How to embrace your emotions, from one man to another

I realized, after a discussion with one of my colleagues, most men don’t know how to feel their own emotions.

Let’s start fixing that, one Medium post at a time.

It’s important to have a compelling reason to try anything, so let me illuminate what learning to embrace your emotions can do for you, with my top three reasons:

1. You will make better decisions, more consistently.
2. You will make stronger connections with others, and maintain them.
3. You will make a bigger impact in whatever you’re trying to achieve, faster and easier.

If you choose to start this journey, know that is has no end. There is no ‘mastery’ of emotions to be achieved. It is just a long, albeit rewarding slog, until you die.

But hey, isn’t that life?

Take a second to think about it. If you choose to keep reading (I hope you do), I’m going to try and prompt you with some uncomfortable questions, help generate some uncomfortable thoughts, but if you can get through the discomfort, you will finish this post already understanding yourself a little better. When that happens, let me know in the comments so I know to write more content like this, and keep you on this journey.

Let’s begin.

What comes to mind when you see the word vulnerable?

Do you associate it with weakness?

When was the last time you felt vulnerable?

If your answer to this question is “Never”, or at the very least “a long time”, you now know where you need to start.

For most of us, we were taught, either specifically by a father figure, or accidentally through media, that men were strong. That men didn’t cry. And that men certainly didn’t feel fear. As a result, we spent years building walls, digging moats and finding the thickest plate armor we could, convincing ourselves that if we could just add one more line of defense we could be the men we were meant to be, and we’d be able to survive any assault of pesky emotions that could come our way.

Ugh, I know, I used the old ‘suit of armor around your heart’ analogy. But, it’s the most well known because it’s so damn true.

However, this defense building, whilst it usually protects at the start, becomes an issue as we continue to grow and live our lives. What walls once kept us safe, now keep us in. The moat overflows and for many of us, the bridge to escape has rotted away. We’re left with no choice but to wait in our full plate armor, safe behind our walls, slowly starving to death because we’re so cut off from everything.

So if you’re upset at the idea of being called vulnerable I’ve got a uncomfortable piece of knowledge to share…

You are going to die in that armor.

There are no two ways about it.

Choosing to remain in your castle locked off from the world only ends one way. I’d tell you to ask others that chose to wait out the siege, but, they’re dead. That’s what happens when you have no access to supplies, locked in a castle.

If you don’t want that to happen, you can start to change it by taking the armor off.

And I’m not suggesting suddenly stripping it all off and running naked through the castle. That’s how you end up sunburnt with really bad chafe.

No, just take the helmet off to start with. If you’re anything like me, that slowly balding noggin could do with some sun anyway, and the worst thing that can happen is some breeze will cool you down.

So what does it look like to emotionally take a piece of armor off?

Well.. you might have guessed from how I started this, but it means being vulnerable with someone. It means intentionally lowering your guard and inviting someone closer to you.

A little more practically, it means replying with something other than ‘not bad’ when someone asks you how your day is going. And that doesn’t mean suddenly gushing to them about how hard everything is, far from it. I’d actually suggest your best response is ‘not bad, really looking forward to X though’, where X is something you’re going to do later that day or week that is going to bring you genuine joy, and that they don’t know you enjoy (that rules out answering with the weekend, c’mon, don’t be lazy). In that moment, when you tell them what you’re really hoping for from the week, you’re giving them a piece of information they could use to hurt you, and you’ve just made yourself vulnerable.

Start with something small, something innocuous that if you’ve told someone and they do in fact actually block or try to prevent that joyful thing from happening, won’t cause you significant disruption. The idea here is to slowly start to share who you are beneath the armor, in a way that is safe, and allows you to start to trust that you will be ok without the armor.

As you sit here, reading this post, I’d invite you to consider this.

The strongest version of you requires no walls, no moats, and no suits of armor.

The strongest version of you puts a dagger in your enemy’s hands and sits at their feet, pressing your neck into the blade.

The strongest version of you knows that no matter how hard they try, the blade will never cut, because through your vulnerability, you have grown far stronger than any steel.

This is the wonderful thing about emotional strength. Once you have achieved it, you’re no longer in your own fortress, the world itself becomes your castle, you its King, and all of the denizens your people. Your people to help, to lead, and to love.

Is that it?

Ok, so you’re going to try replying with something more meaningful, more vulnerable, to the next person who asks you how your day is going.

If you do this every day for a week, I’m almost certain you will notice a difference in quality of the interactions with those people, and with that simple change, you will have started to create more meaningful connections without even truly realizing it. It’s not that simple to embrace your emotions, but it’s the most practical way to start I can offer you.

In the meantime, stay tuned for my next post on this topic, where we’re going to dive into the art of reflection, which is where we’ll start to realize the potential of harnessing emotions to make better decisions and create a bigger impact.

Most of what I write is nonsense, every now and then I write something good. If you found this post somewhat interesting, I would urge you to follow me and roll the dice, you never know what my next post might be!

If you want to read more on this topic from me, I recommend checking out out this post I did on the every day nature of therapy.

Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed your time!

-Jim