Imagine waking up every day with zero emotion. No excitement. No sadness. No frustration. No joy. Just…neutrality. At first, it might sound peaceful, but stay in that world for more than a few minutes, and you’d quickly realize just how hollow it feels. Without emotion, nothing would matter. You wouldn’t care what you ate, where you went, or who you loved. You’d be a spectator in your own life.
Emotions Override Logic
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio once worked with a man named Elliott, a successful, intelligent professional whose life was upended when he developed a tumor on his frontal lobe. The surgery saved his life, but it also damaged the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is the region that connects emotion to decision-making.
What shocked researchers was that Elliott’s IQ remained unchanged. His memory, reasoning, and vocabulary were all perfectly intact. But emotionally, he went flat. He could no longer feel anything. He had no enthusiasm, no fear, and no preference. As a result, he became incapable of even the simplest decisions: which pen to use, what to eat for lunch, how to plan his day. He could list every pro and con with flawless logic, but he could never actually choose.
Without emotion, his life unraveled. He lost his job, made poor financial choices, and his marriage fell apart…not because he lacked intelligence, but because he had lost the emotional signal that tells us what matters most.
Damasio’s conclusion was groundbreaking: emotion is not a luxury, it is essential to reason itself. Without it, logic is paralyzed. Every “rational” decision you make is driven first by an emotional cue: safety, belonging, excitement, fear, or love.
Emotion is the hidden CEO in the boardroom of your brain.
Our Emotions Determine Our Outcomes
Entrepreneur Alex Hormozi recently posted a reel that said, “The single greatest skill you can develop is being in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. Most people don’t question someone who is in a bad mood. It’s like, “Well, I’m just in a bad mood!” And if you can be in a bad mood for no reason, you might as well be in a good mood for no reason, because that one at least serves you.”
To take what Alex said just a step further, the fact is if you are living mostly in low-frequency states (stress, fear, resentment, depression) you’re not just “having a bad mood.” You’re literally reprogramming your cells for survival, shrinking your field of vision, and broadcasting incoherence into your relationships.
But when you raise your frequency into gratitude, play, courage, or love (“good moods”), your biology shifts into growth, your perception opens, your energy attracts harmony, opportunity, and collaboration, and you tune yourself to higher outcomes.
But here’s the thing…it’s hard to stay there, isn’t it? Ever feel like you actually have a good reason to be in a bad mood? Ever have those days where you feel like you’re on an emotional roller coaster that you can’t get off of? How about a sudden trigger you weren’t expecting? How about those reactive moods that hijack your best intentions?
Sound familiar? Yep! Welcome to the world of being human!
But being human doesn’t mean being powerless. Emotional mastery is not about suppressing feelings, it’s about leading them. It’s about finding calm in the storm, returning to center faster, and living in emotional frequency states that generate clarity, creativity and connection.
The Lever of Life Mastery
If emotions are the leverage point that drive behavior, then mastering emotions becomes key to mastering your life choices. And your choices are what make up your entire life.
In her book Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power, Dr. Julia DiGangi describes how our emotions operate as “neuroelectrical energy” running through the brain. She says that your emotional power rises or falls with the way you work with your brain energy, not just thoughts.
Think of every emotion as a current of electricity flowing through your nervous system. Fear contracts. Love expands. Anger accelerates. Peace harmonizes.
Most people try to “think” their way out of emotion, but the brain doesn’t speak in thoughts, it speaks in energy. When you learn to align with that current rather than resist it, you stop fighting yourself and start leading with coherence, clarity, and calm strength.
Three Tools to Rewire Emotional Mastery
So how do we being mastering our emotions in real time?
The 90-Second Rule: Neuroscience shows emotions last only about 90 seconds unless we feed them with thoughts. When you feel triggered, set a timer, breathe, and let the wave pass without judgment. Most storms dissipate if you stop fueling them.
Name It to Tame It: Labeling an emotion - “I’m anxious,” “I’m irritated,” “I’m grieving” - activates your prefrontal cortex and lowers the intensity of the feeling. Language restores your leadership because you are no longer inside the emotion, you’re observing it.
Add a Word of Curiosity: Once you have named what is true, bring curiosity in to create movement. Instead of stopping at “I’m angry,” expand it to “I’m curious why I’m angry.” Curiosity invites understanding rather than judgment. It transforms emotion from something you have to manage into something you can learn from. This gives you choice instead of just habit.
These micro-shifts are how emotional mastery begins, not through control but through conscious connection with the energy moving through you.
Final Thoughts!
Your mind is the architecture of your life, but emotion is the electricity that powers it. When the current runs low through fear, stress, or resentment, your system flickers, decisions stall, and everything feels dim. But when you raise the voltage with gratitude, curiosity, and love, the whole house lights up.
Emotional mastery isn’t about avoiding storms; it’s about learning to direct the current. The more fluently you understand your own emotional energy, the more powerfully you can illuminate every area of your life.
Because playing full out means keeping your inner lights on: steady, strong, and bright enough to lead yourself and everyone around you home.
Life Updates!
We hosted our first official couple’s retreat last weekend at a cabin close to Bear Lake here in Idaho. It was SO fun! We divided into how we are showing up as partners, what kind of unconscious energy we are magnetically pulling toward us and the dynamics that creates in each other, nervous system alignment, and we introduced some fun and super sexy modalities for couples to expand with together. We are getting the next one on the books soon, so hit this email and give us a reply if you want the details as soon as they are released!
Xander hit up the East Idaho Jazz Society’s Jazz Jam at a local restaurant last Tuesday night. The place was packed with friends who came to support and cheer him on. We have such gratitude for so many great people in our lives and cannot thank everyone enough for taking the time to come and be a part of our lives. Thank you! Oh - and you can catch just a tiny snippet of him playing his sax right here if you would like to!
And in other Xander news, he turned the big 16 yesterday. Not sure where the time goes, but we are sure proud of the young man he is becoming. We went out for his favorite treat (Duck Donuts) and his favorite restaurant (Tandoori Oven) and we ended the night watching him play at a pickleball tournament where he had a great night and crushed it. Good way to end the evening!
We are headed to Boise for Inner Circle this Saturday and will be there until Tuesday night or Wednesday morning! Looking forward to seeing everyone there!
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