Ride the Baseline

For a long time, I thought being in control of my emotions meant not having them.

Don't get too angry.

Don't get too anxious.

Don't get too excited.

Stay calm.

Keep everything level.

But that's not how life works.

And I'm not sure that's how we're supposed to work either.

We have emotions for a reason. They communicate something to us. They communicate something to others. They can organize us and motivate us to take action.

The problem isn't that we feel.

The problem begins when what we feel takes control of what we do next.

That's where the baseline comes in.

What Is the Baseline?

I don't think of the baseline as a perfectly straight emotional line.

I think of it more like riding a wave.

Life moves us.

We experience anger, fear, excitement, disappointment, sadness, anxiety, joy, frustration and everything in between.

Sometimes those emotions are small.

Sometimes they're enormous.

Riding the baseline isn't about making the waves disappear.

It's learning how to experience them without allowing every rise and fall to determine who we become in the moment.

I learned this in a very real way standing at an accident scene.

I arrived at the corner of two one-way streets and saw an ambulance, a fire truck and a police car.

Traffic was backed up.

Both roads had been reduced to a single lane.

And sitting in the middle of all of it was one of my company's trucks.

My logo was right there on the side for everyone to see.

My mind took off.

The business is over.

I'm done.

Everyone can see this.

Those thoughts felt completely real.

And the emotions attached to them were real too.

But there's an important distinction I've learned to make:

What I feel is real. What I'm telling myself may not be.

Those first thoughts were my perception of what was happening.

They weren't necessarily the truth.

That's where the tools mattered.

Notice. Stop. Replace.

One of the earliest lessons I learned about changing my responses was simple:

Notice.

Stop.

Replace.

Notice what is happening inside you.

Stop the automatic reaction long enough to examine it.

Then replace what isn't serving you.

But there's an important piece of this:

We aren't replacing the emotion.

I didn't need to replace fear with happiness while standing at that accident.

I didn't need to pretend I wasn't worried.

I needed to examine the thoughts driving those emotions.

That's where the Perception vs. Perspective exercise came into play.

I began checking the facts.

An accident happened.

No one was hurt.

I had full auto coverage.

I had general liability insurance.

Vehicles could be repaired or replaced.

People couldn't.

The accident hadn't changed.

The truck hadn't magically fixed itself.

My emotions hadn't disappeared.

But my relationship to what was happening had changed.

I had found the baseline.

Finding It Is Only Part of It

Finding the baseline doesn't mean you've suddenly become emotionless.

It means you've found enough stability inside the emotion to decide what happens next.

And that's when something changed for me at that accident.

I had arrived as a business owner.

The business owner saw the truck.

The logo.

The traffic.

The liability.

The possible consequences.

But standing there, after checking the facts and getting underneath my first perceptions, I could see something else.

My son needed me.

The business owner could wait.

I needed to be Dad.

That was Choice.

The fear didn't have to disappear before I could make that choice.

That's riding the baseline.

Emotion and Reason Can Exist Together

Years ago, I was introduced to something called the Wise Mind.

Imagine two overlapping circles.

One is the emotional mind.

It can be intense, expressive, reactive, impulsive and hot.

The other is the reasonable mind.

It is controlled, fact-driven, logical and sometimes cold.

Wise Mind exists where the two overlap.

Emotion isn't removed.

Reason doesn't take over.

Both are allowed into the room.

When I first learned about Wise Mind, some of the words I wrote underneath it were:

Calm.In control.Intuition.Peace.Balanced.Intentional.

And underneath all of that, I wrote:

Set Wise Mind as an intention.

I didn't know then how much that idea would eventually influence the way I try to live.

Today, I see a strong connection between that lesson and riding the baseline.

We're not trying to live completely inside emotion.

We're also not trying to become cold, calculated people who reason our way out of everything we feel.

We're learning to hold both.

Pay Attention

Another definition I used to read every morning was this:

Mindfulness: paying attention, in the moment, on purpose, letting go of judgment.

That changed things for me.

Because you can't find the baseline if you don't notice you've moved away from it.

You have to pay attention.

What am I feeling?

What is this emotion trying to communicate?

What urge is coming with it?

What story am I telling myself?

Are the facts supporting that story?

What is another possibility?

What is the alternative?

Those questions create an opportunity to move from perception toward perspective.

Not necessarily a more comfortable perspective.

A more truthful one.

And from there, we have a better chance of making an intentional choice.

Sometimes We Don't Ride It

I wish I could say I do this every time.

I don't.

Sometimes I recognize what's happening while I'm in it.

Sometimes I don't recognize it until afterward.

Sometimes I ride the baseline.

Sometimes I get knocked completely off of it.

That's why this isn't about perfection.

It's about awareness and progress.

The more we practice noticing, the sooner we begin to recognize when emotion is taking us somewhere we don't want to go.

Maybe yesterday we noticed three hours later.

Today we noticed after twenty minutes.

Tomorrow maybe we'll notice while it's happening.

Eventually, maybe we'll notice before we react.

Awareness is the beginning of change.

And when we do get pulled away from the baseline, the work isn't to beat ourselves up for leaving it.

The work is finding our way back.

Ride It When You Can. Find Your Way Back When You Can't.

Life isn't going to stop creating waves.

There will be accidents.

Arguments.

Traffic.

Bills.

Loss.

Success.

Fear.

Love.

Grief.

Excitement.

The goal isn't to flatten all of that into one emotionless line.

The goal is to become better at living inside all of it.

To notice.

To pause.

To question our perception.

To find perspective.

To check the facts.

And then, while the emotion is still allowed to be there, to choose who we want to be.

That's what riding the baseline means to me.

Feel the emotion.

Find the baseline.

Ride it when you can.

Find your way back when you can't.

Because life is going to keep moving.

And maybe the goal was never to stop the waves.

Maybe it's learning how to ride them.