Imagine having an AI that knows you in and out.

Elon’s brain chip implemented in you.

It knows all your conversations,

measures all your bio markers,

and can tell you when you need to take a break, fully learn into your work, or do some sports.

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Always knowing the next step…

Always living in balance and in touch with what you need at the moment.

Aren’t people like Bryan Johnson, living after his Algorithm, paving the way to a better future?

Given our day and age, this seems to be a dream…

But what if you don’t need to wait for that? For technology to progress. To hope for some fix that suddenly makes life worth living…

What if I told you instead, that you carry the potential of a powerful intelligence with you.

Not an artificial one…

…but a natural one.

One that can help you to not only not be miserable…

…but one that is designed to help you flourish as a human being.

To see yourself properly unfolding.

To really live in true alignment with yourself.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if that were the case..?

A Mental Health Epidemic

According to psychologists like Jonathan Haidt, we are going through a mental health epidemic.

Especially for GenZ, the rates of anxiety and depression are shooting through the roof.

There seem to be multiple reasons for this:

• Too much adult supervision during childhood.

• Too little opportunity to explore the world by yourself and show yourself that you can deal with uncertainty.

• Too much time spent on the phone and

• too little time spend interacting with other people or spending time with nature.

Too little time to truly feel.

To truly experience.

All in all, there seems to be so much order in our lives, that we have lost the ability to deal with chaos.

To make things worse, we are dealing with this situation in the stupidest possible ways.

On the one hand, people are overly caring. They treat every bit of negative emotion as a sign that a person has trauma. That they are fundamentally broken and need a fix. From this perspective, people are seen as fragile and not able to withstand the turbulences of the flight that is life. And so, we need to protect them. But by doing so, we aren’t even allowing them to fly (because that would be to dangerous).

There is also the other side of the extreme… People who completely reject the notion of depression and anxiety. People who claim that it is just an illusion. People who say that it does not matter how you feel.

Both of these seem to come in part from a perspective that misreads the Stoics. Rather than seeing it as a philosophy aiming at living a good life in alignment with one’s Self and emotions, it is seen as a macho way of suppressing emotions – because apparently being in touch with your emotions is weak…

The first group of people fully reject this, and therefore paddle in the opposite direction.

The second group fully agrees, and full lean into this.

Yet, both are wrong…

But what were the Stoics (and other traditions of emotional mastery and integration) really about?

Could it be that there is a deeper understanding to them?

And could it be that we actually now know how to make use of those teaching? Could it be that we have actually managed to master them, from a scientific perspective? Could it be that we actually know what you can do to do the emotional work – to integrate your emotions into a unified whole – and thereby reach another level of human experience?

“YES!” is the answer to all these questions…

So, let’s have a look at what we know…

Understanding Emotions

Before I will share the details and specific steps of emotional work that you can do – and tell you how I integrated this into my life – we first need to understand what emotions are and how they come about…

Because when I later let you loose on your own emotions, I want you to not only understand what to do, but also why to do it in that particular way…

A Linear Model of Emotion

The first thing to understand about emotions is to understand how they arise. Understanding this helps us to understand what they actually are…

The basic linear model of emotions goes like this:

1. You are in a situation that contains a trigger

2. You pay attention to the trigger within that situation

3. You evaluate the meaning of the trigger

4. You respond in a particular way (both by having emotions and with behaviour)

Try to think through this model.

Think back to the last time you had a semi-strong emotion.

What was the situation?

How did you pay attention?

How did you evaluate what happened?

How did you respond (what emotions did you feel and how did you act)?

Really… take a second to do this now!

Chances are, you can map your experience onto this model quite nicely…

Yet, this model misses two crucial points:

• It overestimates the importance of attention

• It misses the point of recurring situations

What I mean by the first point is this: You are not aware of everything that is going on within yourself…

In fact, your conscious mind only processes about 0.05% of the information that you process in total at any given point in time. Most of the processing is happening unconsciously.

And this means that you respond emotionally to something without actually being aware of it. You only notice the emotion, but you don’t know where it came from. What the situation was. And what triggered it…

The second point is equally important… It’s not like you have a situation, pay attention to a trigger in it, evaluate the trigger, and then have a response.

I mean, that does happen (more or less). But it completely misses the point of recurrence: You often find yourself in the same situation again and again… (especially if you haven’t learned to live in alignment with your emotions)…

So, how can we adapt the model from above to better fit reality?

Upgrade: The Cyclical Model of Emotion

We start with point two: the missing of recurrence.

To overcome this problem, we can simply add the 5^th step to the model:

Reflection.

Now the model looks like this:

What the reflection step allows you to do is to learn from your emotional response.

It is the step that helps you break out of the never-ending cycle of being a slave to your emotions. It allows you to take a step back, once the emotions have faded, and to analyse what has happened, what you would have liked to have happened, and how you can respond better in the future.

The whole point here is twofold.

1. To adapt your behaviour across time and

2. To learn to understand the language of emotion

This is aligned with what Alex Hormozi’s definition of intelligence.

According to him, intelligence is the speed at which you adapt your behaviour after making a mistake or learning something new.

Now, having emotions is clearly not a mistake…

…but you can learn from them.

…If you can get to the higher levels of emotional processing.

The Hierarchy of Emotional Processing

The ability to deal with and process one’s emotions can be categorised into three distinct levels of a hierarchy.

Let’s go through them one-by-one…

Level 1: Uncontrolled Expression

Uncontrolled Expression is the lowest level of the emotional processing hierarchy. It’s basically a straight line between input and output.

Something happens. You attend to it. Evaluate it. And then respond.

But at this level, this happens so quickly that it seems almost instant. It feels like: situation → emotion.

This is not unlike how animals behave.

Animals find themselves in different situations throughout their day. They attend to what’s happening around them and their nervous system evaluates it. If something unexpected and frightening happens, the animal might run away. Simply because its evolutionary programming “told” it to do so.

There is no control… No stopping and evaluating whether one’s evaluation was right.

At this level the five steps of the emotional process are happening on autopilot. Very quickly, but not necessarily accurate. The reflection step basically doesn’t happen at all (although there might be some implicit – and uncontrolled – learning happening).

So, when it came to us humans, we needed a better system…

Level 2: Controlled Suppression

As we humans started to become more like humans and started to form more stable tribes and later on societies, we needed to get a better grasp of our emotions.

Just think about it. The environments in which our evolutionary programming was developed – the programming that mostly runs level 1 – are completely different from the environments we find ourselves in today.

We are not just interacting with the people of our tribe that we know well. We are dealing with strangers that we have never seen before and will never see again, on a daily basis.

Instead of hunting and gathering, we are sitting in one room for most of the day, looking at a screen and typing at a keyboard.

Most people don’t move as much as they should and simply go through the same routine day in and day out.

This is not a recipe for a stable emotional life.

And so, we needed to learn to control our emotions.

And the primary form via which we did and still do that is suppression.

Think about it: What would happen if everybody would just let their emotions out? At work. When shopping for groceries. In the park…

You wouldn’t be too happy about it.

Chances are you have seen someone be really REALLY angry in public. What was your response? Definitely not happiness… Most likely something like alertness and a bit of anxiety about whether the person might do something bad…

So, we – as individual humans and as societies – learned to suppress our emotions in the right moments.

But this created a couple of problems:

• It made us see emotions as something to be controlled

• It made us suppress our emotions too frequently

• It made us lose touch with our emotions

Basically, what happened was that we got ourselves into a situation where each child as they grow up learn that their emotions are something that needs to be suppressed or controlled. And as we found out above, that has some good reasons. But the problem is that the kids never get told this by their parents, because the parents themselves don’t really know this.

And so, we are missing a crucial point…

And to get this point, we need to rise to a higher level of emotional processing…

Level 3: Integrated Processing

Finally, we are at the highest level. This is what we came here for.

So, what makes it different?

You step into this level of the emotion processing hierarchy when you shake your belief that emotions are something to always be controlled. Rather than trying to manipulate or avoid your emotions, you see them as a source of information.

You not only learn to accept them,

But you show genuine interest in them.

Because you know that they hold valuable information that can help you to

• Find purpose in life

• Get to know yourself

• Set & Reach your goals

This level finally integrated the two shortcomings of the linear model of emotional processing that we discussed earlier.

It’s whole purpose is to learn and integrate your emotions properly so

• It helps you to reflect and learn from your emotions (think back to Alex Hormozi’s idea of intelligence)

And it emphasized the role of active engagement with emotions to learn from them:

• It helps you to master your attention and use it to learn from emotions effectively

You are most likely at Level 2 of the emotional processing hierarchy.

And given that you read this, I assume you would like to get higher…

So, how can you reach the highest level?

How can you become a integrated emotional processor?

And, how does that even look like?

The Three Steps of Integrated Emotional Processing

Integrated Emotional Processing (IEP) starts with zooming out.

It immediately goes beyond emotions alone.

Because it recognises that emotional regulation or processing is not about regulating emotions.

It’s about flourishing.

It’s about becoming the best version of yourself. Living the best possible life. Finding your answers to the question of “How Good Could Life Be?”.

Simply put, it’s about transcending the desire to overcome negative emotion and committing oneself to a life well lived. And because IEP aims at integrating our emotions with the rest of the self, it plays a central role in this.

But how can you actually do this?

What are the steps of Integrated Emotion Processing?

Step 1: Open Receptivity

Basically, what the first step is all about it is mindfulness.

Simply paying attention to your emotions. Not shutting them out. But taking them for what they are, without yet evaluating them. No labels. No explanations. Just the raw feeling.

This in itself is a step that, when I got better at it, really transformed my relationship to my emotions.

Before, I was really captured by my emotions – especially anger or frustration – when they came around.

But simply by showing active interest in the emotions, inviting them, and exploring how they feel, I managed to already take quite some wind out of their sails.

You can practise this through the day when anything happens that you dislike.

For example, you might be walking or cycling outside, and it starts to rain. Your first response is “F*ck, that’s so annoying”.

But then you stop. You notice that the rain is not annoying… You interpret it as annoying. Because the rain just is (you can literally say the last sentence to yourself in your head; it works wonders).

It might take a couple of tries, but if you start doing this with mild annoyances first and work yourself up, you will quickly see that it is actually quite interesting to explore your emotions that way (at least that’s how it was for me).

You can also combine it with some general practises for taking control over how your mind reacts to what’s happening in the world to get even better effects.

But why would we actually do this? Why does paying attention to your own emotion and really investigating them is something worthwhile doing?

Here’s why: Emotion = Information.

This is true at lower levels of emotional processing too. For animals, they get an emotion – an impulse – of fear which gives them the information, “you should run away”.

At the second level, people already have an idea that emotions signal important information. But they don’t yet dare to take a look at those information.

But at the third level, things are different.

It’s for people who don’t want to settle for a mediocre life. It’s for people who want to whole damn thing. As good as it could possibly be…

At the third level you start to recognise consciously that emotions can hold valuable information. You consciously decide to lean into them to extract the information –even if it feels uncomfortable from time to time…

Because what you will find when you face your emotions, is that they tell you something important about yourself. They tell you about your goals. They tell you, what you truly value.

Simply put, they can tell you:

1. What obstacles (internal or external) you are currently facing in relation to your goals and

2. What goals you are currently pursuing unconsciously…

Here is why that works:

As we already learned above, your conscious mind only processes about 0.05% of all of the information that you process. Meaning most of the processing is happening via your unconscious mind.

And it mostly communicates via…

Emotions.

And it’s your job to extract or translate these emotions… which is step two of integrated emotional processing…

Step 2: Active Exploration Driven By Curiosity

After having invited in your emotions, it is time to actively explore them.

This is the step of extraction (or translation) of the information that are hidden in the emotions.

This means you can basically think about your emotions as a different language that you have to learn. Which is exciting. Because until now, you have simply neglected all the opportunities – all the emotions – your body and mind has thrown at you. But now…

You will be able to full tap into them.

Basically, what we are trying to do here at this stage is to find out what our emotions are trying to tell us.

Remember that they can tell you something about obstacles and opportunities in relation to your goals, or your goals themselves…

Here is how this works.

Imagine you are working towards an important goal of yours: finding a job.

You found a really nice position that you would love working at. At prepared your CV. You wrote the motivation letter. Now the deadline is coming closer, and you are ready to send out the application.

But when you click send, nothing happens… You check. And yess…

Your Wifi cut out again.

How do you react?

There are three broad ways in which you may react:

1. With negative emotion (anger, fear, panic)

2. Not at all (indifference)

3. With positive emotion (e.g., relief)

Now, what can the first one tell you?

That’s what you are here to explore at the second step of IEP.

It likely means something like “I actually value my goal of getting this job and the internet cutting out is an obstacle to this goal – that’s why I feel negative emotion in relation to it”.

Does that make sense to you?

Do you see how this happens in your own life? Take a second to think about a time in which you felt a negative emotion while you were working towards a goal… Then, try to interpret it from the frame that I outlined above.

Amazing! You just did your first emotional-information extraction!

But what with the other two ways of responding? What can they tell you about?

You might also react with indifference to the Wifi cutting out. Why? You might be surprised by this yourself…

What does this tell you?

It could tell you that maybe you don’t actually care about this job. Maybe you just have no real emotional attachment to getting it. And so, what you thought was a goal, might not have been your goal. It might have been set for you by someone else…

And what about the positive reaction to the internet cutting out?

It could tell you a similar thing… It could tell you that maybe getting this job that you are applying to is actually an anti-goal. You don’t actually want it. But you feel forced to do it. And so, when something interferes with this goal, you are not annoyed… but delighted.

Don’t underestimate how much we do this. We have plenty of goals that are not set by us… And our emotions are one way of finding them and removing them from our lives…

All of the examples serve to highlight how you can go about extracting information from your emotions.

Just sit with it.

Then explore it.

Really ask yourself: Why am I feeling this? What is my unconscious mind trying to tell me.

Based on the answer you find…

…you can move on to step three…

Step 3: Informed Response

With the third step, you conclude what has been a true hero’s journey.

1. The emotion was the call to adventure

2. Your open receptivity was your acceptance of that call

3. Your exploration was the venture into the darkness where you faced your inner demons.

And now it is time to emerge as a more fully integrated person. 

From the depth of your emotions, you learned something.

It is not time to do something with this learning.

Only by turning your learnings into actions will you conclude the hero’s journey. And bring what you learned into the real world.

Given that we are talking about emotions, this usually comes in one of two ways:

• Informed Reappraisal: You notice that your emotion is not helpful, and you consciously decide to interpret the situation differently.

• Informed Expression: You notice that there is a deeper truth to the emotion, and you decide on how to express it accurately.

How this looks like depends on the type of emotion you felt, the complexity of the situation, and many other factors.

There is no template. So, this is where your intelligence comes in.

Your goal here is to express what you have learned in a way that benefits you (and ideally even the people around you).

It is a kind of problem solving.

It’s a different piece of the puzzle.

But you have already done the majority of the work.

You have dug up the pieces from underground.

You have already put them together.

Now it’s on you to act on the picture that you see.

How to Do This in Practise?

This post is already quite long…

But I don’t want to leave you with just theory.

So, let’s wrap it up with some practical exercises.

1. Setting Up the Right Environment

Before going into any of the specific practises that I outline below, it’s important to set up the right environment.

I don’t really mean a physical environment (although that is also important).

What I do mean is a mental environment…

One of unconditional regard.

What I mean by this is that it’s important to approach these exercises from a place of compassion and self-love.

I know this sounds very new-agy (and it kind of is) but what it basically means is this: You show enough courage to accept yourself with all your flaws and virtues. You accept everything that your unconscious mind might throw at you.

This is important, because we know from research that conditional regard (only accepting yourself or others on specific terms) undermines full human flourishing.

And given that I know that you want everything out of life, setting up a mental environment of unconditional regard is key…

2. Daily Practise

Based on this mental environment of unconditional regard you want to engage in daily practise.

This is easy, because you have emotions all day long.

The trick here is to start small…

If you haven’t gone to the gym ever, you are not starting by dropping a 150kg bar through your skull while trying to bench press it.

Similarly, here you are not trying to tackle the most difficult emotions first.

Start with mild annoyances.

Things that bug you but don’t really undermine your current identity (that stuff comes later).

The great thing is that it is super easy to induce a integrative emotional processing approach at will. Researchers do it with their subjects all the time, so you can do it with yourself.

This only takes a small reminder before you start diving into a specific emotion:

“I will try to take an active interest in my emotions”

I know that this is so simple that it feel really silly. But this is how researchers induce IEP in their research subjects. And it shows significant differences on well-being measures for the people who actually show interest in their emotions.

So, simply remind yourself to take an active interest in your emotions from time to time.

3. Some Examples

Before I leave, I want to give you some examples of how this can look in practise.

Example 1: The Urge to Breath

Technically, you are not processing an emotion with this exercise. But it’s close enough so that you can get benefits from this that you can then translate to your emotion regulation skills.

The exercise is simple.

Breath out all your air. Hold. Go through the IEP steps.

1. Be open to the feeling of craving air

2. Dive into it. Really explore how it feels when your body is screaming for oxygen

3. Make an informed response. Try to withstand the urge to breath in for a bit (but not for too long of course!). This is the same muscle that you can use to withstand expressing emotions in unwanted situations.

The great thing about this exercise is that you can do it at will. You don’t need to wait until some emotion arises. But when it does, you will be ready because you practised with this…

Example 2: Simple Emotions

We already encountered an example of a simple emotion:

It starts to rain while you cycle.

Here again, simply take a second to remind yourself that you take a deep interest in your emotions.

Then, go through the IEP steps:

1. Recognise how the annoyance about the rain feels.

2. Explore this annoyance. Where is it coming from? Is it justified?

3. Make an informed response. I like thinking “The rain just is” and also just explores how it feels to cycle in the rain. This turns it from an annoying to an interesting experience (at least for me)

Example 3: Complex Emotions

Some emotions are more complex. They take more time to process.

Here, you can help yourself by combining different approaches.

Apply the three IEP steps in different ways.

For instance, when I started out with writing online, I often felt a pressure in my chest. It was like someone was slightly pressing on my lungs.

This made me feel constrained – locked in…

I tried to tackle this in two ways:

1. I simply sat with this feeling and applied the three IEP steps to it.

2. I journaled about this feeling and tried to dissect where it could come from.

Through this I learned that this feeling always arises when I approach writing online form a scarcity mindset. When I fooled myself into thinking that I “have to” do this.

Now that I know this, I can remind myself of this insight. And when I catch myself fin this mindset, it is easier to break out of it…

So…

Some emotions and experiences simply are too complex to be dealt with in a single session. Don’t hold yourself to a single approach. You can apply the three IEP steps in different ways.

I hope I gave you a good mixture of theory and practise above.

Now it’s your turn.

Now Go and Do!

Much Success With It!

All the best,
Niklas