Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. When most people ask, how are you? They aren't actually looking for an in-depth or even honest response.

It seems to be a societal norm to only exchange brief pleasantries such as I'm fine, how about you?

Followed by the equally generic and vague, I'm good. This ritual reflects how little

attention we give to the full range of our emotions, except of course for the

frequent complaints we are compelled to voice throughout the day.

Anything from the common, I'm so busy, which is often worn as a badge of honor for some reason,

to expressions like, I'm tired, I'm angry, or I'm irritated and fed up, all of which we freely express.

As a result, we rarely look deep within ourselves unless we are either fortunate enough to have

therapy sessions on a regular basis, or we have close friends who are genuinely

interested in our well-being.

Even then, people don't always listen, that just wait for their turn to speak.

So once again, our feelings go unacknowledged, unrecognized, and unchecked.

Historically, many of us were actually discouraged from expressing our feelings growing up.

Whether you want to blame toxic masculinity for it,

which urged boys to never show any emotion,

but just pretend to have answers

and act like you know what you're doing,

never cry and God forbid, don't you dare giggle like a little girl.

But women were also raised to hide their pain and anger for example because it wasn't ladylike.

So they went through life resilient but silent.

Until at some point they have had enough, so the pendulum swung in the other direction

and parents started raising their kids to cry when they want to cry and scream when they want to scream.

...