Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships, we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Ann O'Hare, and this is The Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare and I'm your host. And today we will be talking about Excitement. Is excitement healthy? Is it good for us? We're going to take a little look and see, but before we begin, please consider like sharing and subscribing. You know that this helps us to get our content out to many more people. And please also consider sharing with your friends and family so that they can benefit as well. So excitement. This is a very important topic for me. As you know, if you've been watching the podcast, I grew up in New York in the Northeast on Long Island and I grew up in a, I'm going to say the background, it doesn't really matter. But. But maybe there's still some truth to it that makes sense to somebody. I grew up in an Italian Irish background household. And in this particular case, there was a lot of drama. There was a lot of dramatic emotional ways of talking, yelling. There's this joke that Italians. When they say, stop yelling at me, they say, no, that's just the way I talk, right? It's a joke. I mean, you could say it about other nationalities too, but I'm not picking on anybody in particular. I'm just saying that that's the way I grew up, uh, in a very active, excited kind of state. It was like almost, there was always a crisis mode. It felt like a crisis. Everything was always heightened. I remember before I moved to Florida, And I was 36 years old when I moved to Florida, but I remember move, remember before I moved thinking that the energy in New York is very frenetic. Like a raw nerve and it's always like that. And I was happy to leave it actually because I wanted a calmer environment and Florida is definitely a more laid back lifestyle and environment. So that really did help. Today we're talking about excitement and I'm bringing it up and telling my background because I grew up in an environment where excitement was seen as good or you really care or if you if you're not excited and you're not emoting and being dramatic about the situation, you don't really care. So it definitely was seen as a positive thing. Have you ever heard people say, are you excited? Are you excited about your birthday? Are you excited about your trip? Are you excited about this? Are you excited about that? I guess it's just something that people say because they're trying to have an opening about talking to you about the thing and maybe having a positive feeling, but I'm going to challenge this idea of excitement today. And I'm going to say that it's not really healthy for us to be in an excited state. And so I wrote a few things down. There are a couple of things that are related to excitement. And I'm going to say that if you're excited a lot, it may predispose you to some of these things like anxiety, stress, elevated blood pressure, elevated heart rate, increased mental activity. Disturbed sleep, inability to rest, inability to calm down, inability to meditate. So what am I saying? If I have the habit of being excited or excitable and then I tell myself, okay, time to meditate or okay, time to go to sleep or okay, it's kind of like a fire hose. You know how like it's a fire hose versus a garden hose. Like let's say the situation needs a garden hose, but you come in with a fire hose. So if I'm always on that level, it's going to have an impact on my body. It's going to have an impact on my mind. It's going to have an impact on my sleep. It's going to have an impact on my health. It's going to have an impact on my relationships. One of the things that was hard for me to understand and still, I'm still working on it to be honest with all of you, I'm still working on it, is the idea that I can be calm and still get everything done. Or I can be calm. And have good relationships or be honest, be calm and be honest, be calm and get things done. Be calm and be happy. I was wired, I'm wired to think that emotions go with those things. So maybe it's not healthy. Is there a possibility to live a peaceful life? I'm sharing this with you. It's interesting that as I'm doing these podcasts, as you know, if you've been watching, I'm sharing from my own experience and I'm sharing from the heart, I'm sharing from my own understanding. This is an area that I'm actually working on now. So I want to share with you, maybe the difficulties I'm having, I'm having a hard time slowing down the mind. Still, I'm still having a hard time letting go of certain habits and certain, activities, maybe, you know, looking at certain social media or screen time or whatever, or even activity, always having something to do. It's a lot better than it was. I still feel that I could do more to feel calm while I'm talking, calm while I'm doing dishes, while I'm, so this idea of not engaging that sympathetic nervous system, I think our culture has, made excitement so normal and so natural that we think it's nor, we, we think that it's positive, like productive. This is another thing that meditation helps us with just one thing. Like for instance, if I say I'm a peaceful soul, if I sit down for meditation and I tell myself, I'm a peaceful soul, and then I see myself excited. Think about it. For those of you who are watching, I'm sure some of you maybe have anxiety or something like that. Get in touch with your body for a minute. Feel, is there tension in your body just as you're sitting listening? Is there tension? Is there excitement? Is there kind of a, is the engine kind of revving in your nervous system? I have a feeling that a lot of us have this thing. So I, I'm saying today that maybe excitement is not positive. I mean, it's not bad. It's just not necessary and it's not healthy. I was sharing in a recent episode about, I have this colleague at work who's very calm. There's some people who do have a calm personality. I do feel that. We need to take a look, a more discerning look at excitement. I think one of the other downsides of excitement is disappointment. Like if I'm revved up about something and then it doesn't happen, then all of a sudden I get disappointed. It's almost like that emotional investment kind of thing. But even that, I want to say that even emotional investment has some kind of validity to it. Excitement doesn't even have validity. Think about it. Why do I have to be excited about this? I'm not saying it's never appropriate to be excited. I mean, obviously it's part of our, you know, part of our physiology, but do I have to get excited when, I'm getting ready for work? Do I have to get excited? Excited meaning stress or over overstimulation of my nervous system, overthinking, over emotional, over talking, difficult to rest. As I'm sharing this, I just think that it's, it's, unfortunate in a Maybe not unfortunate, but it's It, it makes me feel compassion for myself that it's, that thing is kind of running in the background, but what it's doing, the positive thing is that I have something to work on, but also it's helping me, it's helping me to be able to talk to all of you also because I understand it. I remember one time I was watching one of these, guru type people, like a spiritual person speaking on an interview. And the person asked her, well, what do you do about, you know, beating yourself up? Or what do you do about like if you are mad at yourself or something? And she says, well, I never get mad at myself and I never beat myself up. And I thought to myself, well, then how can you talk about it? So I want to say that for any of you out there that have. I'm not just talking about anxiety, but I'm talking about excitement, like getting excited all the time. The nervous system is firing, right? Too much. So any of you that have that out there, realize that if you want to work on it or whatever, the fact that you have it is actually setting you up to help others too. So everything that we have as a principle, every issue, every thing that we're trying to heal or get better or transform is actually a platform for us to help others once we get a handle on it, right? So I'm going to leave it there. It was a little bit of a short episode, but what I want is to say that just to bring forth the idea that. Excitement isn't necessarily good. And what would it be like if I didn't have to be excited? One last thing I'll say, you know, this thing about celebrations and I have to celebrate the birthday. We got to do Christmas. We got to do this. We got to do that. It's fine if you love it and you have the energy for it and everything it's fine But I think that a lot of people at least I know for me, but I know other people too It's a lot. It's a lot to ask you have to generate this energy and you have to and you feel like I know I might be going against some people's ideas right here, what I'm saying, but I'm talking specifically about overdoing it, overstimulation. How can we be calm and take care of ourselves when we have to push ourselves and push and push and push, whether it's overworking, overexcitement, overemotions, no rest, so I would say today, take a look when you say, are you excited? Do I need to be excited? Maybe not. Maybe I can try to be calm. So I'll leave it there. Remember our slogan is heal, empower, and serve. And in this case, I would say that if we take a look at excitement and we learn how to be calm and we learn how to value peace and how to value calmness. That, that would have a positive impact on me, my relationships, my health, and also my future would impact my decision making too, right? So thank you all for being here and until next time, take care. You
