Hey, everybody, it's Eric from the one you feed with this week's mini episode, although that would imply one comes out every week, of which I am not willing to make a commitment to. Hope you're having a good holiday season. And what I wanted to talk about this week is I had a previous episode about setbacks and disappointment, and I'm going to talk about another one because I think it brings up an awful lot of the themes that show up in the show a lot and really brought
him into focus for me. So the other day I had one of those experiences where I didn't get something that I thought that I really wanted. Um. It was a big, big disappointment, and it was one of those things where there's an element of rejection in it. So UM, what I was amazed about was how quickly certain things we talked about showed up. Um. Immediately the stories in my head started up with is like, well I'm not good enough, or I'll never get this, or um, what
a loser. And some of those stories they're they're embedded so deeply that it takes real effort even to question their validity. They seem so incredibly true at the time then I went into a couple of things we talked about on the show, like the mental or spiritual bypass, where it's like, oh, it's for the best, or I really didn't want that, or it is what it is, and and just sort of trying to jump right from I don't feel good to acceptance because I don't like
not feeling good. It's such a lousy feeling. And then comes the oh, I shouldn't feel like this. I should know better than this. You know, haven't we already learned this lesson before, etcetera, etcetera. So there I was right in the middle of all those things that we talked about all the time, and the reality was the only thing I could do. The best thing to do is to simply feel shitty for a while, And so that's
what I did. The amazing thing about allowing yourself to feel bad, or I should say allowing myself to feel bad, is that it usually passes relatively quickly. Quickly, I guess is a relative term, but it passes so And once I allow myself to feel the feelings, then I think it's okay to start to think about, you know, what's really happening. And I think one of the things that's always important for me is to realize that I have this idea of these things that are going to make
me happy, and I am so frequently wrong. I get something that I wanted and I'm not any happier, or something happens that I thought was going to be bad and it turns out to be fine or even better. So reminding myself that I don't know what's gonna make me happy. A listener recently asked me, somebody who's going through a hard time, you know, how long do you feel your emotions and when is it time to stop
wallowing in them? And that is a question that I am in no way qualified to answer, nor is probably anyone else. Um. But I think the path forward has something to do with the difference between emotion and thoughts or those stories. So I'll do a show in the future about the second arrow. But the basic concept is that we get shot with one arrow. That's the original pain, so the disappointment or the rejection, and then the second arrow is everything that we put on top of that.
I say on the show a lot, it's this layering on of additional layers of suffering. There's the I'm not good enough, or I'll never get that, or this always happens to me, and then the oh, I shouldn't feel that way, which you could almost call a third arrow in that case. So I think that back to that idea of how long do you feel your emotions and when is it time to stop wallowing in them is
to make a distinction between what's happening. Am I feeling a legitimate emotion here that's that's relevant to what happened, or am I feeling emotions that I'm feeding by negative thinking or the stories that we talked about. And I think making that distinction is part of the way to know whether to be alien something or whether to try and move on from it. So thanks everybody, I hope you have a great week. Remember to check out audible trial dot com, slash one you feed for your free
audible book. It's a great way to support the show. And we'll talk again soon. Thanks