Escape the Negativity Trap (4 Steps To Change Your Future)

Did you know that 95% of our thoughts are repetitive, and 80% are negative? Most people trap themselves in a cycle of repetitive thinking and behavior. If most of our thoughts today are the same as yesterday, then so are most of our actions. What if there existed a path to shatter constraints and live a happier life?

Most people's lives don't change much because we get up, start our routine, and then go through the motions. We lose the bigger picture. We miss the little moments that make life worth living. The first sunlight on the grass. The first smile from a child. This mundane cycle affects our relationships, too.

We forget what life can be like.

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."-Buddha

Think about your life for a second. Do you wake up each morning, brush your teeth, feed the kids, go to a job you don't like, watch some Netflix, and go to bed?

Then rinse and repeat. It's a hard cycle to break.

Most of us don't even realize we're spinning in circles.

What is an Emotional Home?

Everyone has a mental and emotional home they go back to. A billion dollars won't help you. If you feel frustrated and angry, your life will too. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. Your habitual emotions determine the quality of your life. That’s your emotional home.

Wherever your emotional home is, you will find a way to get back there. Until you change that, you will always face the same problems.

Have you ever seen people living in disaster-prone areas who refuse to leave when the storm is coming? It’s because that’s their home, and they don’t want to leave what they know.

It’s easy to see when it’s someone else, but it’s harder to recognize when it’s yourself and it’s emotional. We all have an emotional home, though—that place that we always go to, good or bad, in our minds. Some of us grew up in tough environments, but that doesn’t mean we must suffer forever.

I have experienced this in various ways. My parents' divorce shaped my childhood. A single mother raised me. We faced hard times and used food stamps at times.

I didn't know my emotional home was avoidance. I always put a positive spin on a negative situation to avoid feeling pain.

I now recognize it in myself. I had to do a lot of work on myself to learn to see this. But I still tend to "forget" painful experiences and gloss over things that upset me.

Our Patterns, Our Conditioning

Most of us want to change but don’t realize our conditioning is the anchor dragging us down. If you're always negative, too positive, or fearful, that pattern will repeat.

But what if you could wake up and realize that you live in an emotional home you don't want to be in?

You can change it.

"To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." Friedrich Nietzsche.

Most people suffer even when they’re successful. If you’re successful but not fulfilled, that’s the ultimate failure. If you have people who love you, but you’re not feeling joyous and alive, do you know what it is?

You have a broken emotional home. It is not a happy home. It’s a home of worry, frustration, anger, and feeling like everything is unjust.

If your emotional home isn’t good, you will find a way to get back there, no matter what.

Some people’s emotional home is anger. They will always find something to be angry about because that’s what they’re used to. It’s their conditioning. Even when the storm comes and messes up their lives, they return to that same state.

Anger and fear always intertwine to make you feel angry or scared. You don’t know why you’re stuck in the same emotional loops. You don’t understand that your emotions are pre-wired from your conditioning. You want happiness, more friends, and to stop pushing people away, but you’re clueless about how to achieve it.

Maybe you think, "I am not good enough". You don't want to seem weak, or you feel you must fight to protect what you have. You don’t think you have a problem, or it’s too hard to face yourself. But I promise, acknowledging these feelings is the first step toward change.

Changing Your Emotional Home

Start by looking at where you are and where you want to be. Begin by changing your habits and replacing them with better ones. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. You have to make a conscious effort to change your emotional home. Remember, the quality of your life is the quality of your habitual emotions.

How do we start?

The Emotional Pathway Framework is a good place to start. This framework has four steps: FEEL, ACCEPT, MANAGE, and SHARE.

First, name your emotions and be curious about them. Don't rush away.

Acknowledge your feelings as genuine and significant, understanding individual emotional responses.

Then, manage your emotions.

Use healthy coping skills, like journaling, positive self-talk, and exercise. Finally, share your feelings with trusted loved ones.

It will deepen your connections and strengthen your relationships.

This framework will help you escape negative emotional loops. You can then build a healthier, more fulfilling life.

But as the old saying goes, the first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is a problem.

And as one of my mentors likes to say:

"The problem is never the problem; the problem is always me."

Your emotional home affects your life and relationships. It shapes your reactions to tough situations. Once you see this, you can improve it.

It is never easy to examine yourself. It's easy to point out others' flaws while overlooking our own shortcomings.

But remember, when you point a finger at someone, there are three more pointing back at you.

If you’re ready to make that change, check out the Prosperity Path course here. The first part of this course dives deep into the self. It helps you find your strengths and weaknesses. This will help you figure out where your emotional home is and how to change it.

I hope you got value from this. Please forward this letter to someone who might need help or who would enjoy it.

Until next time, stay motivated, stay positive, and keep pushing forward. In the next few letters, I will discuss how to change ourselves and our mindsets. So, watch for them in your email in the coming weeks.

-Jerod

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