Tag Archives: emotions

Meditation and the half-life of your emotions

I’ve been doing Sam Harris’ Waking Up course on meditation on and off for several weeks but regularly for the last week and a concept that he has continued to return to is identifying your emotions and observing them. He does this by encouraging you to imagine a situation which made you angry, or sad, or happy, and observes where that emotion comes from. Spoiler, it is all created within your head, thus, is under your control.

What I’ve found when I observe the emotion is that it dissipates because, at the end of the day, emotions are produced from your consciousness, which can be entirely in your control. The reason I say can be is because this control comes from practice, I know it isn’t innate because I used to feel as though every initial reaction of mine was out of control. This was until I began meditating and practising observing what goes on in your consciousness. This leads to the understanding that whilst you cannot control the stimulus which enters your consciousness, be it a loud noise, an unpleasant scenario or someone bumping into you when walking, your reaction to that stimulus is entirely within your control. Sam mentions the ‘half-life’ of your emotions, which is simply the amount of time you intensely feel that emotion; that is, the time the sadness consumes you, or how long you stay angry for. He acknowledges that often your gut or immediate reaction may still occur, but it doesn’t have to be something that persists for more than a few moments, and certainly shouldn’t hang around for hours.

I’ve only begun to develop this skill but even so, I have noticed a lot of change already. I am less likely to be spiteful when I’m annoyed, I’m less likely to be angry for any period of time and I generally have greater insight into the emotions I’m feeling and can examining why I may be feeling them; helping me remove the stimulus quicker.

There is another saying which goes something along the lines “You cannot expect to be happy with somebody else if you are not happy alone,” essentially saying that you need to be content in your own skin before you can be truly happy in a relationship. This is also something I’ve really resonated with because I can see the truth in it. If you are ill at ease with yourself, nobody and nothing will be able to plug that hole, fixing that issue. This is another area where meditation can help because it allows you to get used to spending time in your own head, without distraction. It also allows you to realise what is actually going on in there and you can adjust your lifestyle accordingly.

This has been slightly abstract but it is hard for me to convey the benefits meditation can provide. I think the biggest benefits are the control over your feelings and reactions because this is how you interact with the world around you and dictates a lot of the quality of your relationships. Because of this, meditation is definitely something worth investing just 10mins a day into. It is surprisingly difficult at the start, but the exercise is bringing yourself back from distraction, not the time spent undistracted (This will make sense once you’ve started meditating).

Investing in Relationships

Over the past few years there has definitely been a significant increase in the productivity sphere of social media, with the rise of people like Ali Abdaal and Thomas Frank. They are very insightful and have many great tips on strategies to improve your output, but I’ve found this can lead to the pursuit of becoming a machine which churns out study or content for business or social media non stop for 16 hours a day. I love both their work but it can be easy to ignore their advice for achieving balance, which is certainly a trap I’ve fallen into.

In the pursuit of becoming a productivity machine it can be easy to forget to invest in your relationships. My girlfriend told me to have more emotions the other day, “it was like I was a robot” she said. This made me think about the balance in my life. In my mind I was meditating, studying a lot and generally being very productive. I felt like I was on top of everything, but I realised I wasnt devoting enough mental space to my relationships, and this showed in me not showing too much emotion, which certainly isn’t me.

This isn’t a long one, nor a guide at how to be more in touch with your emotions, this is simply a reminder that relationships are arguably the most important thing in life, and producing more content or studying more won’t improve them. It’s important to take some time off, spend uninterrupted time with your friends or significant other, being vulnerable with them, and be willing to divulge as much emotion as you recieve.

Friendships are inevitable with enough time, but they are fast tracked or cemented when you are both vulnerable with each other, when you are willing to listen to their issues but also lay out your own. this is something I’m definitely not putting enough time towards, and am going to focus more on in the future.