The Quest for Emotional Clarity in a Complex World

Frank: 0:45

Did you pull the emotion wheel up?

Jake: 0:48

I did.

Frank: 0:50

And what do you think?

Jake: 0:55

A lot to digest here.

Noah: 1:00

In our last conversation just to bring the tuppies in we brought up identifying emotions as a problem or something as a concept as a problem for human beings. Yeah, or often a problem for human beings, something like that.

Frank: 1:20

Yeah, and as emotion experts, we thought we should talk about it. There's the three foremost experts on not knowing if we're emotion, having emotions yeah, amy just cries all the time.

Noah: 1:38

really well, not all the time, but she's a, she's a very she cries. I've never seen her cry. She cries easily. She's very emotional. Yeah, she's just like cries and I'm like is everything okay? Can I do anything for you? She's no, these are happy tears. I'm just being grateful right now.

Frank: 2:03

And I was like, oh okay, yeah, good, that's some. I've never seen her cry. She must not be grateful for me, she's not.

Jake: 2:12

Yeah, Well, I mean how did that make?

Frank: 2:18

you feel?

Noah: 2:19

I didn't have any effect. There's an emotion wheel right in front of you.

Frank: 2:22

Oh, let me look at it. I mean, I was surprised.

Noah: 2:27

Okay, Would you say startled, confused, amazed or excited?

Jake: 2:35

Mm-mm.

Frank: 2:43

No, I wouldn't say those. So are you sure you?

Noah: 2:48

were surprised, I was surprised yeah. Okay, that's as far as the emotion went.

Frank: 2:53

I was surprised by the complexity. Oh okay, Did Jake say something?

Jake: 2:58

Just uh, yeah, Can you hear me?

Frank: 3:02

Just barely. I mean, you get quieter every time you talk.

Jake: 3:06

So I was just rereading the book um Atlas of the heart by Brene Brown, and when I say reading, I mean listening, noah.

Noah: 3:17

For clarifying.

Jake: 3:17

She just got through this part where she was talking about surprise and she says that surprise, when they measure it only lasts like five seconds or something. Yeah, it requires an expectation that wasn't there to be broken, or something like that.

Frank: 3:38

Yeah.

Jake: 3:41

I thought it was interesting.

Frank: 3:42

Yeah, I mean it requires the expected conditions to not be met. Yeah, Essentially, and how long can that last?

Jake: 3:53

Not too long. It's like the distance between when cognition starts to make sense of the emotion you're experiencing and then it becomes something else.

Frank: 4:04

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you're flying along in a plane and you think everything's fine and you look out the window and you see that you're headed directly for the Earth.

Noah: 4:14

Are you in the cockpit?

Frank: 4:15

It doesn't matter.

Jake: 4:19

Yeah, I'd say that'd be surprising.

Frank: 4:21

Yeah, but how long could it last before you're like oh, we're dying now?

Jake: 4:26

Yeah, I mean, I feel like you would have some sense prior to looking out the window depends if they subtly switched from flying to diving true, they've been very subtle yeah, at some point that food cart's gonna come rolling that's true, that is true.

Noah: 4:56

Yeah, all your belongings will slide off the tables and stuff so does surprised always I'm asking jake because he listened to the book does surprised always turn into something else, or can surprised end at surprised? I don't know the answer to that.

Jake: 5:10

Does surprised always turn into something else, or can surprised end at surprised? I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I would think that it always turns into something else.

Frank: 5:22

Nah, I know you weren't asking me.

Jake: 5:29

But it's a nah from me, a nah from him dog.

Noah: 5:33

Well, I think Frank was just surprised and it didn't turn into anything else, that's what I'm saying.

Frank: 5:36

That's my prime example.

Jake: 5:41

But I think that you said that we are the foremost experts on not knowing what we feel, and I think that sometimes people who fall into that sort of category, about any topic, are actually some of the best people to talk to about it. For instance, if you have a person who was not great at gymnastics and they had to teach themselves to be good at gymnastics, they would then be a better teacher because they had to go step by step to get there.

Frank: 6:21

Sure.

Jake: 6:23

I think the same could be true about emotions. If I have no connection but I've gone through the process of connecting myself, then I may actually have more insight than someone who just naturally emotes.

Noah: 6:38

That's probably true If you're doing the work. Yeah.

Frank: 6:43

Yep.

Jake: 7:02

So what's really interesting for me, as someone who has a background in understanding linguistic theory, is that the language that we have truly shapes our experience of the world. So that could be true physically, in terms of like color. There was a study back, I want to say, in the 1950s, that was looking at languages that have different words for colors, and it turned out that the languages that had more words for colors, the speakers, actually experienced the world and had more sensitivity to color shifts, like a difference between chartreuse and turquoise or something like that. If I have the words for it, then I'm sensitive to the shifts between the two, and that is true for anything on a spectrum, including emotions. So the more words that I have for emotions, the more sensitized I am to my own emotional shifts.

Jake: 8:00

When I was in therapy a couple of years ago, my therapist told me that I had alexithymia, which is essentially the state of not having words for my emotions. You know whether that was my caregivers not giving me those words or whatever. I didn't have them. So I was a little bit desensitized to what I was having and the work there was to gather that vocabulary, to start naming my emotions so that I was more like aware of what was going on, and I found that process and practice to be invaluable in my life.

Noah: 8:43

Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate and I was listening to you made it weird the other day and Pete Holmes had on some guy who had died and can you make that make sense. No, um, he had this guy on who had got electrocuted and died for 11 minutes and was brought back and they were talking about all sorts of things not related to emotions, but I got it.

Noah: 9:24

But they did break into this idea of language surrounding it. Started with talking about psychedelics and stuff like that having psychedelic experiences and having language around that or not having language around that, so people can't understand it. Anyway, they were liking it, likening it to teaching your children as they start to feel emotions as they grow up, helping them to have an understanding and language around that, because they don't often know how to explain what they're feeling to their parents.

Jake: 10:07

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, as a parent, that is one of my number one imperatives. It's like, hey, bud, you know, what do you think you're experiencing right now? And he'll usually be like I don't know or I don't want to talk about it, or something. And I'm like, okay, well, is it angry, is it sadness, is it, you know, surprise? And usually by giving him, you know, a multiple choice question or something like that, he'll choose one and it actually progresses the conversation.

Noah: 10:59

But you know, because of what I've struggled with in my life, I really, again, am sensitized to the fact that language is so important and want to give him the words that I didn't grow up with. Do you think there's danger in that? I mean helping define those things for a child. I mean they're going to get defined at some point anyway. I wonder if another person trying to help is better or worse. I mean, this is a real question. I don't have an opinion necessarily.

Frank: 12:00

I mean, I think there could be danger. I think the least. I think Jake doesn't offer much danger in doing this because he's going to be like. This emotion may for some, in some cases, sometimes mean.

Noah: 12:12

So he's just going to be as confused as before.

Frank: 12:15

Well, he he's going to have a new idea introduced that he may be able to choose a meaning for the emotion.

Noah: 12:21

Someday Thatcher is going to be like my daddy says that this could mean either that I'm sad, that I'm angry, that I'm happy.

Frank: 12:30

And for each of those that could mean this was all, because I got a boner, that I'm happy.

Jake: 12:34

And for each of those that could mean this was all because I got a boner and I can't figure out why. Yeah, to answer your question, I do think it could be dangerous when I, like, push my own definition of an emotion on to him. It's like you know, growing up in a household with codependent relationships in front of me and my parents tell me this is called love, and I grow up thinking, oh, love looks like that and I tried to replicate it in my life and that's what love looks like. That can definitely be a dangerous thing and I think we see that play out every day. But if I'm actually doing the work and I'm actually creating a shared vocabulary with shared definitions and shared separations between the emotions, I think it can only lead to greater communication capacity in the future and I think that's a good thing.

Noah: 13:40

Yeah, I think it gets even more confusing because emotion can express. The emotion that expresses is not necessarily the emotion that caused it. So, for instance, fear can be expressed as anger. If something scares you, or if I mean if thatcher did something that could have hurt him, a fear response could turn into anger when expressed to him. Possibly Don't do that, you know what I mean.

Frank: 14:20

Yeah, sure, I read something the other day about anger that said that it is no, it was hate. The hate only can occur when you're trapped. Hmm, like when you feel trapped, otherwise you just don't like something, but if you're stuck with it, that's how you hate Interesting.

Jake: 14:45

That is fascinating, because one of the things that bernie brown draws a distinction between is anger and frustration, and she says that frustration is in a situation where you don't feel like you have a choice or something, yeah, and anger is in a situation where you feel like somebody put you in that position and you could actually change something. It's like this motivator to change.

Noah: 15:12

Interesting. So somebody who knows more than I do about this wheel that we're looking at how is this best?

Frank: 15:23

used. Oh, I'm feeling a thing, I wonder where it is.

Noah: 15:27

Okay, I'm curious because I mean, I guess this is just for identification, but on the angry part of the wheel, frustrated, is one of the options that branches off of that.

Frank: 15:45

Yeah.

Jake: 15:51

Yeah, they're like cousins, they're related feelings, but they don't necessarily, they're not linear. It's not like you have to be angry in order to feel frustrated or something. Um, and the ones toward the middle are I don't know if I want to say more accessible or more primary or something, but when we like survey people, we find that most people say they can identify three emotions happy, sad and angry. And if you look toward the middle there obviously those are three of them and then there are some others as well. Um, but yeah, those, those are just more primary and then you can get more nuanced as you go out.

Noah: 16:31

And what we're looking at, to two different wheels here. What are, frank? What's the difference between these two? One from different random places on the internet Okay, on the internet, okay, well, for the listeners once starts in the middle with happy, surprised, bad, fearful, angry, disgusted and sad. The other one has angry, numb, sad, happy, surprise, fear and love. Similar, but not quite the same. Yeah, is numb a feeling or is it a an absence of a feeling?

Frank: 17:13

Um, I mean, I don't know, I don't know, because usually people like do it as a defense mechanism to bad and I think bad is missing from that one.

Jake: 17:26

So, yeah, I will say. I mean, everything is defined by its opposite and if you're always feeling something, whether you're aware of it or not, the absence of a feeling in an environment that would otherwise provoke one is noticeable and you can almost feel that and that's what I call numbness. It's like I can't even put forth the energy to feel something in this moment. I have completely blocked it. It's almost like that feeling of getting a local anesthetic or something, whether you're at the dentist or getting stitches in something sensitive, and you like push on it and you're like I can almost feel something. Here I kind of talked about how I've struggled to identify and be sensitive to emotional shifts. Um, finding language for those things has really helped me to identify them in my life. Do either of you have similar experiences?

Frank: 18:43

uh, yeah, I mean I've used this wheel I've had it on my wall before but my desk um to do what you're talking about and I think it helped me find words for them. The idea that they exist isn't easy for me, like the path to noticing an emotion is is almost doesn't exist If the same type of thing happens three times in a row or something. Like I get on three different conference calls and I'm like I was just kind of pissing me off today At that point. Two and a half hours in, I'm like, oh there, I seem to be having a filter on the world right now and sometimes that's been an emotion in the past or something like that. I wonder what it is very rarely to never do. I have, like I'm real angry right now or something. I just don't ever notice it like that. There are things that'll get me there, but I don't even usually notice it. I've gotten better at it if it's like extreme levels of anger or something.

Jake: 20:04

but Did that answer your question, sure.

Frank: 20:14

Yeah, I think, as a five, identifying emotions is uh something we strived hard not to do, and uh isn't the most accessible path. What about, as an eight?

Jake: 20:31

That makes a lot of sense, as in Enneagram seven, I think I didn't strive to cut off connection with emotion, just negative emotions, so I didn't fully lose the connection to the emotion. Uh huh, or making jokes, we're doing something that makes me feel better or the other person feel better in the situation. So at first, when I was really starting to dig in, I actually started to notice my emotions by like how I was avoiding them. Yeah, like, oh you're, you're being happy in a situation that doesn't really seem appropriate. Well, what are you feeling?

Frank: 21:34

Yeah, these are definitely totally different things between me and you. I don't even feel and I'm pretty sure I never blocked or tried to resist or anything Emotions. I just thought they were sort of like unimportant sources of information, like the thing that matters right now is this, and yeah, I wouldn't like actively resist. I'm just like I should focus on this. I wouldn't ever try to override, like I'm not saying what I'm doing is better or something in any way, just the difference. But I never try to really override.

Jake: 22:28

It's funny. I can remember conversations I used to have when I was probably between the ages of like 12 and 16. And I had a friend who was very emotional and I was playing like the rational or logical counterbalance to that, and I think I became hyper-rational as a result of that relationship and those conversations. But I would essentially take the position that emotions were worthless pieces of information, that they were always wrong, that you could never trust them and the only thing to do was to look at things objectively, and that was how you made like steps forward. And so it was a very extreme position and I held that for a decade huh, huh.

Frank: 23:29

What's it like to feel emotions if you're an enneagram eight?

Noah: 23:33

different than what you guys are describing. I don't think the eights necessarily have trouble identifying emotion in the same way that a five or seven does. I wouldn't think we definitely shy away from feeling vulnerable, which is why eight expresses anger so easily, because we, we will express something, some other emotion, as anger sometimes, but more than that. I think we take any emotion and turn it into for lack of a better term productivity or something, action. Yeah. So, regardless of what the emotion is, there's less dwelling on it or less sort of thought about it. Yeah, but I don't know that we necessarily have trouble identifying it. That's not something that makes sense to me that I identify with I've.

Frank: 24:48

I feel like most eights that I know are like emotion dissipation machines, um like for me, an emotion is very likely to stick around. Um an eight usually will process and deliver it, like either verbally or by physically doing something or whatever. Just yeah, they feel the need to respond to it and they do.

Noah: 25:16

Yeah, yep, I agree with that, and yeah, it's not. There's not a lot of dwelling on things as an eight really. Yeah, in general, so it's, it's very action oriented.

Frank: 25:35

And I think fives are pretty, are pretty close to that actually, on the like spectrum of how long an emotions half-life might be, I think fives are way closer to eights than like a four um yeah for sure, but that you know, or, uh, some other types that I won't number, that I won't enumerate, but you know some people can't like they will hold an emotion for 30 days or something. That doesn't seem like something I can do.

Noah: 26:18

Yeah.

Frank: 26:21

What did you say, Jake?

Jake: 26:21

Definitely not. I think that you were kind of on to something there with the idea that converting emotion into action definitely has this dissolution property or dynamic to it that I notice first about having an emotion is the distinction between what I'm experiencing and the reality that's playing out in front of me, and I say well, wait a second. What I'm feeling right now, or what I'm reacting to, is not actually the person or the environment that I'm currently in. I am reacting to something else and it depends on the situation what my action is going to be. If I'm in a work situation and my you know, co-worker or whatever is making me feel angry, my decision in that moment is to do nothing, like I'm going to try to sit back, not make a decision in that moment, because I know it's probably going to be the wrong one.

Jake: 27:34

If, however, I'm in a situation where I feel safe, I'm in a relationship with a friend or my girlfriend or whatever it is, and I'm experiencing something, I might say hey, so right now it kind of feels like you are probably doing something with great intentions. You're trying to, you know, fluff up some pillows for me and make me comfortable, but right now, for some reason, it feels like you're shooting arrows at me. I can't figure out what that is. I know it's something inside of me, but would it be okay if we talked about that Um and that process of sort of getting it out in the open, talking about it and diffusing it is definitely the first step toward, you know, making that half-life like not repeat itself.

Frank: 28:25

Yeah, you don't think that this would work at work I think it could for sure.

Jake: 28:33

It just depends on the situation. I mean, I've definitely brought things up to my co-worker or my boss. Usually it's after the fact, though usually it's like, hey, we need to move forward on this and I'll save the conversation for later.

Frank: 28:52

Yeah, yeah, I guess it depends on the intensity for me, um or like how, maybe, how confident I am in the emotions I'm feeling, or something. The other day I was on a call and somebody was like are you okay? You look tired. I'm like you guys are exhausting me. I mean, this is just the fourth time we've done this. It's still broken. It's exhausting, but I don't always do that. But I suppose there was some level of safety and they inquired.

Jake: 29:33

So I was going to say does it have to do with the fact that they asked?

Frank: 29:36

Yeah, I mean, I was expressing the tiredness obviously with my face or something.

Jake: 29:43

Yeah, I had a situation a couple of weeks ago where I was on a group call with our team and after the call, my boss actually called me separately and he said hey, just wanted to check in on you. I know you're you're pretty stressed right now and there's a lot going on. This may be absolutely nothing, but you said a couple of things that I could take one way or the other, and one of the ways I could take it is that you're pretty angry at me for something and I just wanted to check, like is there anything that we need to get out in the open? I'm perfectly happy to do that, and I was like whoa, I respect that so freaking much. Thank you for asking.

Noah: 30:28

Yeah, and was he right?

Jake: 30:34

In that situation? No, I was just making a joke.

Noah: 30:40

Yeah, it's cool that he asked though.

Frank: 30:51

It was a really good joke, sounds like it if Jake was on video just then he probably would have puffed up a little.

Noah: 30:58

He did, I'm sure. Yeah, did you get?

Jake: 31:03

I mostly just turned my volume down it was pretty loud.

Frank: 31:11

It was for us. I'm sure it was for him yeah, that's that's.

Noah: 31:18

that's pretty cool though that he asked because my, my boss, I I suspect he's a seven. I know we're not supposed to do that, but I think he probably has a hard time even identifying his own emotions. I'm sure similar, similar in a lot of ways to your experience, jake, and so for him to. He also has no attention span, so for him to even notice someone on the team having emotion.

Noah: 31:55

Yeah, it's probably probably pretty impossible. So for him to go, hey, something, something wrong, I would be very surprised, and I wouldn't need an emotion wheel to figure that out.

Frank: 32:12

Yeah, what are your favorite emotions to feel on the emotion wheel?

Jake: 32:18

No one.

Noah: 32:20

Me, my favorite one to feel.

Frank: 32:22

Yeah, your favorite top five even.

Noah: 32:26

I mean, I think, think, uh, love and happiness. I think if you don't say those two, you're probably pretty stupid. Those are the best ones to feel for sure really yeah, you don't think so I like love um happiness.

Frank: 32:47

I like love Happiness.

Noah: 32:52

Mm-hmm, when do you feel it, it's very, it coincides with love, I think, oftentimes, which is why it's a nice feeling, I mean happiness is. I think that I relate happiness to love. I think I relate happiness to flow. I think I relate happiness to obviously to contentment. Yeah, happiness to obviously to contentment. Um, yeah, and you?

Frank: 33:32

don't, yeah, you don't agree. Why are you surprised by happiness? Um, I like all the work. I think I like all the words for happiness on the second wheel and, yeah, I mean, I'm fine with it. It's fine, I'm not opposed to happiness. Well, I'm I'm confused by your initial it's just feels like happiness is a future state is something I try to avoid. That's my only resistance to happiness, as well as my favorite, like the absence of it will be gone at this day, at this time or whatever.

Jake: 34:15

Yeah, well, yeah, I think any emotions are present. State we have a very sorry no, go ahead I think, culturally we have a very weird relationship with happiness, um, and I mean, we could maybe even take it back to, uh, you know, the declaration of independence or whatever, and say that the phrase the pursuit of happiness really has this place in all of our consciousness.

Jake: 34:41

In the west, we think that we're pursuing it and that's sort of that future state that you were talking about yeah, yeah, that's what's most associated with me and it does create this idea or concept of the absence of happiness and that if we're not pursuing the thing that brings the happiness um that we are, are not going to get it, whereas there is actually, funny enough, um, a relationship between for me in my mind, like happiness and contentment, um. So I think maybe what we're talking about when we say the pursuit of happiness is we're actually talking about this state of contentment, because happiness is fleeting, it goes in and out. I'm happy right now, but I'm also feeling a lot of other things. I'm feeling connected, I'm feeling aroused in some way, like cognitively, and happiness is associated with that, but it's not the one that we talk about. And happiness is associated with that, but it's not the one that we talk about.

Jake: 35:54

One of the things that Brene Brown brings up is that every emotion falls primarily into either a state or trait. Emotion, a state, is one that is fleeting. I can be angry for a minute and then the next minute I'm not. But then there is the trait, which is like part of your character structure. It's like, oh, he's in generally optimistic person or generally pessimistic, and I think that we can talk about happiness in those different ways as well.

Noah: 36:24

Yeah, I also think that we we get something wrong, which is we assume we understand what or at least to some degree what emotion is happening in somebody else by how they're expressing outwardly facial expressions or actions or whatever. Yeah, and that's incorrect. I mean, the thing that comes to mind for me is going to a concert. I'm very um reserved at a concert. I'm very much enjoying it. I love music. I watch, I watch the different musicians. I play the drums and the guitar a little bit, so I'm very interested in watching how they play and watching how they're responding to the music and, uh, taking the music and taking the atmosphere and if it's, if it's a great atmosphere. You know these things.

Noah: 37:24

I'm not outwardly showing anything, and so people seeing me at a concert might think that guy's miserable which is pretty much the exact opposite, and so I think we start to almost mislabel things based on how we think it's supposed to look on the outside.

Frank: 37:52

Yeah.

Noah: 37:55

And so for me, like that, that example, that feels like happiness to me when I'm just immersed in the music at a concert.

Frank: 38:12

Yeah.

Jake: 38:16

I like it. What are your favorite emotions, Frank?

Frank: 38:22

First, I keep picturing there's a short of Bobby Althoff at Drake's concert. I don't know if you've seen this, but she's standing there in exactly as you described, noah, while everyone around her is having a party. That's what I picture when I think of you at a concert, like just being in a mosh pit and standing still.

Noah: 38:52

Yeah, well, and I think it frustrates me. Sort of concert culture or event culture kind of frustrates me a little bit because it's performative on both sides. Yeah, um, I heard actually I heard jimmy carr talking about this exact thing recently that this idea that it's performative, like a comedian might walk out on stage and say you, you know what's going on Houston, or something like that, and everybody screams you wouldn't do that in any other circumstance. Somebody says how you doing you wouldn't go Right, it's performative on both sides. And and I think there's this, uh, this sort of the people who don't feel the need to perform in that way are somehow unhappy or angry or miserable or something which I don't like. I mean, that label's been put on me before, yeah, and it's unfair. Just because you are willing to perform in that way doesn't mean that I am yeah or bobby, right or bobby that's good of you to come to her defense.

Frank: 40:17

Yeah, I got your back, bobby, she started her podcast after ours and we're on a similar trajectory. She started her podcast after ours and we're on a similar trajectory. We are yeah, yeah, I think so we have Drake next week.

Jake: 40:37

Right, Jake yeah, and then Mark Cuban.

Noah: 40:44

Are we going to do the Drake?

Frank: 40:46

podcast in bed. Just the four of us in bed together. I don't really want to.

Noah: 40:52

Didn't she do the Drake podcast in bed? Yeah, yeah. The fact that I know that means we're not on a similar trajectory.

Frank: 41:02

Why you don't think she knows where you do your podcast on a similar trajectory? Why?

Noah: 41:06

You don't think she knows where you do your podcast. No, I think that the fact that I know who she is and that she did that podcast in bed means that she's a little more successful.

Frank: 41:17

It's all how you see it. I guess it's like emotions. She is in more debt, Maybe not. You're taking on debt like crazy these days.

Noah: 41:26

I know man Crazy, that makes me.

Frank: 41:32

What does it make you?

Noah: 41:33

It makes me.

Frank: 41:36

Fragile.

Noah: 41:37

Hold on Starting at sad, moving out to depressed. Let me do the other wheel. Hold on Sad, depressed.

Frank: 41:53

Powerless.

Noah: 41:57

Empty, I feel empty because of debt.

Frank: 42:03

Right, because they took all your dollars from your account, correct? Hey, jake, are you still on the podcast with us?

Jake: 42:13

Still here.

Frank: 42:14

All right, um, I like surprise. It's my favorite.

Jake: 42:21

You like to be surprised? No Positive.

Frank: 42:29

Oh yeah, I'm yeah, I like it. I like to be surprised. No positive oh yeah, I'm, yeah, I like it. I like to create it also. But yeah, I'm fine with it either way, positive or negative I struggle with the favorite emotion.

Noah: 42:40

I know that I answered. I'm the only one that's answered so far.

Jake: 42:44

Yeah, it's hard, because I had to kind of go in and ask myself, like, how do I decide what my favorite emotion is? And then I was like, okay, well, are there certain emotions that I actually actively seek out or try to evoke within myself? And there are some. You know, if I'm like bored one day or I have some free time or whatever it is, what do I want to feel? Um, if I am going out in public and I am feeling, quote, unquote, social or something like that, I want to feel a certain energy. I want to feel energetic and connected. There are moments where I'm like, hey, I've got three hours. What do I want to do?

Jake: 43:36

I want to meditate, because what I really want to feel is a sense of awe, and that's what meditation often brings me to is this state of almost unitive consciousness and an expansiveness of what it is to be alive. So I love that. I love the feeling of being inspired, that sense of what is possible being displayed either in my own life or in the life of someone that I know, or in the life of some sort of like um, you know character in our cultural consciousness. And I love also the sense of being optimistic, like to be in a situation where I have choices on how to project the future. The feeling of being optimistic is one that I naturally tend toward, but I think it's because I also like to feel it. I like to feel that sense that things are going to be great or better than I expect right now.

Noah: 44:45

Is that that feels like future to me, like not being present, but maybe it's not?

Frank: 44:54

Um.

Noah: 44:55

I mean he was.

Frank: 44:56

He was doing a future exercise to try to capture which emotions are his favorite to feel.

Noah: 45:04

Oh, okay.

Frank: 45:06

But I suppose in the moment he's doing it the awe feels present. We could ask him, but we could just talk about it also.

Noah: 45:19

He's on the call, just let me know. Does that make you feel like you're not present?

Jake: 45:31

Can you refine that statement or that question?

Frank: 45:34

Well, it's the same one. We just had a sub-conversation about.

Jake: 45:39

Well, are you talking about optimistic?

Noah: 45:42

Well, the exercise itself sort of feels like it's future, looking in a way. What was that sound? Did you hear it?

Frank: 45:55

Yes, I don't even know what it came from. I don't either. Oh really, I don't know what it is either.

Noah: 46:04

Did you hear that?

Frank: 46:05

sound Jake.

Jake: 46:06

I heard it.

Frank: 46:07

You did.

Jake: 46:08

Is it aliens?

Frank: 46:09

Yes, anyways, that's exactly the kind of surprise I like to feel.

Noah: 46:17

Yeah, anyway, I'm just saying the exercise itself feels sort of future looking in some way, and emotion is always present. Sometimes it's caused by looking into the future or the past, but the emotion itself is present, and so I'm just I don't know. I don't know what my question is.

Jake: 46:38

I'm super confused by your question. It's like if I asked you what your favorite books are, your favorite movies, you would ask yourself a series of questions like well, which ones you know come to mind, and what do I feel whenever I'm watching them? Uh, you are projecting yourself into another place. So if I ask myself what my?

Jake: 46:58

favorite emotions to feel are and I say, let me ask myself which ones I actually purposely go after at different points in my life and most often I do these things relatively often and I think it's to pursue these specific emotions so they're probably my favorite.

Frank: 47:17

This is conversation is amazing to listen to what's your favorite part about it? It just that his rebuttal there was really good, you know well, it was helpful yeah, I know, yeah, it was helpful, it's just I think I just misunderstood what he was saying when he first explained it, but I guess I get it I want to hear jake actually do the argument to you where you're like no, my my favorite movie is Finding Nemo, and he's like, no, you're not watching Finding Nemo right now. It can't be your favorites.

Jake: 47:53

Movies are always present.

Noah: 48:00

Yeah, I always choose a movie from the future. It's my favorite. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm pretty sure that's my favorite one.

Jake: 48:18

Anyway, you know what I think would be good?

Frank: 48:25

Now that we've got the sort of umbrella conversation about emotions.

Jake: 48:27

Hang on though on, hang on, hang on, though I'm not gonna hang on.

Frank: 48:29

You have to. It's really good. What noah just said is a major problem humanity faces. Okay, we do do that. The my favorite movie is in the future. That's a great point.

Jake: 48:43

I don't know what it is yet, but it is in the future. That's a great point.

Frank: 48:46

I don't know what it is yet, but it's in the future. It keeps us out of now. I mean, I'm the star of my favorite movie 100%. Alright, I'm sorry, I stopped your whole train of thought.

Jake: 48:58

Please get started back up it's sort of the whole idea of happiness that we were talking about. It's like the happiness that is, um, inextricably linked to some ideal future state is a different type of happiness than I experience now, like that's the belief inside of me. Yeah, whenever I say that, and so I put all of my energy and I give up the potential to be happy and content in this moment fully to pursue that ideal future state. It's the movie I haven't seen yet.

Frank: 49:32

Yeah, yeah. And while you're focused on the idea that it might exist or how it might particularly exist, you are missing the movie you were in 100%. So I guess Noah was actually right.

Jake: 49:53

That's a great point. I wasn't even thinking about the feeling that I was feeling while I was doing the exercise to figure out which ones I want to feel.

Frank: 50:02

Right.

Noah: 50:04

Could you say Noah was right?

Frank: 50:12

I think his audio cut out.

Noah: 50:16

No, I think he accidentally muted himself.

Jake: 50:17

So what I think we should do is we should go into other emotions in the next few episodes, oh yeah, and talk about, for instance, how anger shows up in our lives, or happiness, or surprise Some of those. That'd be fun.

Noah: 50:38

Which one should we do first?

Jake: 50:44

How about fear?

Frank: 50:50

Fear. Yeah, how about fear fear?

Noah: 50:52

yeah, okay, next week next week on the unbecoming platypus podcast. We will dive deep into fear happy cinco de mayo everyone yeah, happy cinco de mayo.