In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast

Escaping the Trap of Emotional Affluenza: Strategies for Cultivating Gratitude and Mindfulness

December 29, 2020 Bettina M. Brown Season 2 Episode 56
In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast
Escaping the Trap of Emotional Affluenza: Strategies for Cultivating Gratitude and Mindfulness
Show Notes Transcript

Vaccinating against Emotional Affluenza-- getting rid of the need to have the latest and newest, and taking the time to enjoy the "ordinary moments."  So often, the best memories involve knowing that the extraordinary is already there.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 
In this podcast, I talk about this chapter from Donald Altman’s book Clearing Emotional Clutter, Mindfulness Practices for Letting Go of What’s Blocking Your Fulfillment and Transformation. Mr. Altman is a psychotherapist and former Buddhist monk, who intertwines principles of both in his book to help us see what is getting in our way of our goals. What about if what is in the way is us?       






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 Bettina M Brown: Hello, hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown, and this is the platform I have chosen to talk about living a life that is really in. Truth in alignment with your goals and your aspirations, and leaving behind that shame blame game that unfortunately many of us have either grown up with or become accustomed to.

I like to start off by saying that I am not a counselor, psychiatrist, psychologist, but I am a person who loves to think about what makes one another tick, and I've been very fortunate enough to have a career where I interact with people. And have the opportunity to talk about things like that. So I was really wondering what am I gonna talk about today?

But I was reading a fantastic book, about clearing your emotional clutter because I love to clean up before New year. In fact, in my culture in Germany, you really clean out your home, but more than anything, you wash all your laundry, you don't bring your dirty laundry into the new year. And I was thinking like, well, I'm gonna go wash and I'm already having, you know, load after load to make sure everything is super clean.

Trying to bring the best into 2021 because there's been a lot of stuff in 2020 and. I realized that I really should clean out not just the external, but we need to clean out the internal, right? So we have those internal barriers and external barriers, internal baggage and dirty laundry, and external baggage and dirty laundry.

And so I was reading this book and I really, really love the title of chapter 12. And that is really looking at stopping Lon. So vaccinating yourself against Lon and what does that really mean? Well, affluent is really the, yeah, it has stuff to do with being, you know, wanting to be affluent, but really just the idea that what we tend to think is that the really wealthy just have more.

More, more, more, more. They always have the most up-to-date car. They always have the latest and greatest. You know, they're never gonna wait a year for the newest, phone upgrade. They have everything ahead of time and on time. And just the other day I had another, you know, group of advertisements in the mail about how, you know, I needed a brand new car and I was looking at it and I got one of those fake checks.

You, you know, them, you know, $2,000 if you buy this today. And this is not a real valid check, but it is useful at our dealership for $4,000 or what have not. And I just looked at it and I thought, you know, if every single year. I need a brand new car, then you're not making really good cars. Like if it, if I have to have the latest bells and whistle, like, why didn't you think of it last year, 12 months ago you came out saying, I absolutely needed this and that my car was atrocious.

But you're racing the prices. Like have you looked at prices of cars nowadays? I mean, they just keep getting more expensive. Like they should last significantly longer than my refrigerator if they're gonna be that expensive. That's just my opinion. And the author talks about. There, you know, his own experience with this and how much he was so happy whenever there was a new car and the whole family would run out and they would smell that new car smell.

There's even, you know, a little fragrance now called New Car Smell because there's just something like a dopamine hit when we have something new or something more. There is joy in that, and there's nothing wrong with having joy in something new, but is it unregulated? Are you always needing something new?

Do you buy something for yourself with the intention of having joy or are you really buying it with the intention that your neighbor or your coworker or someone's gonna say, wow, look at them. That's where ZA comes from. And so with going into 2021, really vaccinating ourselves from ZA or the need for it.

There is no need. And the author goes into a story and it's a story and he calls the lady Gwen, of course, to protect her privacy. And she was going through a divorce and. She pretty much lost everything. She lost their fancy home, and then she was sleeping in her rental home, which was near a very, very fancy ski resort.

She was sleeping on the floor because there was no more furniture, but she had to still be known and seen as sleeping in this place. Eventually, everything was repossessed. Her fancy car, her fancy home, her fancy rental home. And for a short time, even the custody of her children, but she got herself back out of that.

So the, the author really talks about how she realized her belief system was in touch with something that she really didn't honor, and a lot of that had to deal with her life being upside down. So she and her husband were living a life that there was no respect. There was no love. But there was definitely an importance on what do other people think of us, and that will only work for a, a short time.

And that short time can be, you know, 10 years or 12 years or 15 years, but it tends to not last a lifetime. You know, there's, there's a point when it's over. You just don't want to fake that anymore. And so she recognized the, the issue in her ex-husband, but you know, we can't fix other people. We can only work and improve ourselves.

And so she really changed her whole life around. And instead of thinking she needed to have everything that's extraordinary, you know, the extraordinary clothes, the extraordinary, this, they extraordinary, anything, anything that you put on, um, including your, your p your social media posts, you know, if you're BOS posting, And not doing anything about real life.

Then it's what do other people think of me? You know, 10,000 followers and only two people they can really call. It's always interesting and sad when that happens. So how can we appreciate and savor ordinary moments? How can we get back in touch with those things that bring us joy and not the larger things such as another car?

There's nothing wrong with a new car. I am harping on it this morning, but I'm just saying, what can we do to really bring some joy and bring clean emotional clutter and clean laundry, both, you know, physically and emotionally, mentally, spiritually, into 2021? And so the author went into four different things, and one of the things he said was, savor those small things that bring you joy.

Small. What if it's having a nice cup of tea and looking outside, or a nice cup of coffee getting to cozy up in your favorite chair? I have a papasan chair in my, loft, and when it's not repossessed by who loves it as well, I love to sit in there and just read and have, you know, a nice tea next to it. I like to look outside the window and just have, just have a moment where I get to pause.

And any of that, any of those small moments when you're making pancakes with your family, enjoy not just the pancakes or think about all the dishes you have to do afterwards, but just the process to have that conversation while you're doing something in the kitchen. It's the small things. Those are the memories you get to keep.

And having a wonderful conversation with what I call my adopted grandmother, who is near 90. She said, you know, all I have now are my memories and I'm so glad. I'm so glad, Bettina, that I got to make many of them. So those small things are very big, not just now, but in the future. The second thing the author talked about is observing ordinary things right next to you that.

Is really kind of, kind of an awesome thing. Remind yourself that the ability to get in your car and drive to work. You don't have to wear these open shoes anymore. You get to wear good clothing. We've upgraded quite a bit in the last a hundred, 200, 300 years. Remind yourself that the small moments of driving your kids to the school or having to go pick up groceries, you know what, you're able to get some groceries, enjoy those times, enjoy the process.

And number three, the author talks about soaking in past success. So a lot of times we look at our past and we get frustrated, well, I could have done this. I should have done this. Well, so and so did this to me. A lot of victimhood. Well, this is, I am this way because so-and-so did this. You know that shame, blame, you know, this is either on yourself or for other people, but there are good things in our past.

There's success in our past. You know, did we graduate from a certain school that we wanted to? Did we graduate at all? And the excitement in that, you know, think about a few things that really bring you. Pride in yourself and your accomplishments that you've done in your past. Don't go on a tangent and you know, think, well, it could have been this way if this person had none of that.

Just think about your own success and appreciate that for a few minutes, just for a few minutes. And also number four, remember a past kindness. When was there a time that someone really helped you? And when was the time you helped someone else? You know, there is, there is this, belief system that we have to do everything by ourselves.

You know, I got myself in this mess. I'll get myself out of it and we will offer help to other people. We will offer advice to other people, but when we do not accept help, we are showing in essence that we have some prejudice about help because the person doing the helping. Gets to feel like they are somehow more worthy, more intelligent, more anything than the person receiving the help.

It's still looked at kind of as a downward arrow, instead of a horizontal error arrow, where today I help you, tomorrow, you help me, and so refusing to accept help. Puts a little bit in there that you still have some somewhere in your system and it's okay to vaccinate that because it is through helping one another that we go up that staircase a lot quicker.

But if you insist on doing it yourself all the time, you are really staying in a emotional, in an emotional za and it doesn't really do much for you. Just like a new car every single year won't do much for you either. Now, heck, if you can afford it, do what you wanna do with it. But I'm just saying, as an example, take into the new year, a clean slate.

And the awesome thing is we don't have to wait for a new year. We can do this every single week. If next week, which is the first full week of 2021, if that one doesn't work out for you, you know what? You get to start all over the next week or leave January the way it is and start in February. That's the really blessing about having a life where you can just start over any day, not just when the calendar gives us permission.

So as a review, the four things are to savor those small things that bring you joy. Number two is observe ordinary things right next to you. Number three is acknowledge your past success, and number four is acknowledge and be grateful for past kindness. There's a lot there. So this author really goes into being mindful of where you are and was, you know, a, a Buddhist monk previously and takes all that into his current practice of being a psychologist.

But there is something about peace and joy that. You know, many of us kind of envy. We would love to have that. And it starts with you and you don't need any stuff to get there. So until next week, let's keep building one another up!