How To Move Out Of Your Emotional Home And Be More Content With Your Life
Dr Livingood
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I wanted to write something a little different, and tell you how I became more content with my life by moving out of my emotional home. The decisions you make can not only impact your emotional home but your overall health, too.
Most people’s thoughts today are the same things that they thought yesterday. Our minds and emotions live in a very familiar place. We live in a very static and comfortable emotional state. It’s our mental and emotional home. It’s what we consistently come back to. Your life becomes what you think about and feel the most.
Personal Background Story
I grew up in a small town in Iowa. I would go and visit my grandfather who lived on the Mississippi River about an hour away, and we’d have to run errands sometimes. As we’d run errands, we’d drive down the Mississippi River and go through these small towns. At the bottom of a hill, there was this nice town on a floodplain. The snow would melt in the springtime from up north and it would come rushing down the hill.
I remember at least three times growing up when that town was almost completely underwater. Maybe you don’t live in a place like this, but people still live there. The town’s completely underwater, yet people still live there. Two years later I would see a new building go up or someone building a new business or renovating an office in that area. I just want to stop and ask, do you know what happens here? Every few years you’re on borrowed time.
In North Carolina, someone’s house was out on the coast and the tides came so high that it wiped out the foundation of the house and it fell into the ocean. Why would you live there? Why don’t you move? The whole house was wiped out. And they’ll probably just rebuild. And they had neighbors, lots of them.
It’s like seeing someone smoking nowadays, and no offense if you do smoke, but sometimes I want to walk up to them and ask, how did you miss the commercials? Why are you doing that? Don’t you know the consequences of it? They probably do. They’re doing it because they’re conditioned. They say it’s my home. That’s my home on the coast of North Carolina. That’s my home along the Mississippi River.
It’s really easy for us to judge this and look at it negatively when it’s someone else. It’s a physical thing, where they live or they’re smoking, but it’s much harder to see it in ourselves when it’s our own emotional home. A lot of people have a home of suffering. People will suffer even when they’re successful. If you are successful at something and you’re not fulfilled, that’s still a failure.
That failure is there because you’re still in the same emotional home. Most of us have an old home that we’re used to, emotionally. How many of you know someone who, no matter what happens in their life, it’s always something negative?
They could have a winning lottery ticket and they would complain. They’d get a new car and complain about it. They finally get that thing they’ve been asking for and they’ll twist it to be negative. I remember my grandfather used to be this way. It didn’t matter what was going on. We had a big Thanksgiving meal, nothing bad was happening that day. Just angry about something. Why?
How many of you know a worrywart? That person who is always worried. Did you see what’s going on in the news? Did you see what’s going on with the weather? Did you hear what’s happening with the Johnsons? I wonder what’s gonna happen with the election.
They’re just worried all the time. Or how about the person that just never takes anything seriously? You can try to bring up a serious matter and all they want to do is crack a joke. They just move on to the next funny thing that they can talk about.
You see, they respond to life with what makes them comfortable. They respond to life from their emotional home. We can all relate—we all have an emotional home that we go back to.
Wouldn’t it be nice to upgrade your home? To develop empathy for people? To not be offended by what a stranger on the internet says about other people’s opinions? To live in happiness, to be content? Even if it doesn’t happen quickly, wouldn’t it be nice to live in that place? You can make the decision to do this today. How?
Draw a line in the sand and decide that you’re going to live happily. Suffering is a choice. You don’t have to live on the coast. You don’t have to live in the floodplain. Move! Rebuild your home somewhere else!
Move mentally. Criminals will oftentimes have to wear a bracelet or anklet so they can’t leave the state. I challenge you as a way to implement this way of thinking, this new emotional home. You put a bracelet, put a rubber band, something around your wrist that’s gonna give you a little stretch and a little snap, and I challenge you to wear it. Every time that you go back to that emotionally comfortable place, you go back to the floodplain, you go back to the coast where the storms are rolling in—you give yourself a little snap.
You can upgrade your home, but first, you must decide: I don’t want to live in this home anymore, I want to move out of these storms, I want to move away from this danger, and I want to live over there in happiness, in contentment, in empathy, looking forward to every single day. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.
It’s not going to go away instantly. It’s not that you’re not going to have days or moments of anger, sadness, and worry, or moments where you can’t be fulfilled. But you snap that bracelet and you prompt yourself every time it happens. Prompt yourself to stay away from that emotional home. Even if you have to lean into it for a moment, you snap out of it and you get back to thinking, “Okay, how can I move forward? How can I be content? How can I have gratitude at this moment?”
You start moving in that direction. Move, move, move. You don’t have to live there anymore. You don’t have to stay in that emotional state. You can change it with one decision, and I promise you, you will change everything with that outlook.
You can upgrade your emotional home and live in joy and contentment and peace, and enjoy every day of this life. Even if life throws a storm at you, you don’t have to take on the flood.
You can move. Get yourself to prompt yourself, and if you need help controlling happiness, check out my free book, as we continue to help you experience real health, make health simple, and give you the motivation to live the life you were created to live.
