Matt's Audio Letter of the Week

Hey everyone, welcome to this edition of the Feel Better Letter, or the FBL.

This is Matt.

And yeah, just welcome to this week—hope it's going well for you.

Quick announcement:
As far as our live training for the month of May, we're going to push it back from next Tuesday to the Tuesday after.
So I just wanted to let you know.

Today, what I want to talk about is the idea of attempting to surrender or attempting to release from a place of control and resistance.

This is really at the epicenter of most people’s struggle when it comes to mental and emotional health. There are these unpleasant experiences—generally emotional, right? Like, “I don’t want to feel this emotion,” or, “I don’t want this type of energy in my body, this sensation,” or, “I’m having these thoughts in conjunction with that emotion.”

And we’re trying to do everything we can to get rid of it—often from a place of control.

So when we try to learn about techniques like acceptance, letting go, or surrender, most people try to implement them from a place of resistance—a place of contraction—and that’s why they run into problems.

It doesn’t “work” for them, because they’re trying to implement it from a state that’s already resisting it.

To give you a visual of that, it’s like having my arms crossed and trying to give someone a hug so they’ll stop hugging me.
What I’m saying is: no—go and embrace the person.
You can’t do both.
And if you’re doing one, you’re not doing the other.
Right?

These things can’t simultaneously exist.
You’re either in a state of resistance or a state of surrender.
You’re either in a state of acceptance or a state of rejection.

And like I said, what most people do is try to accept their feelings—or accept their thoughts or let go of control—from a place of control and resistance.
That’s the default: “Okay, I’m going to do this so this goes away.”
“I’m going to do this to get rid of it.”
“I’m going to do this to…”—and then fill in the blank with your desired end result.
And all of that comes from a place of control.

The ironic thing is, the more you do it from that place, generally speaking, the more intense the symptoms become.

I’ll just put it bluntly: generally, the worse it gets.

Why?
Because the issue is resistance.
The issue is not wanting to feel exactly how you feel.
Saying, “I don’t want to feel anxious,” or “I don’t want to feel depressed,” or “I don’t want to feel guilty,” or ashamed—or any of these lower emotional states, often fear.

The irony is: you’re already feeling it.

It’s like if it’s raining and you’re saying, “Well, I don’t want it to rain.”
It already is raining.

So when we say, “Accept it. Welcome it. Don’t resist it,” we’re not saying that from a place of, “Oh, you should try to create that feeling.”

The feeling is already there—whether it’s conscious or not. It’s there.

And interestingly enough, the more accepting you become of your lower emotions—when you stop resisting them, stop trying to control, suppress, repress, avoid, condemn, negotiate with, or justify them in your mind (which leads to all these mental behaviors like ruminating and analyzing)—what happens is that the emotion expands, runs its course, and passes.

So when you say, “I can’t feel this emotion,” the truth is: you already are.

The real issue is whether you’re trying to control and resist it.

It’s not a matter of can’t feel an emotion—it’s a matter of won’t.

And when you start to understand that it’s a choice, you begin to see that you really do have options here.

You can choose to loosen your resistance internally, allow yourself to feel it, and accept the feeling as it is, where it is, for however long it needs to be there.

Or you can fight it.
You can try to control it.
You can push it down, avoid it, run from it, or self-medicate.
You can do all those things.

But ultimately, you are the one who has the choice.

And if you’re trying to accept something from a place of wanting to get rid of it, you’re not actually accepting it.

If you’re trying to drop resistance from a place of resistance—if you’re doing it with an agenda—you’ve already gone off course.

What this is about today is simply becoming aware of that tendency to do things from a place of resistance.

Because most people are unaware of just how resistant they actually are.

And if you can begin to bring more and more awareness to your resistance, that alone starts to change it.

So that’s all I wanted to talk about today.

With that, I hope you found this helpful.

If you know someone who would benefit from it, please feel free to forward it to them.

And again, if you’re looking for guidance and want to be part of our Taking Back Control community—join our live groups and really learn to master these skills—fill out an application for TBC.

We have some spots open in May for our group program.

I think I have approximately two one-on-one spots open as well, for those interested in that route.

And with that, I hope you have a wonderful day, and I’ll talk to you soon.