Emotional Baggage and Self Discipline

Emotional Baggage: Definition

I define emotional baggage in a very general way, much as I define culture in a very general way. Culture is a lot more than national costumes, food, and art. Culture is how far we stand apart from other people, how we talk to them, how we define ourselves and our roles in the community. It is our gestures, and our feelings in response to situations. In the same way, emotional baggage is what makes us feel feelings that could be unwanted, neutral or even positive. We may have emotional baggage that causes us to cheer when our opponent fails. Emotional baggage is our attachments that pull on us and create feelings without really consulting us.

Self Discipline: Definition

Self discipline is making ourselves do what we don’t want to do because it is to our long term benefit. A simple example is studying in high school.
Self discipline is preventing yourself from doing what we want to do because it is to our long term benefit. A simple example is not overeating so that we keep a healthy weight.

The Goal: No Need for Self Discipline

Self discipline according to my definition above has two unpalatable words. “Make” and “prevent”. Either way, exercising self discipline means a reduction in pleasure in the short term. So it is unpopular. But Imagine this: we have to do something for our own good and we don’t want to. Then imagine that the “don’t want to” feeling evaporates. The resistance to that activity (cleaning the house, going to work, etc) simply disappears.

Wow! Now life is easy!

Now imagine the opposite. There is something you want to do that is not really good for you (eating chocolate, sleeping longer in the morning, watching youtube..). Then suddenly, the desire to do it evaporates. If you do that activity, you still feel pleasure, but the strong desire to do it is gone.

Wow! Now life is easy!

That is the goal: remove the friction and the forces in our lives that make self discipline necessary. None of the pleasure has been removed. In fact, you probably enjoy everything you do much more. But you don’t have to make yourself do anything, and you don’t have to prevent yourself from doing anything. Easy!

The Problem: We need to use Self Discipline to get to the goal

Well, we’re gonna need self discipline to do the scanning breath, especially at the beginning. This is the mountain that we must climb to get to paradise. Hey! Who said it was easy? Well, the best part is it gradually gets easier and easier.

Getting to the Goal

Now, we systematically go through all the things that we like to do and with the scanning breath experience those feelings as strongly as we can until they fade away. Conversely, you can go through all the things that we want to avoid and with the scanning breath, experience those feelings as strongly as we can until they fade away.

If you get those feelings again in the future, simply repeat the exercise. Be prepared for this to take a long time at the beginning. This is because you are not really good at the technique. Perhaps you are not focussed enough, or you are breathing too fast or too slow which makes it much more difficult.

You should be able to get to a point where only one or two fifteen minute sessions are enough to get rid of the emotional baggage that is causing discomfort. Watch your life get easier and easier, and you feel lighter and lighter.