Newton’s Third Law of Emotion
I am currently in the middle of a juicy ass book called Every Thing Is Fucked (A Book About Hope) by Mark Manson and today’s read really sat with me, so I thought I would share.
In this chapter, Manson talks about Newton’s Third Law of Emotion. Which is “Your identity will stay your identity until a new experience acts against it.”
The way that Manson explains this is that ultimately, the values that we hold are just a collection of our feelings over time. Which to my understanding, is why it is so hard to create change in my life sometimes. This past year I have had so many goals and so many dreams that I have wanted to accomplish. I told myself that I can do anything I set my mind to, which is absolutely true, HOWEVER, I can NOT do everything all at once. Which has been such a hard pill to swallow.
And since I haven’t been able to do everything at once, I have found myself being unintentionally very hard on myself at times.
That’s something that I’m working on though. I’ve been on my self improvement journey since January 1st, 2022. During this time, I have been constantly growing and constantly evolving. I often feel as if I have major growing pains. Not like physical growing pains, but like spiritual and mental growing pains.
In my last post, I had mentioned how I have been feeling really lost and secluding myself a lot this year. Part of this is because even during the times that I have felt lost these past (almost) two years, I have felt like I have been growing at the same time.
This brings me back to Newton’s Third Law of Emotion. Manson mentions that “It is impossible to become someone new without first grieving the loss of who you used to be.”
“When we lose our values, we grieve the death of those defining the narratives as though we’ve lost a part of ourselves- because we have lost a part of ourselves”
This reminds me of what the growing pains feel like. It hurts and I feel saddened at times because I am constantly grieving the version of me that I was yesterday. I sometimes feel like I can’t even keep up with the present me, if that makes sense.
I have felt sort of stagnant with my previous job and felt like I was no longer growing in the ways that I needed to with the company and these past few weeks have been super crazy but I sense a lot of good coming in 2024.
Now that November is coming to an end, I really want to take the whole month of December to sit down and reflect on what my current values are in 2023, then envision what I want my 2024 to look like. Especially since I have this website now, I’m stoked to see where this journey will take me.
Something else that has stuck out to me in Every Thing is Fucked that relates to this is, “The other way to change your values is to begin writing the narratives of your future self, to envision what life would be like if you had certain values or possessed a certain identity.”
“By visualizing the future we want for ourselves, we allow our feeling brain to try on those values for size, to see what they feel like before we make the final purchase. Eventually once we’ve done this enough, the feeling brain becomes accustomed to the new values and starts to believe them.”
Manson states, “Without these narratives, without developing a clear vision of what the future we desire, of values we want to adopt, of the identities we want to shed or step into- we are forever doomed to repeat the failures of our past pain. The stories of our past define our identity. The stories of our future define our hopes. And our ability to step into those narratives and live them, to make them reality, is what gives our lives meaning.”
Just sumn to think about while we are ending this year and preparing for the next.
If you are reading this, I hope something stuck out to you during this post and helped you in some way, shape, or form. I appreciate you and hope you are having an awesome day.
I’m about to finish my din din and hop in the shower.
See you on the flip side.
Love always,
Kyrin.
