SUMMARY

• “When we understand what the mind is doing when we feel sad, what thoughts are fueling the emotion, then we can catch it and retrain it.”
• The mind focuses on a few key things when we are sad: the absence or loss of something now, or something we’re going to lose in the future. 
• “When you feel sad, check in on the thoughts the mind is thinking. Are you focused on the absence or loss of something? When you catch the mind, you can redirect to a new thought strategy that gets you to the outcome you want.”
• If you’re looking for tips on how to understand and overcome sadness, this episode is for you.
• Watch the video to get the full training.

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 Full Transcript:

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of Joey’s Performance Tune Up With Joey Klein. Please note that this episode, like all episodes, features Joey speaking unscripted and unedited. This video is captured in one take.]

In this session, we are going to train sadness at the end of the day, like, what is it that the mind is doing when we feel sad? If we understand what the mind is doing, how the mind is fueling sadness, we can catch it. We can hopefully stop the mind from thinking those thoughts and redirect the mind and the focus in a new direction. And the byproduct of that will be feeling less sad or eliminating sadness altogether at some point, potentially where it becomes an exception, for sure, at the very least, and definitely not the norm as it can become for any of us at times. We can all get caught in different loops within the mind that fuel a variety of different emotions if we don't understand how to train this stuff, which you're clearly going to know how because you're watching this training. 


And so, if you look at what the mind is doing when sadness is present, the mind is focusing on a few key things. As I always say, the mind is focusing on the absence of something when we feel sad. And it can do that in a couple of different ways. Essentially, it's focusing on something that we tend to have lost or something we believe we're going to lose in the future. And we're in the experience of that loss by way of focusing on it and putting our attention there. And it can literally be anything. It could be, man, I've lost my athletic ability from when I was younger. I've lost my health. I've lost my vitality. I've lost my youth, right? It could be I lost money that I used to have, right? I don't have as much as I used to have. It could be I lost a job. It could be I lost someone, you know, six months ago or ten years ago or thirty years ago, it doesn't matter, the length of time that goes by, if we're focusing on the loss of somebody and the things that we no longer have in that way. Like, it's gonna, it's gonna propagate us feeling sad, and it's gonna keep that sadness alive so long as we're focused on the perception of what we lost. 


We can also go into the future of what we perceive or anticipate we're gonna lose. Like, I'm gonna lose all the money I made, or I'm not gonna be healthy forever. Like, I'm getting older and I'm gonna lose my health, I'm gonna lose my vitality, I'm gonna lose my friendships. I'm gonna lose the people around me. I'll probably lose my job one day, right? It's like, no matter where it is, we are focusing in relationship to our life, if we're focused on the theme of what I'm going to lose or what I have lost, then the byproduct of that is going to be sadness. Now, as I said, we don't have to focus on something that we lost to feel sad. We can actually feel sad just by focusing on the absence of something, something that we maybe never have had. 


And so sometimes we can go, man, I've never really known love. And so now I'm feeling sad over something that I never even had. Like, I'm creating a fantasy, probably, about, you know, from, like, the Disney Channel, about what love is. And then I go, oh, my God, I've never known love the way other people have known it. But you're only creating this idea. You might have known love exactly as other people have known it. You might have known love in even a more profound way than most people have ever known. And it would be irrelevant, because if you're focusing on the absence of it, I've never known love in the way that's possible, well, then, no matter what love you know or have, you're going to be focusing on this abstract idea of the love you've never had, and therefore, you're always going to feel sad. Definitely not that love that you're looking for. 


Or we could focus on, man, what would it be like to be a billionaire? Right? I'm not, I'm not a billionaire. I've never had that before. Or I don't have more money, I'd like to be a millionaire. I'd like to make 100,000 a year, and I make 50. And so it's like, you can actually create sadness by focusing on the absence of something. Now, it's not something you lost because you never had it. But if we're just focusing on what we don't have, what we don't have, what we don't have, what we don't have, again, the byproduct of that is going to be sadness. And so if we focus on what we lose or that which we don't have, then sadness is going to be present. There's a lot of ways to focus on the absence of something if we, if we try. And the more we practice anything, the better we're going to get at it. Like, some people are really good at focusing on the absence of stuff, but you could get equally good at focusing on the presence of stuff. 


You could focus on the people who are in your life the health that you do have, the vitality you have, the opportunities you have, the gratitude that you have for the time that you were able to spend with the people who passed away, in the values that they imparted on you, and the memories in which you still get to hold on to, and the time in which you got to share with them. And that would lead you to feeling gratitude and inspiration and love, as opposed to sadness. And so we can focus on the same area of life and focus on the presence of something, as opposed to the absence of something or what we're going to attain, as opposed to what we're losing or have lost. And it's a game changer. 


And so, remember, whenever you notice that you're feeling sad, check in. Where is the mind focusing right now? I find it's even helpful sometimes to just write down, word for word, what you notice your mind is thinking, thought for thought, and then ask the question, am I focusing on a loss, on something I've lost here, or something I perceive I'm going to lose? Or am I focusing on the absence of something? And what you're going to find is that whenever you're feeling sad, you're focusing either the mind is focusing either on a loss of some sort in the past, in the future, or the absence of something. Something that we perceive is not there that we want. And before you know it, the byproduct of that's going to be sadness. And so if we want sadness to evolve or go away, you know, don't look to try to fix the sadness. Fix the strategy going on in the mind. Change the theme in the mind. Change the theme in the mind. Change your focus, change your attention. Then the emotion is going to tend to follow. 


And so, play with this over the next few weeks. See how it works for you.See if you notice this correlation that when sadness is present, you know, these themes in the mind are focused on loss or the absence of something. And learn to think about your emotions as more a radar system that's informing where you are at, as opposed to informing you about what to do. And so what I mean by that is, when you look at how you're feeling, you go, man, I feel sad. Sadness is letting me know that where I'm at is I'm focusing on the loss of something. I'm focused on the absence of something. That's where I am in that moment. And it's just letting me know or trying to remind me, hey, we can redirect. We can go somewhere different in this moment, but in order to do that, we've got to not validate the emotion in the way that we think it's trying to tell us something or assume that there's something wrong just because we feel sad. It's just an indication of something we're doing. Think of emotions more and more as just indications of where we are and something we're doing, as opposed to an authority to determine or inform about what's going on in our life or for ourself. All right, so hopefully that was helpful. Enjoy, and we'll see you next time.