How Your Emotions Create Your Life

Robert Maldonado  02:07

In psychology, there’s a lot of different models of emotions. Unfortunately, once it gets out into the public, they’re often misinterpreted and simplified to think in terms of good and bad. There’s these good emotions and bad emotions, toxic emotions that you need to run away from. A lot of that is not really good psychology, it’s not a good way of understanding our mind. Our mind is a finely tuned instrument, very complex, but very good at fitting into its environment. Emotions are really the key to help us fit into these environments smoothly.

Debra Maldonado  02:57

As babies, we’re talking about early development, we feel our environment more than we think about our environment. Is that why emotions have that conditioning effect?

Robert Maldonado  03:07

Part of it. Early on, the brain systems for emotions are ready to go day one, whereas the cognitive ones are not there yet. They don’t come online until later because those cognitive structures need language. Language takes a few years for us to acquire. There’s some YouTube videos that we’ll maybe post the links on, where the mother is singing these beautiful arias and the baby feels it.

Debra Maldonado  03:44

They hear the tone of the words even though they don’t understand the words, but the tone of it.

Robert Maldonado  03:50

The music is communicating emotion, they’re picking up exactly what these emotions mean already on day one. Anyway, the whole idea is those early experiences we have from one to about seven, there’s some leeway there. But around that age, right before we really get into school, those early experiences leave a strong emotional impression on us that tells us who we are as people, as individuals, what we can expect from the world. That’s essentially most of our life: who we are, our identity, what we can expect from the world. As I go out into the world, how is it going to treat me? Is it going to be a friendly place or a hostile place? Do I need to be smart? Do I need to be clever? Do I need to lie?

Debra Maldonado  04:49

Do I need to cry and show my emotions? Do I need to hold it back? Be afraid to show how I feel.

Robert Maldonado  04:58

Those patterns are already in place by the time we go.

Debra Maldonado  05:03

Don’t we genetically have similar emotional patterns from the conditioning from our parents’ genetics? There’s a style of being and a level of how we feel. We learn from them too, we look at how they handle emotions, if they outburst all the time, we may learn that’s the way to communicate. If they’re keeled all the time, we learn without words that that’s the way you should be.

Robert Maldonado  05:34

You’re describing temperament. Temperament is genetically predetermined. But the way we express our temperament is shaped by those early experiences, so it’s a combination.

Debra Maldonado  05:54

Every sibling has a different temperament. Parents will say “My first child was so easy, but the second child was a nightmare. They were always messy. If I had that one first, I don’t know if I’d have had a second one,” or vice versa, the second one was so much easier. It’s a combination. Their genetics gave them a certain temperament but also, when you’re the mother, and it’s the first child, you may be a little more nervous, maybe not sure, anxious around the new baby, where the second one, you did it before, you’re more comfortable. All of that those tiny little differences can change a person. A lot of people wonder why their siblings are so different, have different ways of reacting. It’s because of these tiny little micro experiences that we had.

Robert Maldonado  06:44

It’s a combination. That’s why people born into the same family might react very differently to situations emotionally, because they’re bringing their own temperament, combination of genes and epigenetics into the mix. But let’s look at the family, because that’s our first environment, for most of us, the family structure is the environment that we have to navigate emotionally. Who are we attached to? Who does the discipline? Who rewards us with love, affection, attention and who punishes us if we do something wrong or out of step? All those things leave subtle, powerful impressions on us unconsciously. Now, this is the key. We’re not talking emotional intelligence, because emotional intelligence is usually thought of at the cognitive conscious level. These emotional patterns are laid down unconsciously.

Debra Maldonado  07:52

You might not know they’re there. Like that one time I told you I was triggered, and you were like “That’s your anger.” I was like “I don’t have any anger.” Then when I really did some of the work we do in Jungian coaching, we understand there’s stuff here that I haven’t looked at yet. That’s the difference with a lot of coaching. In Jungian coaching, the depth coaching, we’re really going a little deeper into what’s the core that’s driving us versus just what we can see on the surface.

Robert Maldonado  08:24

Secondly, peers. Once we grow up a little bit and they send us to school with a lunchbox. Did you ride the bus?

Debra Maldonado  08:36

I walked to school, it was two blocks away.

Robert Maldonado  08:38

I used to ride my bike too. The peers, the people that influence us the most at that age, starting after six-seven, are our peers, the ones that we connect with as friends, the little groups, the cliques that we hang out with. They have a big influence on our sense of self and what we can expect from the world, who we are going to be out there in the world.

Debra Maldonado  09:08

I was shocked when you told me that everyone, and I used to do this too, focus on the childhood, but never understood that the peers, the people you surround yourself with, are the people you live your life by. Your parents, you’re not going to hang out with them the rest of your life, you’re going to socialize with your peers. From a social perspective, that’s really important. If you’re accepted into a group, if you are not, how your friends treat you, all those things are emotionally conditioning us how to behave. Are we the loved one in the group? Are we quiet? Do we speak up? Are we the easygoing person? We see these teen dramas where the teen is awkward, then their friends bring her out of her shell and create something new. We want to be accepted by our peers. It was initially our parents for survival, but aren’t the peers more about our social survival?

Robert Maldonado  10:06

Absolutely. If you look at a group of kids on the playground, you’ll see everything you see in politics, everything you see in societies, everything you see in the office.

Debra Maldonado  10:18

Like The Lord of the Flies, the movie where the kids all took the archetypal roles.

Robert Maldonado  10:24

There’s alliances formed. Who is the leader? Who is the alpha? Who are your peers? Who do you see yourself equal to? Who do you see above you and below you? All those things are done unconsciously.

Debra Maldonado  10:43

Are you the cheerleader? Are you the football player? Are you the popular one? Are you the nerd?

Robert Maldonado  10:52

All those stay with us at some level, although we might not be aware of them. We forget them. We think “I’m not in that environment anymore. I grew out of it.” But our mind records a lot of those patterns because they’re important to us. It’s teaching us about who we are and how the world works.

Debra Maldonado  11:19

When you go to work, you’re in the playground again. I noticed that when I used to work for a big entertainment company. They had this huge, it was called the lodge. There were TV producers, there were writers, there were the graphic people, the accounting people, the marketing people, the finance people. Everyone sat in their little groups, they all dressed differently. It was the same tables you had in a cafeteria. I said “This feels like junior high”, because the cool people were the producers and the creatives, the finance people were all buttoned up and very conservative in the way they dressed. We go into our workplace and unconsciously bring, maybe if you were the nerd, you bring that “Do people accept me?” You’re looking for acceptance still in the group you’re in socially in the office. Also the hierarchy. What I noticed is that when the nerdy guys became the boss, they had arrogance, a bit like compensation for being teased all the time. They were like “I’m so great.” These tech companies, you see they were probably teased a lot, they’re compensating. A lot of that comes from those times instead of just your parents. Then your parents, of course, on top of that. But there’s so many things that happened to our life that we’re unconsciously carrying with us that helped us shape our experiences.

Robert Maldonado  13:01

Of course, the teachers have a big influence in the school that you go to, the neighborhood that you grew up in, the church, the institutions surrounding your environment, which is what we call culture. It includes language, religious norms, behavioral patterns in the community. Our mind is finely tuned to absorb all that information and to make of it what we need to make of it. What does it mean for me? How is this going to help me survive or not survive? Our mind is doing all that work intuitively.

Debra Maldonado  13:43

And unconsciously. Is it emotionally? What feels safe, what doesn’t.

Robert Maldonado  13:51

Neuroscience is just getting to the point where we can start to see how the brain reacts to certain stimuli, where the individual is not even conscious of it, but because the images are pointing to some of these elements, we can record the person’s reactions unconsciously. If you ask the individual “Did you feel any response?” Not at all, no conscious awareness of what that reaction was. We react differently to familiar faces, people that look like us, people that are different from us, different parts of the neighborhood, different images that show poverty, wealth, all those things our brain has already learned how to respond to unconsciously.

Debra Maldonado  14:47

And projecting. You start a new job, and everyone’s looking at what you look like, they’re projecting all these assumptions on you. Then you can’t be anything else. You’re doing that to everyone else as well. How do we become conscious of these things? First of all, what if we never become conscious of it? What if we think “That’s the way that person is, this is the way I am.” You’re trying to get through the day, maybe doing some stress relief, Brock’s breathing, trying to get through anxiety or even medicating because it’s so stressful. That probably could be, if you don’t look at it, that’s what happens. You cope with it on a conscious level only.

Robert Maldonado  15:30

That early adulthood period, once we get out of school and start to look for a job or go to college and become an adult, or the early adulthood period. You see that these patterns that were laid down very early on start to play out in the way we do relationships. Not only that, but also the kind of work we do. It’s difficult for a lot of people to accept that we’re conditioned by those early experiences in the way we are going to choose our partners and the kind of relationships we’re going to have, whether they’re going to be long term marriages, or divorce, or fights, or dysfunctions, as well as what kind of work we are going to do as far as careers. Are we going to be happy in these situations?

Debra Maldonado  17:36 

Jung talked about the unconscious and the projections. You showed me is a map that our unconscious is speaking to other people all the time. They’re affecting us unconsciously. That’s why we keep getting the same boss that doesn’t appreciate us, the same job that doesn’t give us more money, the team members that maybe don’t work hard enough, or good team members, you’re resonating with them, all that dynamics with partners. For me, you look online at the profile and what they say on their persona. But unconsciously, we’re drawn to people and can’t figure out why. Why do I like this person who does not fit into my life at all? Why am I drawn to them versus this other person who makes a lot of sense? Why don’t I fall in love with the good guy or the good girl? Why am I always bringing in troublesome relationships or friendships even, that are constantly struggling? It’s all because if you’re not examining the unconscious, you’re emotionally connected to them in some way. It’s usually not a choice.

Robert Maldonado  18:52

We think of the assumptions we’re making about what relationships are, how they should play out. All these are unconscious. If someone doesn’t match those assumptions, we’re repelled by them. We don’t feel the attraction for them. But if those assumptions are met by the way this person is, we feel attracted to them, we feel that chemistry, we think because it’s chemistry, it must be real love, or it must be a real, healthy attraction. But it’s not about healthy or unhealthy. It’s that it’s matching a lot of the early emotional patterns that are in the unconscious mind. Therefore, they’re triggering this sense of connectedness and familiarity.

Debra Maldonado  19:42

My father was stoic, pullback, not showing a lot of emotion. He was the power in the family. That’s another thing that we’re emotionally drawn to the characteristics that exert power, we want to borrow that power. When I was dating, if a guy showed his emotion, I saw that as weakness. I aligned power with that distance. I always was attracted to people — before I met you, Rob — that were distant and not emotionally available. I couldn’t figure out why I kept doing that. It’s this unconscious alignment that makes sense to your unconscious that you’d be drawn to someone who had the power. It doesn’t matter what their personality is like, but you’re drawing emotionally to the power, not the logical “I want someone to love me back, I want someone who wants a commitment.” That’s a cognitive idea, and our thoughts only have so much power. This whole thing of your thoughts creating your life, it’s really your emotions create your life.

Robert Maldonado  20:48

In our programs, we teach this a little bit more in detail. But here’s where attachment style comes in, especially in relationships. The attachment styles give two questions for you. One, am I willing to trust others with my heart, with my emotions? If that answer is no, you’re always guarded. You might find great people, but you’re not going to trust them regardless. because that’s what happens to all of us. The other question is, can I trust others? One of them is about you, am I ready to trust others? The other one is, are others trustworthy? You might be ready to experience love. but if the answer is “I can’t trust others,” then again, you’ll be guarded.

Debra Maldonado  21:58

It’s funny, because I don’t think anyone on the planet is 100% trustful. We’ve all been let down. We’ve all been disappointed. Sometimes parents give mixed signals, you learn “I can’t trust what they’re gonna say, there’s a Santa Claus, then all of a sudden there’s not a Santa Claus, they’ve been lying to me the whole time”, little things like that. Sorry to those who still believe. What we want to look at is the spectrum of trust versus “I trust or I don’t trust”, but more like the spectrum to change your relationships in everything. Do I trust my boss? Do I trust my employees? Do I trust my partner? Do I trust the person who does my hair? Do I trust the world in a way? It’s not just turning it on and off but actually how to expand my level of trust, how to look at trust where I’m in my power, where I don’t feel vulnerable? I’m going to just fall and hopefully someone will catch me. That face fall that they do at trainings, it’s really this idea of trust we all deal with.

Robert Maldonado  23:11

The first question is more like “Am I worthy of love? Do I feel worthy of love or others loving me?”

Debra Maldonado  23:20

And acknowledgement, that’s another form of love. Being acknowledged by your boss and getting a promotion. If they don’t, it’s really that he doesn’t love me or she doesn’t love me.

Robert Maldonado  23:31

All those are very subtle emotions, we feel it at different degrees with different individuals, depending on our level of trust and what the circumstances are. But the early adulthood experiences also leave a strong imprint on our learning emotionally. We seem to be shut off at this point from the unconscious. It is an evolutionary thing, at the early stage of our adulthood we should be focused on the external, on developing our persona, like Jung says, on doing something in the world, developing our social skills. It’s not until we enter the midlife — although midlife is a weird term now, we live so much longer than in Jung’s time. Midlife for us might be 50. But around 30-35 we start to question those early experiences.

Debra Maldonado  24:56

You’re outgrowing them in a way, it doesn’t fit anymore.

Robert Maldonado  24:59

Psychologically, what’s happening is the unconscious is opening up to us now.

Debra Maldonado  25:08

It’s a force coming from within us, that feeling of unease. People think it’s wrong, but it’s actually a calling, our soul is calling us to wake up, there’s more to life than just surviving.

Robert Maldonado  25:25

That’s where we start to get serious about what is my career, what am I really here to do? We stop just finding those temporary jobs, or jumping from one career to another, and start to think seriously about what my lifelong career is. That happens from 30 to 40. In those mid years, what happens there is if we take the opportunity to examine our emotional patterns and really do some inner work. This is a big “if”. If we take the opportunities to do that inner work, then we can change those early patterns.

Debra Maldonado  26:16

But if we don’t, we end up living out our destiny that was conditioned in us by everyone else, but us. We agreed to it. We were very externally focused, “this is what the world wants me to be.” The second part of life is “who do I want to be for the world?”

Robert Maldonado  26:37

It’s really a turning point. It’s such a crucial question for us. Unfortunately, the way societies are structured now, they don’t provide individuals with opportunities to really do that internal reflection and introspection, to ask those questions. There should be, at that time, an institution or some school that people can go to, like CreativeMind, experience that inner world, examine “Am I really these patterns?” because the patterns that were laid out early on from childhood and in early adulthood are going to determine the rest of your life. Think about the power of that. If you don’t examine them, you’re going to repeat the pattern. If you’re happy, I guess that’s great, you’re just going to continue to be happy. But who is really satisfied in every possible way?

Debra Maldonado  27:54

We can be satisfied and complacent, “I have a good family, I have a good job.” It doesn’t have to be a big urgent thing, like some crash happens in your life, but it’s that feeling like you’re on Groundhog Day, you’re just going through the motions, you maybe get some excitement, a new crime series that you’re excited about, that’s what you talk about, that’s all you have, maybe get lost in a book. But you’re really not feeling connected to people, maybe you’re losing connection with your kids or your parents, the relationships and friends aren’t as meaningful. It’s more social, “let’s get together”, but you’re not feeling like people really know you. That’s the point where you’re like “Do I know me? Do I know who I am?” It’s a beautiful place to be when we realize that this ordinary life isn’t going to cut it, we want to step into an extraordinary life. An extraordinary life may look the same on the outside to everyone else. But that extraordinary life is the richness within your heart and soul, your sense of who you are, the sense of groundedness, the sense of wonder you have with the world. No one can see that on the surface, it’s a beautiful place. In Buddhism, they say the enlightened man chops wood and carries water exactly as the unenlightened man. It’s not about acquiring things to show that you became enlightened but more that you know yourself and feel deep satisfaction. When you’re getting older, especially when you turn 40 or 50, you’re not having all the regrets looking back and wishing your life could have been different. You’re spending time moving forward, “how can I live the rest of my life in the greatest capacity?” It’s a very big shift, but not many people think like that. I wish everyone would think like that. But a lot of people just get more depressed, feeling their life is slipping away versus “what’s ahead of me.”

Robert Maldonado  30:05

How do we do this? If these emotions are unconscious in us and forming the assumptions about who we are and what’s possible for us in the world, the inner work then becomes so much more important. One of the ways to start to chip away at the barrier between our conscious mind and our unconscious mind is to begin to ask those deeper questions. Is this who I really am? Are these patterns defining me? Am I really making choices or am I being played by my past conditioning?

Debra Maldonado  30:57

When we think about how we were conditioned, we’re moving away from pain to pleasure. The things that we feel are painful or uncomfortable, even emotions that are uncomfortable, we want to get rid of them or numb them away. We think they’re bad but they’re actually driving behavior. When we’re triggered, instead of running away from the emotion or finding a distraction like “I’m gonna go for a run and burn out all this anxiety”, be present with the feeling you’re having, ask the feeling what it’s about versus running from it and labeling it as wrong. Because that’s what you’ve been doing unconsciously your whole life, running from the fear, running from the worry, running from unhappiness and grief. One of the learnings about emotions is that we want to feel all of them, we don’t want to numb life. When we talk about an extraordinary life, you want to feel everything and not be afraid of feeling. I always say, it’s just a sensation in the body eventually. If you think about emotions, the tactile feeling is all there is. We are afraid of that tactile feeling because we add all the story around it.

Robert Maldonado  32:22

We began the podcast with the idea that there’s so many misconceptions in the culture about what emotions are and what they do to us. There’s this idea of good and bad, toxic emotions, that somehow these emotions are going to damage us or hurt us, or cause us to lose our mind. Of course, in extreme cases, those are all possibilities. But for most people, our emotions are like our senses. They’re telling us about the meaning of our experiences.

Debra Maldonado  33:04

I love that the emotions are like the senses, they are very closely tied.

Robert Maldonado  33:09

Very closely tied, they give us the valence of what that emotion is meaning. The meaning is “Is pleasurable, is this good for me? Or should I reconsider and back away and not engage?”

Debra Maldonado  33:31

Anger can be a very powerful emotion. It’s an unexpressed passion that we have to stand up for ourselves. If we didn’t have anger, we’d be a doormat. Many people have anger in their unconscious because society tells you you can’t be angry, don’t be angry. Other people who are kind, compassionate or soft can be not safe. I’m going to be angry and push people away as a defense mechanism. Any emotion can be a defense mechanism or used for that. But we want to be able to feel all the emotions and be free of the conditioning of it.

Robert Maldonado  34:11

Anger, for example, it’s just one example, can signal that there’s been a boundary violation. Somebody has stepped over our personal boundaries or our social boundaries. Is it really harmful to feel anger? It depends on how we react. Here’s the problem. If we only think of anger as bad and I shouldn’t express it, I should be a logical person and reason these things out, then I’m going to repress my anger. Even if it works out that I’m able to repress it and work things out rationally, that’s a difficulty with the emotion because constant repression of emotion then builds up, it’s a cumulative effect.

Debra Maldonado  35:12

The boiling pot with a lid on it, it finally pops.

Robert Maldonado  35:16

It’s not the anger that’s hurting me, it’s not the anger that’s causing difficulty in me. It’s the repression of the anger, that’s very different. The anger is a healthy response to a boundary violation. It’s the repression, the conditioning around what I should do with the anger, that might have a harmful effect on me, by me repressing it and not expressing that anger over a long period of time. We know repression of anger is connected to disease, physical malfunction.

Debra Maldonado  35:59

Isn’t it tied to anxiety too? If you have anxiety a lot, you’re not able to express yourself or you feel stuck. The energy of anger, we give it a label, but it’s that some part of us wants to be expressed, it wants something. It’s like a force, then it comes out as this loud thing that people think is unpleasant. We don’t want to have that. Our behaviors and the way it’s expressed in a human being is sometimes not really what the core of that emotion is. It’s just energy our psyche wants to use. When we’re able to express it, we could feel really passionate about things. Sometimes people sit, then they allow themselves to be angry. All of a sudden I have all this emotion and creativity that came out. It’s not that you should always be angry, but allow yourself to be when you are, it’s okay.

Robert Maldonado  37:05

The key is expression. You can express it verbally, you can express it passionately. You don’t have to resort to violence or aggression but still express that boundary violation, call it out. That’s expression right there. Learning that balance requires us to talk about it and to practice it. It’s not an automatic thing that you shouldn’t be angry, you should be logical and reasonable. That’s a good lesson. But how do you do that?

Debra Maldonado  37:45

Some people say they’re frustrated. I always say frustration is anger lite, like you don’t want to say you are angry. I’m frustrated. That’s tamping down the power of that emotion or that force that’s trying to express itself. We try to make it PC and end up giving it a label that makes it feel more suppressed.

Robert Maldonado  38:12

Then there are even higher ways of dealing with these powerful emotions that not only allow us to express them, but actually allow us to learn from them. One of the things we teach is that if we’re able to observe our emotions, there’s a witness in our mind that we can practice with, we’re able to witness our emotions without being caught up in the emotion, then we can learn the lesson that the emotion brings us. It’s teaching us about the nature of our relationships, our work, and our reality.

Debra Maldonado  38:53

I love Carl Jung’s quote, he says “Something has come alive in me that needs my attention.” That’s what it is. When we’re triggered, that’s what the emotion is. It’s something coming alive in you that’s asking for attention. It’s like a knock at the door. It comes in a whisper first, then it’s like a bulldozer. The transformation of this emotion, you don’t need to make it positive. But the energy changes, when you drop the judgment and examine what it is, the energy shifts in a way, it feels different. The label gives it the sense in a way. There’s this powerful force that’s just a force, then we give it all these labels. It only can be fixed, just like other people. That’s a mean person, that’s this person. When we label things, we end up collapsing it into very limited expression. Then we feel like we need to make it better or positive, that dualistic approach. But imagine being open to this energy and not needing to fix it. There’s a space that opens up that is creative. Our psyche is so creative. Here’s how you can use that energy.

Robert Maldonado  40:08

The same thing with shame, guilt, embarrassment, grief, on and on. All these powerful emotions are telling us about the meaning of our life. If we repress them and don’t learn from them, we impoverish our mind, because we’re only living at the cognitive level, trying to figure things out rationally, missing out on that deep passion that is our life. That’s where art comes from. That’s where love comes, the deeper sense of the meaning of our life. It’s more than emotional intelligence. It’s an emotional deepening and acknowledgement of our deeper nature.

Debra Maldonado  41:00

We call it emotional power integration, one of the tools we teach in our training, EPI. It’s getting the power of that emotion, not pushing it away. It’s like suppression of power when you deny an emotion.

Robert Maldonado  41:17

Going back to those early patterns, what it does, it changes, it liberates us from them by pushing them away or denying them all that stored up energy of conditioning of our past experiences. Now we’re able to use them in a creative way, so that it helps us live our life in a more creative way.

Debra Maldonado  41:40

We’re going to feel the emotion, drop the judgment, become curious about it and what you can learn from it, the witness mind, then it’ll start shifting the pattern. What I notice when I sit with emotions, I see all my patterns, like your life passing before your eyes, how this emotion or me avoiding this emotion has limited my life and my expression, how I didn’t keep a boundary here. Then all of a sudden it frees up, you’re getting unconscious and making it conscious. Now you can be in control if you want to be angry or not, it doesn’t come explosively or in the form of a health issue because you’ve suppressed it so much. So much of our health and anxiety is because we don’t know how to work with our emotions.

Robert Maldonado  42:29

A lot of people we work with tell us, especially around work and success, that working with their emotions liberates them from the conditioned assumptions about wealth and success. If you never do this work, they remain from those early experiences that our parents often told us that rich people were bad, or that successful people were evil or up to no good. All those subtle impressions remain in our psyche until we’re able to release them and transform them. Then we can decide who we want to be and how successful we want to be in our lives.

Debra Maldonado  43:17

Thank you for joining us again on Soul Sessions. Please don’t forget to subscribe to our channel. If you are watching us on YouTube, this little button here in the corner, click it and subscribe to our channel. If you are listening to us on Spotify, iTunes or any of the great podcast services, please do us a favor and subscribe, that helps us a lot getting more subscribers and getting our messages out to more people. Have a wonderful rest of your day, feel all the feelers, enjoy your emotions, we’ll see you next time.

Robert Maldonado  43:49

See you soon.

Debra Maldonado  43:50

Goodbye. 

OUTRO  43:53

Thank you for joining us. Don’t forget to subscribe to CreativeMind Soul Sessions. Join us next week as we explore another deep topic where you can consciously create your life with CreativeMind Soul Sessions. See you next time.