okay so I had this weird epiphany while talking to a dude today about like, recognizing emotions and validating them but also not letting them control you?
which is: Marie Kondo them.
I’m not saying to get rid of emotions that don’t Spark Joy, that’s not what I mean. but I’m thinking about how in the KonMari method, when you’re getting rid of stuff (say, a pair of jeans you only wore twice), you’re supposed to thank them for what it brought you (for example, the joy you got from the two times you did wear the jeans). sometimes what it brought you can be something like “I learned that I do not like this style of sweater, thank you for teaching me this lesson, Sweater” or “I felt happy when I initially got this birthday card, but now I can get rid of it because it’s served its purpose.”
so like, emotions! emotions are important in terms of giving us data (“I feel afraid because there is a bear in front of me, I should leave immediately and avoid bears in future to stop feeling afraid”), but wallowing in the emotion is not productive.
what does the emotion do? like, what is it trying to alert you to? (“I feel unusually upset because my boyfriend went to bed early today. I probably feel like this because I want to talk about something and I am disappointed. I should talk about it with other people so I’m not as dependent on talking to one person.”) (or even, “I learned I do not like clubs. thank you for teaching me this lesson, boredom and irritation.”)
and then, once it has served its purpose, toss it in the trash let go of it because you don’t need it anymore.
it’s not that feeling anger/disappointment/sadness/jealousy/fear/etc. is bad and you should never feel like that. those emotions have a purpose! it’s important to listen to them! but then, once they have done their jobs, you can dunk them in the Big Recycling Bin Of Abstract Concepts.
I realize this is a lot easier sounding than it actually is but tbh I prefer this framing than like Mindful Awareness or whatever the parlance is because meditation never made sense to me until I thought about it like this
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