This week felt genuinely life-changing for me. A few major realizations clicked in a way they never had before. 1. Emotions are signals, not identity The more I stay present with myself, the more I see how emotions come and go in waves. And I realized something simple but huge: I was identifying with them. I thought my emotions were me. I treated them as facts. I let them shape my thoughts, beliefs, identity, and actions. If fear showed up, I acted like fear was reality. If shame showed up, I assumed something was wrong with me. If motivation disappeared, I believed I couldn’t act. Now I’m starting to see emotions for what they are: signals in the body. That’s it. They’re not truth. They’re not instructions. They’re not identity. I can feel them fully without following them. That shift alone changes everything. I don’t need to suppress them. I don’t need to act on them. I don’t need to “fix” them. I can just notice: fear is here, shame is here, tension is here — and still move consciously. 2. Watching the survival mind take over Another big realization: I can now actually see when my survival mind starts taking over. It’s almost physical. My vision feels different. My awareness narrows. I enter autopilot. Thoughts speed up. The body tenses. It feels like something primitive hijacks my system. Before, I was that reaction. Now I can see the transition from conscious to unconscious behavior happening in real time. I can see the animal responses. The fight/flight/freeze patterns. The flood of thoughts that justify them. That separation is insane. It’s like watching the program instead of being the program. And I also noticed something important: I used to try to use presence to eliminate “bad” emotions. I was still labeling them as good or bad and trying to purify myself into perfect reactions. Now I see there are no bad emotions. There’s nothing to release. Nothing to correct. They come. They go. They move in waves. Let them. Presence isn’t for controlling emotions. It’s for not identifying with them.

As I sit with it, insecurity arises. This black colored feeling,the mind convinces me to perfect this as Im writing by making it sound polished, editing a word here and there. The flow is happening, the mind is losing grip, losing its power little ny little, becoming a quiter smaller voice. The more I sit and meditate with this insecurity, the louder I hear it scream. What does it scream? "Give me attention dear God im begging for it". With tender love and care I come right along aide my inner child, give him a big hug, grab him by the hand, say to him "hey buddy lets go play". The mind has done its job in serving me through the years in protecting me from harm and such. Now it is time to live fully from essence. Ego is not a bad thing like the rest of the world will tell you it is. It is the attachment to the ego that can damage the relationship you have with self. The mind is having a fit, circling rapidly as I attempt to write this. It did the same thing as I was journing earlier. I can truly feel more freedom than Ive felt before,the grip is loosening. It feels truly fucking liberating,transformational,grounding. Real true honest change. The dictionary defines change as to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone.

Short and sweet

As I was journaling my results from this week for approaching, something interesting happened for me. I write it all out, and I then just let it be. I felt the feeling. I wrote the following: Doing this way of tracking (writing out exactly what I did). It left me feeling empty, it felt pointless,more pressure,like I still wasnt enough. Even though it felt like lots of content, it seemed at the end, as if im attempting to fill a void. This is not personal, as much as the mind and emotions are trying to convince me it is. This is feedback,information, that is it. I think engaging with the discomfort, the "im going to express this no matter what,I need to start challenging myself at a new level". Engaging with the discomfort when I spoke to those women, allowed me to have those intense moments with my nervous system. Which led to higher awareness.

There’s a quiet but critical distortion in how most people experience effort. Work itself is neutral. But we don’t just do work. We psychologically experience work through time, identity, and meaning. So instead of: “I am typing.” It becomes: “I have 5 more hours of this.” “This is my life now.” “If I don’t do this well, I’m falling behind.” “When this is over, then I can relax.” Now the nervous system is not just doing a task. It is holding: Future dread Identity pressure Outcome fear Escape fantasy All simultaneously. That’s the real grind. Why Long Hours Only Feel Long In Psychological Time Clock time is simple. But psychological time is layered. Psychological time is, Imagining future effort while still in present effort Mentally dragging the end of the task into the beginning Measuring suffering against imagined relief When you think: “I have 6 hours left” Your brain doesn’t experience that as information. It experiences it as 6 hours of suffering, compressed into the present moment. So you’re not working one hour. You’re emotionally carrying six. This sits in the background of the mind like open tabs: Low-grade tension Constant checking Subtle resistance Low-level dread This is why people feel tired before they are physically tired. The Background Weight Most People Never Notice The mind is constantly calculating: How long How hard How meaningful How risky How this affects who I am What happens if I fail When do I get relief This is the invisible load. And because it’s invisible, people assume.. “This is just what work feels like.” But it isn’t. It’s what work plus psychological narrative feels like. The Cultural Story That Reinforces This Most people grew up absorbing messages like: Nothing worthwhile is easy You must suffer first, then you deserve results If it feels light, you’re doing it wrong If you’re not exhausted, you didn’t try hard enough So people learn to distrust ease. They equate tension with seriousness.