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Ep38 Living…Normal

Hello and Welcome to the Way of the Emotional Warrior Podcast. My name is Kai Ehnes and today we will be answering the question of: How can one live this thing called normal?

So the main issue we need to look at is the notion of what is normal? You hear this all the time. Normal this or hey, that’s not normal. Somewhere out there I think most people believe that there is a normal or point of reference. Then it is believed that the closer you are to it the more normal or right you are in your thoughts and actions.

If this were really all so simple why is normal such an elusive mistress? When I was little I never fully understood what this normal life actually was. Think about it, we are born, not really by choice, (well…mostly) into a family we didn’t have a choice over, (mostly) and into a time and place outside of our control. Talk about not having a center.

On top of being cast into a life without an operator’s manual, we are supposed to act normal, when essentially few people can agree on what that actually is or means?

Let’s look a bit deeper into normal. The Cambridge definition says that normal is ordinary or usual, the same as would be expected. So we can already see that normal is pretty bland, the same old same old. Sure it is consistent and that is good for a while but it will pretty quickly get challenged by novelty and variety. To me normal would be good as a point of reference but not really of value to living an authentic vivacious, dynamic life.

One way to look at normal is through the lens of neuroscience. The term in this field for normal is homeostasis. This helps animals maintain stable internal and external environments with the best conditions for it to operate.

So if we use normal and homeostasis interchangeably you can see that it is no longer bland. Homeostatic balance means that you can have your own being interact with the world around you in the best overall fashion.

This is what I would call a sustainable state of being. IS there more? According to Donald Riggles, our brains process a staggering 11 million bits of information per second, of that 50 bits per second are conscious. Neuroscience shows that survival and pleasure reactions are the main task of our unconscious mind and are directly involved with our health and well being.

Consider this for a second. Our health and well being are being handled by our unconscious mind and mainly work on our interaction with pleasure and pain.

There is a secretion of adrenaline, dopamine and oxytocin, all which maintain our balanced state.

These bookends or guardrails keep us in check and balanced.

So…tieing this together, Our brains are hard wired to consistently bring us back into a state of balance which means that we have an internal sense of normal. We know what normal is at all times. However, with our lifestyles, we spend a lot of time and effort on being out of balance, consider diet and exercise.

So if we know what normal is internally and by design, why do we have such a hard time with it?

Let’s look at this from the perspective of an Emotional Warrior. What is clear from this viewpoint is that the heart controls the show. Resilience and love are the tools for emotional balance and vibrational consciousness. This means that the Emotional Warrior spends their time actualizing their natural, authentic, normal state and then navigates their external world to find places and activities where that normalcy can be lived.

Simply put, an Emotional Warrior lives an authentic heart based life on the inside and the outside. Confusion and chaos begin to fade away allowing for growth, fulfilment and actualization.

Consider how wonderful this lived life is and can be. In the next episode we look at life within these guardrails. I look forward to seeing you there.