Regulate

You don’t feel well?

Regulate.

Things aren’t going according to plan?

Regulate.

Someone pisses you off?

Regulate.

Life suddenly throws something at you that you weren’t expecting?

Regulate.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

A regulated man is a calibrated man.

When you’re regulated, you can actually see what’s happening in front of you.

You can take proper action.

You can respond accordingly.

And I think that’s important because we live in a dynamic world.

Everything is moving around you.

People change.

Plans change.

Relationships change.

Your body changes.

Your environment changes.

Sometimes, life moves in a direction you didn’t fucking expect.

And if your internal state is constantly being thrown around by everything happening externally, you’re going to have a hard time navigating it.

So maybe the skill isn’t controlling everything around you.

Maybe the skill is learning how to regulate yourself while everything around you keeps moving.

Learn to flow.

Learn to adapt.

Learn to self-regulate.

It’s about learning how to ride the waves of life.

Because the waves aren’t going away.

You can either spend your life trying to stop the ocean or learn how to stay on the board.

Nothing can faze you when you’re as regulated as fuck.

And I’m not saying I have mastered this.

Far from it.

Sometimes I still feel things heavily in my chest.

Sometimes an event can completely occupy my mind.

Sometimes I want to react immediately.

But I’m learning to keep steady.

To let the wave come.

To feel it.

And then to ride it.

It’s actually pretty simple.

Box breathing.

I slow down my breathing and give my nervous system a chance to settle.

Pauses.

A huge amount of pauses.

I’ve realized that I don’t always need to immediately respond to everything.

Sometimes the best move is to stop.

Stop escaping.

This one is probably the hardest.

Instead of distracting myself from what’s happening inside me, I sit with it.

I face the thought.

I write it down.

I process it.

I understand what’s actually happening.

And then—

I act.

Not from the first emotional impulse.

But from a more calibrated place.

That’s really it.

Regulate before you react.

Pause before you decide.

Feel before you escape.

Process before you act.

Because the goal isn’t to become someone who doesn’t feel.

The goal is to become someone who can feel deeply without being controlled by everything he feels.

Life will keep throwing waves at us.

I don’t think we need a calmer ocean.

I think we need to become better surfers.