This year, I’ve decided to try stand-up comedy at least once. I have no expectation of what will happen; I simply think it would be a cool experience, and I know I’m scared to do it.
No matter what happens, I am absolutely certain that I will be happy to have done it.
Why then, am I still afraid of doing it?
Emotional vs Cognitive learning
I know cognitively that everything will be okay when I get up on stage, even if everybody hates it and nobody laughs. I know that with complete certainty. Emotionally, though, I’m not so sure.
This discrepancy happens to everybody, all the time. Cognitively, we know that eating sugar is bad for us, but emotionally, dessert sounds really good. Someone who is single and looking for a partner knows that talking to the attractive woman/man at the store would only lead to a potentially positive experience, yet emotionally is scared to do it and may avoid it.
Why does this difference exist? The mechanism for emotional learning is different from cognitive. We learn emotionally through emotional experiences, and we learn cognitively through reasoning with ideas. A teenager who has never experienced a hangover will drink much more recklessly than a 30-year-old who has felt that pain before. Both of them know that hangovers exist, but only the 30-year-old understands the fact on an emotional level.
Emotional learning requires experience. In some cases, emotional learning is possible through the experience of others, but it’s rare. If a family member gets terminally sick because of an unhealthy habit, the strong emotions associated with witnessing them go through that will likely lead to some emotional distaste for that habit.
Most things learned through books and other forms of teaching, then, are not emotionally learned. It is only the speakers and writers who can evoke emotion that accomplish this. That is the reason we learn more “deeply” through stories. They hit us on an emotional level. In general, though, advice only becomes knowledge once it has been followed (or not followed) and an experience has occurred.
Patience
Emotional learning takes time. I can reason through something in seconds and then know it forever (as long as my memory holds), but emotional learning is unconscious and therefore less predictable. Sometimes it takes many experiences before anything sets in.
That is one of the key understandings in this process that I have been coming to realize. My default ways of being are unconscious and ultimately directed by emotion. When I see patterns that I don’t like I may pick them out and analyze them, but it isn’t until I get a certain amount of experience with those patterns that anything changes. The period in between, when I see the pattern but have not emotionally learned to change it yet, can be very frustrating.
Learning on this level requires patience. The understanding often builds without recognition or effort. Set an intention to what you wish to learn, and then be patient. Give your mind time to understand the emotions.
Power of emotions
The flip side of the difficulty of emotional learning is the power of the knowledge once learned.
Once something is learned on an emotional level, we have those emotions on our side. Confidence, motivation, intuition - all are dependent on emotional learning.
Someone who has struggled to go to the gym for years may have someone compliment them after a few weeks of effort. That compliment gives them an emotional experience that feeds into their motivation. The next morning they’re excited to go to the gym and continue building on that compliment (or the emotion that hearing it gave them).
It also can be useful for negative emotions. Someone who texts and drives may get into a car accident. The strong emotions associated with that experience would likely lead to some fear or other negative emotions coming up when thinking about doing it again.
Understanding it more deeply
I don’t really have advice in this area, other than to just continue going through experiences and allowing learning to take place. Wanting change now is an understandable impulse, but it’s not realistic nor helpful when it comes to emotional learning. Be patient and understand that this type of learning comes through experience.
One of my favs. Would love another one deeper into subject in the future