On Emotional Accountability
The Daily Stoic has been a part of my morning routine for several years now.
And supplemented with other reading (The Courage to be Disliked and Ego is the Enemy come to mind), I’ve developed one sort of grounding principle that shapes the way I move through life:
Other people are not responsible for my happiness. I am not responsible for theirs.
That’s not to say I don’t slip up constantly. That I don’t get my feathers ruffled by an email, or irritated at a tone or comment. That I don’t get my feelings hurt.
But I’m getting better at responding to those things. Of reminding myself:
I can choose whether or not to get upset. I am the only one who gets to decide what bothers me.
100% of the time, I am happier when I choose not to let things bother me. I don’t get it right every time. I do still get upset, but never once have I thought, “Damn, I’m glad I decided to get bent out of shape about that and really leaned into my anger or hurt feelings!”
It goes the other way too. Wondering if someone else is upset by a choice I’ve made. I’ll tie myself up in knots taking on moods or wants that do not belong to me. Literally sick to my stomach because I know someone wants me to do something that I don’t want to do or that I’ve disappointed them or hurt them.
I have to constantly remind myself: I am not in charge of whether or not another adult human decides to be upset. That’s their business.
That’s not to say we should all live isolated lives, or tromp on other people’s feelings all willy-nilly. We don’t get to say, “Well, you chose to get upset that I called you stupid, so that’s your problem.”
We must live with integrity, and act with kindness.
But it’s awfully easy to misapply ethical principles to suit our emotional needs. We expect other people to act as we think they should. We want them to want what we want them to want. And when they don’t, we become upset with them. The other person is selfish, uneducated, inconsiderate, or unkind.
Maybe! Maybe.
Or maybe the truly selfish thing is expecting other people to live according to our terms, our values, our wants, our feelings.
Recently Anth and I got into a … well, I’m not sure it was even a fight. But it was a deeply unpleasant discussion. I wanted him to respond a certain way to something I was working on. And I let myself felt really wounded when he was in a very different place.
That’s the key. I let myself.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend it didn’t hurt because I read the Daily Stoic every day. That’s a common misconception. Stoicism is not about not having feelings. People often get that wrong about the philosophy. Emotions are a part of being human. Stoicism is about acknowledging your feelings, and deciding what you’re going to do about them.
It’s about saying:
Okay, that stung. What’s my next move?
I have to admit, pre-Daily-Stoic me, my next move would have been to draw this out into a huge drama that I allowed to shake the entire foundation of how we operate as a team. “You don’t support me!!!” (insert shrill reality TV energy here)
I was tempted! “BUT MY FEELINGS!!!!!!”
Instead, I channeled all my energy in the day or two that followed into thinking: “Okay, Lauren. He feels that way. What the hell does it have to with you? You get to decide if his stance impacts your mood and next steps.”
It took work. It takes work, constantly, to take accountability for your own emotional mood.
But it’s worth it.
The key to a happier life is not wishing/hoping for other people to behave in a way that makes you happy.
The key to a happier life is learning how to consistently say, “That person gets to live their life however they want, and I get to choose my response.”
