Train Your Emotions Like a Skill: Joey Klein on the Inner Game of Mastery

So I've heard you mention an Albert Einstein quote, which is, "You can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it." What does that mean to you?

you?Well, I, I look at it as a, as kind of interesting.

Honestly, it's like I, I start with thinking about it like, like emotional competency and capacity.

And so when we look at...

Like if an average person looks at a lot of the challenges we face, you know, day in and day out, and we look at the energy we bring to those challenges, like it's a lot of times like, "Man, I'm really anxious about work," or, "I feel overwhelmed with the things I have to do." Or, you know, we're, we're kind of wrestling with a marriage or our significant other and, you know, we, we want this depth of connection and this beautiful relationship, but re- you know, resentment gets in the way and anger gets in the way.

And it's like each of these emotions, like when you look at a challenge or problem in life, one of the things that's always a constant is there's a painful emotion that's there.

And the thing with fear-based emotions or painful emotions that a lot of people don't understand is it compromises our cognitive ability and competency.

And so, you know, literally our creative thinking and our creative thinking and critical thinking, creative thinking, and intuition shuts down when our fight or flight system is on.

And the way we know if we're in that fight or flight response is we feel angry, we feel resentful, we feel shame, we feel guilt, we feel sadness.

And what I've learned over the years is every one of those emotions is intelligence.

And so, like if you and I are having a disagreement or we're having a tough time and I notice that I feel angry or resentful, it's like my mind goes to a very rote way of thinking.

It's like, I have to defend myself, I have to be right, you know, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna isolate.

It's like the things that occur to me to do are never gonna produce the vision or the outcome that I'm looking to create.

And then the mind obsesses about the past.

It goes to what has happened and what's currently wrong.

And if we learn to manage state and we can...

You know, before we change circumstance, if we could access compassion, as an example, or a sense of faith in the future or vision that we wanna create, or, or even joy even though we're having a difficult situation, love, it's like all of a sudden the mind thinks completely differently.

Our creative thinking turns back on, our critical thinking, our intuition turns on, and all of a sudden we see the exact same situation from a completely different vantage point, a completely different lens.

But then more important, very different things occur to us to do.

It's like if I approach the person with compassion, it's like I wanna listen, I wanna understand, I wanna be there for them.

If I, if I engage that exact same situation with anger and resentment, I wanna fight, I wanna tell them why they're wrong, and I wanna get away, and I'm like, "I'm not even sure I should be in this relationship.

Maybe I should divorce." And it's like if we, if we learn to access higher emotions starting...

or higher consciousness starting with leveraging emotion, we literally can make ourself more intelligent by accessing a higher consciousness before we do anything else.

And all of a sudden we can trust what occurs to us to do, whereas a lot of times we literally can't trust what occurs to us to do because we're not operating from a, a higher consciousness or higher state.

Hmm.