Dealing with Tough times and Hidden Emotions

Hey, I’m Paul Krismer. I’m coming to you this week from Bismarck, North Dakota, and in just a few minutes, I’m going to get up on that stage and give a talk about happiness. It’s challenging. I’m not feeling particularly happy, and I will rise to the challenge and do my professional delivery, I hope, in a really good way for this audience. But yesterday, flying into Bismarck, I realized I had this kind of profound sadness.

I had been fighting it, resisting it. I was unaware of the fact that I was resisting it, but a variety of things, but one particular in my life has been really, really challenging. My oldest son, David, who’s I’ve got his permission to talk about him in this video, and he’s the one who does the production of this video, adds the B-roll, and makes it look good, has got a very rare form of cancer.

We learned about it last summer and we were treating it quite well, and it seemed to be really well managed. And now, it’s taken a turn. It’s got a new presentation that’s not responding to treatment. It scares the hell out of me, and I think I was a little bit angry for the last week and a half, two weeks since I’ve got this new news.

We’re pursuing all the right things that we’re supposed to do with medical help. But the truth was, sitting on an airplane yesterday when I had time to think, I realized how profoundly sad I was. Just in the depths of my core, triggered by this horrible circumstance of my precious, most beloved son, in jeopardy. And there’s nothing more compelling that a parent can ever have than the love for their children. And when those children are in trouble, you just want to be able to step in and do something.

That inability to do a whole lot to be able to make it better left me angry, but I was unaware of what was really going on with a lot of sadness. And the reason for talking about this is that the reality of our lives is that there’s going to be hard things. A happiness expert doesn’t get to say I get a perfect life and that all things are going to go well all of the time. The challenge, of course, is how do we learn to be content, peaceful, and even yes, happy in the midst of things that are really, really difficult? And that’s what this week’s video is about.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. Yeah, so I’ve got a son who’s got a really serious illness, very, very serious. He may live a full and long life, and I certainly expect that to be the case, but there’s challenges for him to get there.

That leaves me sad, and I resist, like most Westerners, feeling the negative emotions. I run away from them, and they show up in other ways because the emotions don’t go away even if you’re trying to avoid them. And when they show up, they show up sometimes in ways that you don’t want where you’re a little burst of anger in an inappropriate place because underlying, there’s something else that I’m not addressing.

The lesson about dealing with negative emotions is to be with them. The old Buddhist teaching is about inviting your negative emotions for tea. So when you’re sad, like I am, you need to sit down with your sadness and say, hey, you’re part of me, come in, have a cup of tea, and tell me what’s going on for you. And listen profoundly to your sadness, sit with it, be with it, cry if that’s what sadness wants to say.

And when sadness is fully expressed, at least it’s been heard and listened to and respected. It’s listening and respecting a part of yourself. And maybe once it’s been well heard, then sadness can subside a little, and other emotions can come into its place and not express itself in brutish, outlandish, angry outbursts or other ways of attacking you when you don’t want it.

And when there’s then space, you might get content and happy again. And if sadness needs to speak some more, invite it in for some more tea. That’s the lesson there. And this whole lesson of non-resistance, when we resist our negative emotions, it’s totally of the ego. It’s saying that somehow the world should not, it ought to be better, it should not be this way, it ought to be somehow different, and it isn’t, it is what it is, and so we have to come to terms with reality and not let our egos about what we think should be the case somehow dictate how we feel. It’s absurd, it’s an egomaniac, and yet we all tend to that.

And so when I become aware of my sadness, I recognize that I can’t ask for the world to be any other way than it is. It is what it is. And by being non-resistant to what is, it does not mean passive. My son David and I were busy trying to make appointments with specialists and teams in different parts of the country and maybe in the United States to try to manage his condition with professionals who are totally up to it. So it’s not passive, but it isn’t resisting the reality either, or wishing it was something different than it is because that was just an absurd, delusional thing.

We don’t want to be in delusion, and we don’t want to be in ridiculous, over-the-top anxiety. We want to be in reality, and in reality, we say, “Okay, it comes with all kinds of things.” And this morning, I’m going to go get some breakfast. I’m going to present to this amazing big audience of 900 people in North Dakota who are going to learn about happiness. I’m going to do my very best to give them happiness, and I will be happy in the moment that I do it. I love this work and, by being non-resistant to what is, I can be more real and authentic with what’s happening here, and even with my son. And my efficiency and effectiveness at trying to manage the medical system to get them the care that I want. And all of that is this idea of accepting reality, being non-resistant, being outside of your ego. And when you’re all of those things, in spite of the sadness or the hanging on and the gripping that we might feel at times, we can simultaneously be content at some level, accepting reality. And that’s the lesson for this week. I hope it’s helpful. If you like this kind of video, click the like button, share it with your friends and family. Thanks for watching, we’ll see you next time.