#12 Emotions as Forces

In this episode, Arnold Beekes asks what seems like an easy question: what do you want? He remembers being asked it by a coach 25 years ago, after he had lost his job, was going through a divorce and had lost his father. He spent the session listing what he didn’t want, no boss, no large corporation, and the coach asked what he did want. He had no idea, and nobody had ever asked him before, not his parents, teachers or bosses, who mostly want you to do or be something. That started his journey to understand who he is. Arnold explains why focusing on what you don’t want backfires: where your attention goes is what you attract, like being told not to think of a pink elephant. He gives Anita Moorjani, who grew up being told constantly not to get cancer and then did, and Brian Johnson’s Don’t Die movement as examples of focusing on what you want to avoid. He suggests focusing on what you do want, accepting that it changes as you grow, so choose for the next few years rather than for life. He also says money is not the answer, noting that the millionaires he played golf with were mostly unhappy and unhealthy. His practical exercise is to split life into areas and write down what you want in each, one topic per week, then repeat it every year or two. His inner life areas are mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health, creativity, learning, work, family, home, money, service and nature, and his outer life areas are the senses, nutrition, sleep, exercise, recovery, the people around you and your environment. Right now what he wants most is silence. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story about research from a Nigerian university on water in diesel emulsion, which across 35 peer-reviewed studies cut nitrogen oxides by 67 percent and particulate matter by 68 percent, stays stable for up to 60 days and needs no engine modification.

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what do I value? He suggests making a list of three to five things that feel right to your heart brain, anything from your health to time with family to time for learning and growing. The reason it matters is that we are bombarded with choices every day, from what to eat and which supplements to use to what media to consume and who to engage with, and knowing your values works like a thermometer that makes those choices easier. The quote is “Sacrificing your enthusiasm for skill and money will sell yourself short.” Arnold says this applies to startups, medium and large corporations, and even charities and NGOs. When you start something you have an initial why and drive, then an article tells you that you need to scale, get bigger and win more clients. He says you can, if you love it, but if you don’t, don’t. His example is a cook with a small neighbourhood restaurant of five to ten tables, where the food is good, the community comes to talk, and the rent and salaries are paid. If that cook opens more restaurants, they will likely become more of a business person than a cook, miss the conversations with customers and spend their time hiring, firing and finding locations. If that is what you love, go ahead, but if you love cooking and your community, scaling is not a must, so don’t sacrifice your enthusiasm.

In this episode, Arnold Beekes takes up responsibility, which links back to the starting point he shared a few episodes ago: you are good enough, and it’s not your fault but it is your responsibility. He lays out four ways to deal with it. First, you can accept responsibility for your well-being or refuse it, and refusing means “I’m a victim, it’s just the way I am.” Second, if you refuse, you become a pinball of other people and circumstances, your problems remain, and you feed a need for significance and attention. Fear often stops people from accepting responsibility, and they end up seeking relief rather than a cure, through drinking, partying, drugs, sex or porn. Third, you sometimes have to take responsibility for things that are not under your control, like a child kicking a ball through a neighbour’s window, where you are still legally responsible, which means balancing your own responsibility with letting go so you don’t feel powerless. Fourth, you take responsibility for what is under your control, which in the Stoic view is very little, but includes your thoughts, feelings and emotions. How you respond is the heart of your well-being, and if you focus on the cure you look at the cause and ask what you can do about it. Arnold’s own daily practice is to ask himself what went well, not what went wrong. The episode closes with a story of everyday beauty from Leicestershire, where 87-year-old Phyllis Day, who has Alzheimer’s, was asleep when a fire broke out at 11:30 pm. Her daughter Suzanne saw two half-dressed men ramming the front door on her doorbell camera and thought it was a break-in, but the neighbours had smelled smoke and run straight out. One of them was driven back twice by the smoke before reaching the bedroom, and they walked Phyllis out, one arm each. She was treated for smoke inhalation and made a full recovery.

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what are you most excited about lately? It can be small, moderate or big, as long as it excites you. He admits it isn’t an easy question, because we’re used to negatively framed ones like what frustrates you or what you hate. He invites you to write your answer down, since it may surprise you, and to keep asking yourself regularly, because it says a lot about you. The quote is from Osho and ties to responsibility, which Arnold will discuss in episode 34. Osho says that if one is miserable, one is responsible, but the miserable person never expects the responsibility and says someone else is making them miserable. Arnold calls letting go of that old habit the great courage to divorce misery.

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes starts with a simple question: if you go out to a restaurant, where do you go and what do you eat? He won’t say what the answer means, but he believes it says something about you and how you deal with certainty and uncertainty, so it’s worth thinking about. The quote for this episode is “People who have nothing interesting to share often resort to complaining and criticizing.” Arnold points to social media, where most people criticize what others do, saying they would have done it differently or complaining about the weather, the food, the government or big companies. These people are responsive, he says, they react to others but don’t create anything or take any initiative to make the world better for everyone. His hope is that more people ask themselves: what am I doing, what can I contribute, how can I help? Every person has a role to play and can help make a better world for all.