Experiencing Cringe to Courage Reflecting on Love’s What-Ifs

"Freedom is being able to feel the painful emotions and thrive anyways."
Experiencing Love Ep 141

Hello and welcome to Experiencing Love. I'm your host, Philip Joks, and I'm so glad that you're here. I'll be honest, directly before pressing "Record," I was in this state of full-body cringe. I don't know if you've ever done this to yourself or gotten into these states before, but it always happens when you're thinking about some memory, some memory that you now find so uncomfortable, or even so exciting, but in a goofy, playful kind of way that it just makes your entire body react. This time around, it was triggered by finding old messages on my phone. Obviously, I haven't seen them in a while, and if I'm going to be honest, and this makes me truly uncomfortable to say, but it was a message, a text chain, between one of my biggest what-ifs.

To be more specific, this what-if was this girl from a few years ago. And I want to make sure that I maintain privacy here. But I'll go as far as to say that this girl I found to be absolutely stunning. She was funny, she was courageous, she was adventurous. And from what I could tell, there was definitely some chemistry between us. The biggest obstacle that ended up getting between us happens to be this little thing called the Atlantic Ocean. This person lives in Europe, and I met them when they were on vacation in the New Jersey, New York area, and then continued talking with each other for however many months after she returned.

I feel as though I already may have given up too much information. And if I did, so be it. And if she hears this, well, I wouldn't regret saying a thing about it. And I bring this up because I reread these messages, and all the old what-ifs flooded my mind. And they were the types of what-ifs that ultimately just made me giggle, made me laugh. I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning right before opening a bunch of mystery presents. Right. It's that feeling of anticipation where I don't know for certain what would happen or what I might get. But I have an idea, I have guesses, and I know what I want.

And then there's this other part of me that's a little bit rooted in embarrassment, of even just feeling these things or coming back to these emotions or these thoughts. And not the type of embarrassment where I want to hide it and not share it with anyone, but the type of embarrassment that just kind of makes my face turn a little bit red. But I want to share that joy and that passion with other people. Or maybe that has less to do with embarrassment and more to do with just who I am. I guess I'd rather be embarrassed with other people than not feel embarrassment but be all alone. Yeah, I think that's true for me.

And in thinking about this person and the relationship that didn't happen but would have been exciting to have happened, it just reminds me of connection with other people. I still think about this person sometimes, and we talk on occasion. And I still get to wondering, what if? What if I saved up a bunch of money, packed up, and left the US for a few years? I'm not saying I would immediately go to her, but what if I did spend a couple of years in Europe and then I just so happened to meet up with her? My brain goes down these different paths of what-ifs. I think I'm going in circles now because I'm still reeling from the fact that I'm still talking about this.

But I did say to myself a couple of episodes back that if I don't know what I'm going to talk about on a given episode on a given day, that I'm just going to think about one thing that makes me extremely uncomfortable to talk about or to bring up, and I'm going to talk about it. I believe the way to take back your power from something that makes you uncomfortable, or an insecurity of yours, or even a fear, is to talk about it as much as you can with as many trustworthy people as you can. The reason being that every single time you recite a story, you're able to notice it as just that. It's a story. It's a story based on the meaning that we gave to some experience in our life.

So if something makes me uncomfortable, it's because I have some story around it that keeps me feeling shame and maybe even guilt around it, and that encourages me to stay quiet. Yet when I share, the shame starts to go away. Especially when you notice that other people in your life either have felt something similar or honestly have felt something worse before, so they're in no place to judge. And as that shame begins to lift, the emotion gets taken away from the story. And then you get to look at the story more logically, or you get to look at the facts of the story. And it's great reaching a point where you get to start questioning those facts and ask yourself how many of them are really factual and how many of them are something that I made up in my mind and I used my own experiences to confirm.

Our brains are such incredible detectives. I know this because we all come up with beliefs and stories every single day. And our brains, no matter what, will find some piece of evidence to support that belief. Always. I know this to be true because you've done it for every single belief you have. Now, as I like to say, your beliefs aren't the truth, they're just your truth. My beliefs aren't the absolute truth, they're just my truth. I try not to forcefully impose my beliefs on other people because I know it's not their truth. They have a different path to go on, and I want to be supporting them on that path, not pushing them away from it.

I learned all of this a few years ago. Actually, now it would be about four years ago, when I was just starting my personal growth, personal development journey. And it all started with questioning everything I knew about everything I thought I knew. I used the question "why?" in so many different ways that I began to discover just how much my life was rooted in my stories, and almost better described as opinions, than were in facts. When I separated myself, especially emotionally, from all of the memories I had that I deemed as painful or uncomfortable, I realized that there's a way to look at every single one of those experiences as all logical and no emotions. In doing so, I discovered what the real facts of an experience were.

And I got to change my story by changing my meaning. If I had some negative experience in the past, I instead got to say that it was a learning experience or a learning opportunity, and I'd be able to grow from it now. So instead of feeling shame and guilt around it, I would feel gratitude and appreciation. It's the same event. It's in the past, and I can't change anything about it other than how I think and talk about it now.

I guess if I were to connect this all together, and I think about this incredible person, this what-if in my life, I get to decide what I choose after the words "what if?" And that changes my story, that changes my emotions, changes my meaning. Because on one hand, I could say, what if this changed in the past? Or I can take a more proactive approach and say, what if I do this in the future? We can't change the past, but we could influence the future by choosing what I want my story to be. I could decide to focus on the future. When it comes to making goals, when it comes to making plans, I use my past to teach me, I use my future to guide me, and I use the present to experience life.

Being uncomfortable, feeling cringe is a really powerful emotion or sensation when you really dive into it. Feeling that tightness in your body when you're cringing, it's so easy to want to run away. And honestly, it could be easy to run away. But if you're really brave and you're feeling courageous, sit in that discomfort a little bit, maybe make it bigger, feel it even more until you can't hold back the laughter. Maybe you start slapping your knee, maybe you start running around the room. Maybe you do what I've done before and physically thrown your phone into the air after sending a very terrifying text and then running outside to go for a long walk to cool off.

For a few side details, I will say that this terrifying text was to... Oh, God, this is so painful to admit, was to a girl that I was very much into at the time. And I'm not proud of this, but I admitted to her through text that I was into her. I have no excuse. Oh, God. Oh, gosh. Sorry. I just need to sit in this for a second. This is what I'm talking about. I did this to myself. I just challenged you to do exactly what I'm doing now, which is to cringe and to feel it. I'm going through this now and I'm truly wondering why. Why make anyone feel this? Why do this? And I know now why I need to do this. How? And it's to get used to this feeling.

Life can be embarrassing. We make mistakes, we get laughed at. Sometimes we laugh at ourselves. And sometimes it's in doing something you expect to get laughed at for. And if you do this enough, you'll reach a point where you don't fear that feeling anymore and you start taking more risks and you start getting greater rewards. You start experiencing what life is really all about. The type of life that so few get to experience because they're trapped. I want you to be free. And freedom isn't having an experience where you don't feel the painful emotions. Freedom is being able to feel the painful emotions and thrive anyway. I just want you to thrive.

So, if I'm going to cringe, oh, I beg of you, make yourself cringe a little bit. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You know exactly how to do it. That one memory from five, six, maybe seven years ago, out in public. Maybe you're with friends, maybe you're by yourself and you just did something so embarrassing. I'm not going to tell you what's embarrassing because that's for you to decide. We all have something different that's embarrassing. But you know exactly what it is. And think about it. Laugh about it, feel it, maybe talk about it, enjoy it. That's a part of life.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being you. Remember to always fill up with love, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. I love you.

Dive deeper into the world of cringes, what-ifs, and finding the courage to embrace discomfort with Philip Joks in the full episode that started it all. Trust me, there's so much more to explore and laugh about. Tune in for more insights and heartfelt honesty. This Episode On Spotify

Photo by Muhamad Iqbal Akbar on Unsplash