#131. The art of emotional self defense

Listen, most people think emotional defense or emotional self defense means caught in everybody off actin' on by that or pretended nothing gets to you. It's not strength, it's that's not what it's actually about. Real strength is when life keeps poking your soft spots and you still choose awareness over reaction. You make people who test you without knowing it. They'll say something sleek to see how easily you crack. They'll give to you for boundaries they never respected. They would twist stories to make you look unstable. And your body will want to react. It wants to react fast, loud, but that's how they win. Not because they're right but because they got you to step outside of yourself. And so you protect your peace by mastering pause. That is what this episode is about. The art of self defense. Every pause is a shield. Every silence is a message. You're saying I'm not letting you script my response. Emotional defense starts with studying your own triggers. Actually self what kind of comment makes you spiral? Who can ruin your day with one sentence? If they can control your mood they still own some parts of you. And ownership means access. If someone owns you means they have access to you any day any time because they know exactly how to trigger you. They know what to say and they'll poke and get right in. Ownership is access. You don't owe access to anyone who uses it against you. So the triggers people project to survive their own shame. They can't hold their pain so they throw it at you. If you catch it you carry it. If you let it drop they face it. So the moment you understand this you learn to see the difference between what belongs to you and what's just thrown at you. When someone tries to pull you into their storm you you have two options enter and drown with them or stand still and let them see their own reflection in your calm. Most people can't handle calm. It exposes them. Emotional control is not suppression. I say it all the time. In my communities and my one-on-one conversation with people I tell them that you being in control of your emotions does not mean you suppress that you sit down on them. That is even more dangerous because it turns you into something more analistic in the future. Emotional control is selection. You choose what deserves your response. You choose which stories to feed. You need to learn to outgrow that urge to prove your side. Oh they come with you with gussips and rumors. Oh I had they said "dada da da da" and you're like okay. Like why should you even be bothered? Why should you let it drain you? You choose one's silence is more than speeches ever could. Every time you hold your peace instead of defending your ego you gain power. Every time you respond from composure instead of pain you earn respect even from the ones trying to break you. I don't want you to confuse composure with weakness. There's a difference between staying still and being silent out of fear. Stillness is a decision. Fear is avoidance. Stillness is the special ones to get under my skin. They want me to freak out but I'm not gonna do that. Now the game flips right back at them. You see? But the thing when it comes to fear let's say you when you then about fear the fear kind of silence is it comes out like politeness. I don't want them to think I'm insulting. If I say it comes out as logic but in the real sense of what it actually is you are avoiding something. You are avoiding shame being shamed and avoiding being shamed. You are avoiding conflict. You are avoided. You don't want to be misunderstood. So this is the difference between these two kind of silences. Know which one you're practicing. And a lot of people practice the fear kind of silence. But that one would not do you good. It will get you to erase yourself to betray yourself every time. So now that I've explained it when you find yourself in conversations or situations that require you to shut yourself up betray yourself so that you avoid conflict. If you speak up they're gonna stop liking you. They're gonna stop wanting to hang out with you or they're gonna shame you or nobody's gonna believe you or if you say it just one way or another something is gonna happen. You need to kill that fear and you kill it by catching yourself any time you want to suppress your voice to matter. Once you do it you catch yourself like when you're about to cut when you're about to do it because that voice always comes like logic. It tries to negotiate with you. Don't don't speak up now. Don't say this then now. If you do it now everybody's gonna look at you a certain way. They're not gonna like you. That is where you do the azard opposite. You pause you breathe and you do the opposite of what they're expecting. Now the stillness kind of silence is situations that require your emotional reaction. Not response but reaction. You start crying you start proving yourself you start over explaining or justifying your worth. In that moment what you do is you calm down you look them in the eye or you just stay still. Stillness is just basically being present in your body. You're feeling those emotions but you're not letting the emotions tell you what to do. You're not letting the emotions do. It could actually tell you this is how you're feeling right now. You're being disrespected. This person is speaking over you. This person is saying something that you're not. But instead of crying and lashing out and trying to prove to this person that you are not who they are calling you, you calm down, you pause and you speak with clarity. Sometimes emotional self-defence looks like not texting back, not explaining, not showing up to prove you're good, just disappearing with dignity. Because when you stop arguing with delusion, delusion starts. So you're gonna be misunderstood. Someone would switch your words, play victim, make you the villain, and everything you will want to correct the record. But correction is currency. When you spend it on everybody, you go broke. You're not here to be understood by the confused. You're here to master your energy so thoroughly that confusion no longer rattles you. And so that's the first level of emotional defense knowing what's yours to fix and what's not. The second level is learning how to feel everything without leaking it everywhere. You can be angry and still graceful. You can be hurt and still calm. You can be disappointed and still composed. What is your power? Every reaction caused you presence, every other explanation caused you peace. Every emotional argument caused you clarity. The more you defend your position, the more you abandon your posture. So stay postured. Let your energy speak before your mouth does. People can sense when you're not moved. It unerves them. Because most people survive by controlling emotional temperature. When yours doesn't rise, they lose leverage. I want you to train yourself daily. Someone cut you off in traffic. Breathe. It could work out tries to undermine you. Smile. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep doing you. A friend takes a keep shot. Note it. Adjust. Access. Move on. Every minor incident is practice for major tests. You don't need to win the moment. You need to win yourself. Gain control of yourself. That is how you win. Emotional self-defense is actually self-possession. Keeping your turn, your calm, your center, while everything tries to pull you out of it. It's discipline. It's discipline of not becoming who they are while proving who you are. Every time you hold your tongue, you build power. Every time you stay grounded, you build reputation. The loudest person in the room is never the one that could true. When people are saying things to you, study what they're saying, you don't fight projection, you study it. You don't explain yourself to manipulation. You starve it. They're waiting for you to do this. You starve them. You starve them. That is your power. You don't match energy. You set the rhythm and make other people adapt to it. That is emotional self-defense. Sometimes people don't want peace with you. They want power over you. And when they can't get it, they call you distance, defensive, hard to love. You know how to love. You just finally to aware, to be easy to use. So accuse you of being cold because your empathy no longer pays their bills. They'll call you selfish because you stop giving what they never valued. But here's the thing. Boundaries feel like betrayal to those who benefit from your lack of them. And then about the sword we're living in is, it doesn't teach you how to protect your emotions with our guilt. It tells you to forgive endlessly, to always see the good, to keep understanding people who refuse to understand you. But they come to a point in life where compassion turns into self-neglet. And loving everybody means losing yourself. Real power is being gentle with people who don't deserve it, without actually letting them touch you again. You can wish someone well and still close the fucking door. You can love somebody and still not answer their call. You can care and still protect your peace, okay? A lot of people haven't messed up that balance. They either feel everything or nothing. But emotional self-defense leaves in the middle. You feel, but you don't fall. You care, but you don't chase. You notice, but you don't react. You learn that not every apology deserves access. Yes, you forgive them, but they don't have access. They can't just come and walk back in just because they say sorry. No, they say sorry. Oh, you're already forgiven. I forgive you the day we talked about this. I mean, even before they say sorry, you forgive them and move the fuck on. You're not waiting for them to say yourself free. They don't have that ownership over you. Not every explanation deserves energy. Not every fight deserves your presence, okay? Sometimes the highest form of emotional maturity is letting people misunderstand you. Let them misunderstand you. Don't know why you're so obsessed with people understanding you. That obsession is what keeps their leash around your neck really tight. Say yourself free. You notice your circle is shrink when you stop bleeding emotionally for free. Don't call it loneliness. Call it detox. You're detoxing. You're not losing people. You're losing liabilities, okay? The rail wants never need you. They never need your chaos to feel close to you. They don't need drama to feel alive. Most people are now used to being around someone who's emotionally disciplined. They call it distance because they can't manipulate it. They call it pride because they can't guilt it. They call it arrogance because they can't control it. You're going to confuse people who expect emotional depth from your kindness. You frustrate them. You frustrate people who build their worth on your reactions. And baby, that is fine, okay? It's completely fine. People always offend. They are unhield. On bad people, bad people. And so in the process of defending yourself emotionally, I want you to also stay soft, okay? Don't let that defense become your cage. Breathe, but also protected with intelligence. Protect your emotions, your center. Protected with intelligence. Be graceful and still be assertive, okay? It can show up as you being patient without complaining, right? It can be walking away without announcing it. It can be staying on buttocks without needing to prove your on buttocks. Okay? So you know you've mastered it when silence feels like protection, not punishment. You know you've mastered it when you stop needing closure, when you stop explaining your boundaries, when peace feels more addictive than attention. Like you're okay with. You, you enjoy your own company so if this person comes around or not, you're still going to be okay because you enjoy yourself, you enjoy being with yourself. And that is when life starts treating you differently because you finally treat yourself differently. It will start sensing that your emotions are no longer up for negotiation. They start approaching you with respect instead of assumption. They start testing less because your stillness tells them this one doesn't play emotional games, okay? So at the end of the day emotional self-defense is not about who wins, it's about who stays grounded long enough to move with clarity. You don't always need to get back at them, say that the more effective cursive word or throw fist to get revenge. You don't need the revenge. You just sometimes need composure. You don't always need to respond. Sometimes you just need to watch people expose themselves. Let them stare at their own foolishness. Let them just. That silence alone makes their stupidity equal. So next time someone tries to shake you, I want you to remember they are not testing your worth, they are testing your stability. You want to see if your peace is permanent or performative. And it's okay, let them test. You just breathe. Breathe. Pause, stay without pause, stay rooted. And remember what you took, what you took you to get to that point, to get here. Because you must have your emotions, you start being predictable. They expect to need to cry, to throw hands, throw tantrums, to call up in one corner and be sad or start proving yourself, proving that you are a good person, you are understanding, you are not the villain. But you don't do it. Once you start being predictable, you start being controllable. And once you start being controllable, you start being breakable. That's it. I appreciate you coming in here and I love you. I don't know what next we are going to do this. I didn't even think I was going to do a lot of episodes this year because I had so much planned for 2025 and I didn't think I would make time to do this. But eventually I did and I'm grateful that you guys have been with me and makes me happy to know that in some way I am shaking people up, awakening some parts of themselves that have been sleeping and most of the trying of things with myself that I never knew about. So yeah, it's been an amazing journey with you guys and I can't wait to do more, more stuff, more talking, more rumbling, more TED talk sessions with you guys over here and everywhere else.