects of some perceptual space with an unknown number of dimensions shaped by the first person witness.

In the spirit of the broader topic, I think part of aging and becoming a master of your emotions is to recognize the imprecision and false allure of these metaphors. Ignorance is not bliss; it can be bliss or fear. Novelty is not wonder; it can be wonder or horror. And of course, ignorance or novelty can be boring or desensitizing too! Your state and perspective can drastically change the subjective experience, as can any number of external factors omitted from such trite labels.

The notion of not being able to repeat something is also embedded in how I've seen people, without intending any direct reference to the Thomas Wolfe novel, often use the adage "you can never go home again". I would say most people seem to mean that the observer/traveler has changed and cannot experience home the same way, though of course the place/inhabitants and relationships also change. The whole "home" experience is fleeting or even illusory. Conversely, someone can find "home" wherever they go, if they can establish sufficient conditions. I think Wolfe was aware of all of these factors.

Ironically, emotion as a biological system seems to be all about repetition and heuristics for prompting behaviors given the "same" conditions. And it's not just emotion. So much of perception and cognition is based in an illusion of permanence and identity for abstract concepts. Concepts that don't necessarily exist in the actual chaotic environment within which we are living.

Some might say that the true sense of beauty and wonder cones from doing how similar those two opposite ends of the spectrum actually can be

Who might say that and what would we have to do for them to commit to it?

Are you saying it? Because I don't think it's true at all! But I want to wait until someone actually say it before I get into that.

Thanks for the invitation but I'm not looking to argue about it. Peace!

Yes this is one of the great advantages of the "some might say" move, love that shit.

Yes. An easy observation to make when the highly rational and logical person in the room gets angry. Particularly when they're angered by others non-rationality. As if being angry is a rational response or a useful one.

I think we read the same book. Probably "Trading in the Zone" or one of those. I never ended up day trading much, but I sure as hell got that message loud and clear.

> I decided my internal caveman was not my friend, and took steps to sideline his vote in decision-making.

Could you elaborate on what those steps were?

I settled on the triune brain model as a good-enough approximation for my needs in relation to this (whether it's factually accurate is another issue). I would then categorize my thoughts and subsequent actions based on that model (mainly limbic vs. neocortex). It's pretty easy to tell them apart with some high-level introspection. Then, I'd short-circuit any emotional thinking once I spotted myself engaging in it, and injecting rational thought into those times when the limbic system would normally be in control. I'd spent decades of life not doing this, so it took a long time for this to not feel weird, but eventually it became natural.

Once the big reactive emotions (e.g. anger) were dealt with, I turned attention to the more subtle influences. I think there's a middle ground of thoughts that are a more complex or a mix of emotional and rational (think things like national pride, identity, career progression). That's a harder job and a more involved topic. In fact, I can't say I've completely got that done, or even fully mastered the first part. The caveman is always there, of course, and perhaps the best you can hope for is restraining him.

This seems weird and bad. Emotion and "reason" aren't two ends of a spectrum. You likely aren't any more logical or less emotional now than you were before.

I believe you about better control over how you engage with your emotional responses but damn dude. If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that you don't hafta roll your own psychic amputations these days.

> If you were just getting too mad at stuff they got therapy for that

CBT being the most popular kind. In CBT you detect negative emotional reasoning, categorise it, and refute it by coming up with a more rational response.

See the pattern?

Probably the same as changing any behavior: First try to notice when you're doing the thing you don't want to be doing, then try to abort when you find yourself doing it. The time between "start" and "abort" will keep getting shorter, and eventually you'll not do it in the first place.

Sounds like the ACT Matrix