Everything you want is on the other side of not giving a fuck, asking again, and taking another shot. Life gives you endless lottery tickets to try and you only need one win to change your life forever .
Plan your life at 5 levels:
• Decades = Direction
• Years = Goals
• Months = Milestones
• Weeks = Priorities
• Days = Actions
Think broadly long term.
Get specific short term.
Not being able to deal with your emotions is a skill issue and you've never been shown how to actually deal with them and from the shadows they control your life.
When you face something challenging (sadness, guilt, anger) you attempt to run away from it or push it down. Escaping through whatever vice soothes you. Whether you scroll, do drugs, party, gamble or fill your life with busy tasks to avoid facing yourself.
Your vice of choice is directly proportional to the weight/depth of the emotional charge you're experiencing.
Example: Most people who are on hard drugs have had to face extremely traumatising events in one way or another, and the underlying goal of a vice is to provide enough stimulation to distract yourself from sensing the undercurrents of the weight you're carrying.
The biggest misconception with emotions is that they're something that just randomly happen to you because of chemical pathways in your brain. When in reality your emotions are the greatest teachers that help rewire your entire perspective of life, and the idea that they are just random neurological firings is what keeps you stuck in self destructive patterns.
Here's how they look at each stage
Unconscious Incompetence -> You don't even realise you're escaping or suppressing your emotions. You indulge in self-destructive habits that stimulate you enough to forget about the emotion
Example: You feel fear about not having enough money so you go and gamble -> lose money now you feel guilt and shame but that GUILT and SHAME is just a more potent reflection of that fear, and the cycle repeats itself until your life is a direct reflection of that specific fear "I never have enough money" but you can't see that you just repeat cycles of feeling sorry for yourself + gambling instead of actually building something of value.
Conscious incompetence is when you become AWARE of the feelings and thoughts that are arising and you still allow the self destructive patterns to play out. Though when the emotions arise you sit with them, feel overwhelmed and then RUN AWAY from them, but here you are CHOOSING to run away from them.
Conscious competence is when you are aware of the emotions and instead of playing out the self destructive patterns you are learning how to sit with the emotions and see what they're telling you. (This takes genuine practice and intention to sit down as it's very uncomfortable at first).
Though over time, as you hold space for the emotion to rise, you'll see that it leads you back to a part of your identity that gets LIFE from feeling that specific thing.
That memory of your dad telling you, you'll never amount to nothing arises and you realise that YOU have never felt worthy to make a lot of money because you absorbed that idea as a belief.
Then you'll see that the FEAR was never real and it was only a reflection of the belief you absorbed that validated a part of your identity you clung on to.
So now because you see it has not grounding in reality as a REAL thing and that it was only a projection your dad spewed up, you can stop caring about it and let it go.
LETTING GO is the practice of conscious competence, and every belief you hold will arise out of the unconscious at some point, you'll give it space and allow it to run it's course and fade away.
Unconscious competence is when you have practiced letting go so much that EVERY TIME an emotion rises, you hold space, let it run it's course, provide you the necessary perspective upgrade and then it fades away (WITHOUT you even needing to consciously think about it).
This is the state of LETTING FLOW.
That is how you develop the skill of dealing with your emotions.
Understand this: Emotions are TRYING to get your attention to SHOW you something.
When you learn how to actually harness the wisdom your emotions are presenting to you, your life begins to upgrade in quality of experience, the depth and sensitivity of every felt experience is INCREASED and even something as simple as watching a sunset can fill your heart with joy to the point of tears. This translates to every aspect of your life and carries a carefree lightheartedness into everything you choose to do.
This sounds basic but the carry over effects and insane, you no longer feel blocked by an invisible wall, it's easy for you to be yourself, to choose the life you want to live and live in a way that is true to you. You're not bound to unseen strings of guilt and shame your family put onto you about "what you have to do". You're not blocked by the fear of "things not working out".
It's not that you don't experience anger, guilt or shame anymore, but they don't control your life. You can face them with courage and take on the lessons they bring to you about how to navigate your lived experience.
Genuine grounded joy lies on the other side of letting flow. You can taste the entire flavour of the human experience without letting it corrupt your sense of being. You can transform every experience into a positive that helps create a richer experience of life for all.
This is how you unlock childlike joy again.