Brad Stulberg

Ultimately, what that's training you to do is to be able to see thoughts and feelings as separate entities from yourself, and it's creating that space.

And then the fourth thing to do that is supported both by ancient wisdom and modern science is to simply name what you're going through.

When we name something, researchers call this affect labeling.

Back in the Bible, the quote is, if you give something a name, it loses its power over you.

And basically what you're doing is once you give something a name, once you put language to something, you allow yourself to wrestle with that thing.

And if you're wrestling with it, then it's separate from you.

So a big part of what I try to do as a writer actually is to help people name things that they're experiencing.

Because once you can say, oh, that's heroic individualism, then instead of just being it, it can be something that you're experiencing or something that you're struggling with, but you're separate from it.

And therefore you can see it more clearly and take wiser action as a result.

Yeah, well, the neutral feeling is important because if you're really charged up, that's going to influence the action that you take.

So if you're like in this state of anger or resentment, well,

you have to let yourself calm down first, because if you're angry, you're gonna give your friend an advice that would say, yeah, go punch her in the face or go punch him in the face.

Whereas if you can try to come at it a little bit more mutually, then again, you can be a little bit wiser.

And in the book I write about all these decisions that people end up regretting tend to be like heat of the moment decisions, right?

The one that is the most commonly discussed is like extramarital affairs.

And the reason that we make poor choices in those situations is because in that moment, you're just completely overwhelmed by passion, by feeling.

So whatever advice you're gonna give to your friend, you don't even have, your brain can't even turn on.

And it's about, again, creating that space to then let your brain turn on and make a wiser decision.

And that's where meditation is so effective because you strengthen that muscle.

So a lifelong meditator is going to have a much easier time creating space in the moment than someone that's never done it before.