Choose Your Reaction Or It Chooses You

When emotions run hot, one choice can change everything. Gary Wise lays out a clear, battle-tested way to slow the moment, tell the truth about what you feel, and make a response you won’t regret tomorrow. Drawing on decades of Navy leadership, teaching, fatherhood, and faith, we unpack why emotional intelligence matters more than ever in a world of constant comparison, instant judgment, and phones that never sleep.

We break down a simple playbook you can use under pressure: name the emotion with honesty, create a pause through prayer or reflection, and move through What happened, So what it changes, and Now what you’ll do. Then we add the Navy’s Plan, Brief, Execute, Debrief loop to turn hard moments into learning cycles you can repeat. Along the way, we tackle the difference between grief and pity, how to set a time limit on self-pity, and how to build inner reasons that keep you moving when the cheering stops. Expect practical stories, tough-love encouragement, and tools you can try the same day.

We also get real about boundaries and trust, especially around phones and social media. Clear expectations reduce drama; unclear ones multiply it. Support lands better when we listen first, ask better questions, and offer advice by permission. The goal isn’t to feel less—it’s to feel wisely, act with courage, and protect your future from impulsive choices. If you’ve been looking for a grounded, faith-forward approach to emotional intelligence, perseverance, and better conversations at home, school, and work, this one’s for you.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose
• 1:45 Why Emotional Intelligence Matters Now
• 3:45 Personal Credibility And Mission
• 5:20 Sadness, Mental Health, And Responsibility
• 9:40 Technology, Comparison, And Constant Pressure
• 15:30 High-Emotion Moments And Naming Feelings
• 20:05 Pray, Pause, And The What–So What–Now What Framework
• 24:20 Plan, Brief, Execute, Debrief For Life
• 28:30 Perseverance Over Pity
• 33:30 Faith, Forgiveness, And Inner Drive
• 37:55 Transitions, Growth, And Hope
• 41:50 Boundaries, Trust, And Intrusive Love

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose

Gary Wise 0:05

Hello, everybody. Half a day. Good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon. Whatever time of the day you find yourself, uh, hopefully taking a look at this video, listening to the sound of my voice. Thank you so much for spending some time with us here at Words from the Wise. I'm still Gary Wise, the host of the Words from the Wise podcast. I'm super happy to come to y'all today to talk about what I think is a very important skill for people. And this is going to be the ability to intelligently use your emotions or to work to process your emotions, how to work through your emotions. Emotional intelligence is a it's a big, it's a big topic in the world today. A lot of people are trying to figure out best ways they can manage not just their emotions, but the people that work with them and serve with them and are in their families and help them all to intelligently process and deal with the things they're working through in their life. Unfortunately, a lot of schools don't teach this actually in the classroom, but it is something that we need to all think about as we work through our day-to-day. I'm you know, I'm happy to be here as you know, a believer in Jesus Christ, a dad, a husband, a retired United States Navy Command Master Chief. Uh now I'm currently a high school instructor for the Vanguard High School Navy Junior ROTC. And our goal is to one day turn this podcast into hopefully your mentor's favorite podcast. And the idea here is to provide hopefully some insights, some lessons learned, maybe some information from our perspective, from my perspective, that maybe will give you some ideas of what to work towards in your own life, or they just give you different perspectives, right? Uh, you know, I think it's important that everybody understands that there is seems to be a lot of sadness in the world today. In 2026, the CDC basically puts out this data that says 40% of teenagers, high schoolers are reporting persistent sadness or depression. I don't know if that's new. I don't know if that's different. I feel like when I was a teenager, there was always a lot of things going on. And so people have probably always dealt with mental health challenges during those years. I know a lot of adults that struggle with mental health challenges. And so what this means for me is that the challenge of dealing with our emotions is something that doesn't go away as we get older. What we have to do is learn how to best, you know, work through it, understand what's going on, communicate it, and hopefully empathize with people in our community or in our family or on our team that are dealing with things. And then for my moms and dads, for my parents, this is how we can hopefully model good emotional processes that our kids can then maybe emulate in the future. I need everyone to understand that really I'm speaking to the young people that are with me every day. I want you to understand that while your parents can can hopefully will guide you and they'll explain things to you. At some point you have got to take responsibility for your emotions. At some point, you've got to take responsibility for how you handle your emotions. You cannot control what people do to you in this world. Unfortunately, it's just like that. You know, I in O'Cala, not too long ago, we had a gentleman, unfortunately, have his life taken while he was outside gardening. He did not wake up on that day thinking, hey, you know, today's gonna be my last day on this earth and I'm gonna lose my life while I'm outside gardening. Nor did his family think that. Nor did the family of the shooter think that today our young person was gonna go out and change someone else's life. Those actions, that action is going to have consequences for multiple layers of people. And when things happen in life to us, we that is beyond our control. The only thing we have within our ability is to determine how we're going to respond. And that's where I think emotion intelligently understanding your emotions is so critical because handling them incorrectly, responding inappropriately may be something that either makes it worse or God forbid, just does harm to you and the people that you care about deeply. And so I want you to understand that having emotions is a superpower. Understanding what emotions you're dealing with in the moment are very important, and and better yet is understanding how I'm going to apply these emotions to help me find a way through the chaos I'm living or I'm I'm in working through at that moment in time. Um here's another thing for me that's a big difference in life is when I was a teenager, we did not have cell phones. You know, ladies and gentlemen, I'm currently recording on my cell phone. I'm currently living in a world where almost everything we do in society today is being recorded in some way, shape, or form from, I mean, from driving in your car, from conversations that you're having with people. I mean, how many YouTube videos, how many TikTok reels do you watch of people that are slip tripping and falling? And you're just wondering, how did we get the video of that? Like, who set up the video to record this guy walking out the front door of his house and just busting his head three different ways? Was it his ring camera? Was it a security camera? I I don't know, right? But when I was a teenager, you had to look for a payphone, right? You had to, I remember when pagers first came out, you know, early 90s, and that was a a unique way to communicate with somebody. And I remember 1-800 collect or figuring out ways to call people and leverage collect calls from a payphone without having to use money and thinking that that was just a very smart way to communicate. The yellow pages, the white pages. I mean, so much has changed in our society in the last hell, I mean, I'm 48 years old. So in the last 48 years, and my generation has seen it. And I will tell you the level of stress that that can bring. I mean, yes, there's also a lot of peace. Yes, there's also a lot of privilege, yes, there's also a lot of opportunity that comes with this technology, but there's also a lot of stress. I remember we'd get the ship underway, and then we'd have the sailors and the marines aboard the ship, and we would tell them that they'd have to secure all cell phones immediately upon being underway. And it was almost as hard as you would as it is having cell phones not be in the classroom, right? Because they were so used to having their cell phones in their hands and playing their games and reading their books and talking to their friends. And there was going to be some withdrawal symptoms from getting away from technology. And these are things that I would see the stress in them because they would go from having real no real deep conversations with people in actual day-for-day life to thinking they're managing 30 to 40 plus relationships with people all virtually, but in their mind, it was real, right? Because look, our brain can imagine things and make them quite real to itself. And that's where a lot of people get their social cup filled up nowadays is via technology, via a social media app, but then they struggle when they have to deal with people and deal with real emotions and deal with challenges in their day for day. And so we have to understand that this 24 hours a day, seven days a week of comparing our lives with other people's lives, constant, instantly getting judged, feeling pressure to be perfect. It's hitting us all. You know, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna put it just on the young people. I will tell you older people as well. Everybody feels this sense of is my life going the way it's supposed to be going? Am I doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing? And there's always this question as to am I keeping up with the people that I'm comparing myself with? And it's human nature. It just is, right? When you're younger, you're growing up, I how tall are you? Am I as tall as the people in my class? I'm a short guy, always have been. And so then it becomes, well, what can I do that's gonna equalize the disadvantage I may have because I don't have a lot of height, especially if I want to play in a sport or in a certain level of competition? Uh, what if I had don't have the kind of a body I want to have? What if I don't have the kind of academics I want to have? These are all areas that we're constantly being essentially compared with other people and contrasted with other people. And technology just feeds all the way into that because, of course, then you got the people marketing to us all their different wares and all the different things that are gonna help us to feel better. And while I do believe technology can do a lot to help resolve some of those issues, again, when it comes to people's emotions, it can become an additional challenge. We've got to pay attention to. It doesn't mean you're prepared for emotional challenges. And when things get, I've seen some of the toughest people when when it came to actual loss, when it came to strong emotional moments, they almost had the most challenging time because they were not prepared for how to deal with those emotions. And we've got to understand that the goal is to not just react. I want you to persevere. I don't want you just to, you know, get smacked down, hit the deck, have to sit down for a little while and think about it. But I want you to lean into it and be prepared for life. I I love seeing people get back up off the ground. I love people seeing get off the deck. I love helping people off their back. But me as a dad, me as a husband, me as a teacher, me as a mentor, I want to teach my people to stand strong and be able to stand in the face of whatever it is that's coming at us and not get pushed all the way over as we move through life and as we move through things. And this is where perseverance, you know, the ability to just continue to walk into that snowstorm matters for me. And hopefully it matters for you. Today we are going to be covering eight practical ways that we can work through our emotions intelligently from understanding what's happening around us, and then of course, frameworks to move through the challenges. Uh first up, when you're dealing with high emotions, and this is going to be whether good or bad, you know, personally, I've seen people, kids, in particular, young ones out there in the backyard having the best time ever, playing with all their cousins, playing with all their friends, and you hear somebody say, Hey, you guys need to be careful out there before somebody gets hurt. Again, they're having good emotional fun. There's a lot of joy, there's a lot of happiness, there is a lot of excitement, slip, trip, and a fall, and someone's hurt. Right? So any high emotional moment causes for me time to be aware, causes my spidey sense to tingle. Whenever I recognize emotions are getting to be a little more hot and high, then it's not just negative, but also can be positive. I just want you to be aware. And so if you're happy, be happy. Say I'm happy. This is great. Let's not do too much, right? Um, if you're going through sadness, name it. Say I'm sad. You know, I one thing that frustrates me is when I asked my teenager, like, hey man, how you doing? What's wrong? Nothing. Are you okay? I don't know. Like, you know. You know. I would much rather hear, I'm sad, dad. I'm just sad right now. I don't feel like talking. I'll talk to you later. Cool. Like, I can appreciate that there's a boundary there and you're sad. I will I would like to know what's going on. I would like to help if I can, but I can also wait as long as you need, ultimately, as long as we're going to be in a safe place, right? So, step one is if you're going through a hot emotional period, say what the emotion is. Be honest and be honest with yourself. Don't look in the mirror and say, I'm disappointed, I'm upset, I'm whatever. If you're lying to yourself, then I'm sorry. There's nothing anyone can do to help you. If you're delusional and you're telling yourself the lies, that's a big problem. I need you to be honest with yourself. I would like to think you have people in this world that you can be honest with as well, and that you can give them the information to best explain what's going on with you. But don't just lie and say there's nothing wrong, or don't say, Oh, I'm angry. Are you really angry though? Or are you upset with yourself for some reason? Are you disappointed? Are you sad? Dude, are you all of them? You could be all of them. All things can be, they all could be true, right? And so I think being able to recognize the emotions you're dealing with will be the first step in being able to process those emotions. And when you look in the mirror, make sure you're being honest with yourself, especially when you're looking and you're self-assessing and you're giving yourself that talk that maybe is not helping you. Because unfortunately, we're not harder on anybody else in this world more than we are on ourselves. And ignoring the feelings, ignoring the emotions are going to do nothing but cause more problems for you in the future. And so when you're dealing with it, figure out what it is you're dealing with, at least recognize what the emotion is. And that at least that way you know, okay, this is what I'm working through. What's the next step? You know, one of my other favorite things to do, honestly, I, you know, is to pray. You know, we we taught this lesson last week in church about the, you know, the widow who had to go to the unjust of the judge. The judge was unfair, right? He was mean, he was not nice, and he was not treating her fairly. And the lesson was about how do you handle life when things are not fair? And that's a tough, that's a tough thing for people to deal with. And one of the ideas from the lesson that we were given was to talk to was to pray, to try to find a place to pray and and just let God know how you feel about this unjust, this unfair situation, and how to give you at least maybe the the strength and the ability to maybe not accept it, but to like just handle it, to work through it, you know. Because look, if things are unfair, you don't have to like it. If it's unfair, it's unfair. And that's fine. There's way too many things in this world that are freaking unfair, and that's just how life goes. Can we do something about it? We'll have that conversation. But the first thing is to not, again, not overreact, not respond in a way that's less than you would like to be uh known for. And one of my favorite ways to not overreact is to pray and to ask God for some help as I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do with this unfair situation, right? Uh the next thing is understanding uh how bad is it, right? So I I got the emotion. I say the you know, I'm angry, I'm so frustrated, I can't believe this unfair thing happened. And these are the all the emotions that I got. So the next question I've got is all right, so what happened? Let's not, you know, sugarcoat it. Let's let's make sure we understand what happened. Then let's talk about so what? So what? So what happened? What's the impact? What does it really matter? What is uh the change of because of this thing happening? How much of your life is it really impacting? What really is if it just makes you upset or emotional, but it really doesn't affect anything, how much of it should you give to your time? Uh so what so what? The third framework I want you to understand is is now what? Okay. So this thing happened where I was done dirty, I was done wrong, and it was frustrating. So what is what were the ramifications? What were the consequences? What were the impacts to my day-to-day life or to my family or to my team or to my people? And then now what is what are you gonna do? What are your options? What are the best options on the table? Have you spoken to people that care about you? A mentor, uh, people at work, your spouse, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your friends, your parents. What are you going to do about this thing as you make your next move? Right? So just remember something happens, you're emotional. I want you to name the emotion, all of them. Okay. I want you to pray on it and or or talk to somebody and try to process through why you're feeling these emotions. And I want you to, in this conversation or in this process, I want you to talk about what happened. So what? Right? So what? And then now what? What's what where are we gonna go past this? And the reason why I tell you this is because just wallowing in the grief, wallowing in the pity, wallowing in this dangerous place is probably not the best thing for you. At some point, you're gonna want to make a move and go forward. And my advice is to get some people to help you figure this out and figure out the way to move forward. One of my favorite things about the Navy was when we learned how to debrief, right? Anything we did in this life, uh in this workspace, anything worth doing is worth debriefing. So you ask yourself, you take your kids to Disney World. After the trip's over, you guys talk about how to go. Did you take the best route? Did you go to the best rides you wanted to go? Did you follow the plan as you looked to accomplish it? You know, we we do this thing in the Navy where we plan, brief, execute, and Debrief. It's one of my favorite frameworks still to this day. I'm going to plan something for my family. We're going to talk it through. We're going to plan what we're going to do. We're going to tell everybody the day of the event. This is how it's going to go. We're going to go out. We're going to do the event. When it's all said and done, we're going to come together and we're going to discuss: did everything go according to plan? Well, if you use a framework like this, even when you're dealing with high emotions, it's going to be very helpful so you don't lose your way. And I just tell you to think about that because part of the now what, you know, can 1,000% be part of the planning for the way ahead. But the what so what can be a debrief as to what's already taken place that caught us off guard. And I'll tell you a lot of things about emotional at times. It's usually when people are caught off guard or something happened beyond your control and you're trying to process uh what's going on. If you start reacting impulsively, take a breath. Unless you've got to, I mean, look, I'm all about handling business at the moment in time. You know, sometimes you got to just go ahead and say what you got to say. Get there, do it. Stand on that business. Make sure that you get your words out. Use your words. I'm not saying go out there and yell at people and bite their head off, but I'm saying if you need if if the moment is now that you need to say your truth, let it be known. And just remember when all said and done, you might want to take back some words or you may regret a few things, but that's life. None of us are perfect. And I would rather have leaders on my team that are would rather step up out there and go out there and have tough conversations than people who are afraid to talk because they always want to only say the right thing. That's just my personal opinion. So if you are having if you got some words to say, get them out. You know, I remember when I was a young uh leader in the Navy, if I didn't want my sailors to say anything back, I put them to attention. And I would tell my sailors, if you're not an attention, communicate. Communicate. Get your words out. Let's go. But if you're not, I remember when I worked for Captain Grimes at Naval Base Guam, uh, people, a lot of people were afraid of him and they didn't need to be. Jeff is an amazing human being, but they were afraid of him because of his intensity, right? Because he was a war fighter that put Naval Base Guam at the front of everything he did, and it came to work every day to find victory. And if you went down the P-Way to his office and you did not have that same level of intensity every day, he was going to try to inspire you to get there. But you might be afraid of that inspiration, or it might make you uncomfortable, or you don't want to give out that energy because it was a lot of work. But as he's trying to get you more inspired, you might be receiving it as, oh my gosh, he's yelling at me. He's not yelling at you, but he's a war fighter. And if you don't got a warfighter's mentality, you're not gonna enjoy this conversation because you got to turn up your volume, you got to turn up your intensity, and you've got to care as much as he does, or he's gonna steamroll you. And sometimes it's just like that in life, right? And sometimes people come across one another and they're not on the same frequency, and there can become challenges. And this matters to this conversation because, again, people are dealing with emotions, their frequency is gonna be off while they're trying to get it back together again and figure out what the next steps are going to be. Um here's another thing I would tell you if you're having a bad day or something happened beyond your control and you're just feeling like being pitied on or being pitiful or pitying on yourself, having a pity party. Um, which for me, just so you know, this is not the same as grief. Grief is like you've lost a loved one, you've lost a significant relationship, you've lost a significant opportunity, something tragic has unfortunately happened, and you are grieving something. That's a process that takes, it could take a while. And I think that we all need to work ourselves through the timeline that best works for us. But pity for me is something that you should not be just feeling sorry for yourself for an extended period of time. That's a bad, that's a bad thing to do, right? I remember the most common one for me was I was in the military and I would not make rank. And I would feel bad because I didn't make rank, but then I would tell my followers or my team members that, like, I'm gonna go home and feel bad for the rest of today, but by tomorrow I'm gonna get back at it again because the job still got to be done and I've still got to make things happen. Uh, I would recommend if you're feeling sad for yourself, feeling sorry for yourself, having a pity party, maybe you try not to let it go on forever. Try to give yourself a clock, try to give yourself a timeline, say I am going to do something to change my mindset tomorrow, this afternoon, two days from now, whatever it is. And then just be careful. You're not doing it for attention. Unfortunately, a lot of people like we we like to have people care about us. We like to have people show us love. We appreciate when people want to come give us hugs and tell us that it was messed up and that they want to give us all the support. But just don't abuse that. Do not over-leverage pity, trying to always get people support. Those things are not going to be healthy for you. Instead, what I would like you to do is, you know, pull a Rocky Balboa. You're down there on the ground, you're on your back, you weren't persevering, or you're trying to persevere. And I need you to remember all the reasons why you've got to become successful, why you cannot allow this moment to defeat you. You know, Rocky's on the ground, the bell's ringing, and he starts thinking about Adrian, his son, Mickey, the training he has done, the montage hits, the music starts rocking, and he's got all these inner reasons for why he needs to get up off that mat and get back into this fight. I remember when I was a young boy, my dad told me we were watching a Chuck Norris movie, and my dad tells me that Chuck Norris can win all these fights because he's got inner strength. You know, and that his inner strength makes him to be almost a superhero. And I really, really, really personalized that as a young one where I started believing, like if you had this inner belief in yourself, you could do anything you wanted to do in this world. And if you're down in this pity pit, if you're down having this, you know, highly emotional, tough time, you know you did the work, you named it, you did the what, you did the no, the so what, you did the now what. Now you're kind of feeling bad about yourself as you're trying to figure out what to do going forward. I need you to dig deep and find some internal reasons why you have to go forward. And I'm telling you, internal on purpose, because you cannot have to rely on external influences all the time. They're just not gonna always be there. And there's not always gonna be someone that wants to come hype you up, or people that are gonna give you what you want, or tell you what you need to hear, and you have got to learn in 2026 why you're doing something, what you want out of it, and where you hope to go. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you, you have got to work on that a lot. Too many people in this world do not have a sight picture on what they're doing for themselves. And then when the going gets tough, they struggle and they start looking for external motivators, but that's not always gonna work. I would like you to understand that I've seen people recover from so many things: alcoholism, drug abuse, food addiction, unfortunately having criminal backgrounds, making bad choices. I believe that the victory has already been won for us. I believe God has already absolved all of us of all of our sins. All we have to do is talk to Him about it and request permission to not be in this space anymore and to ask for forgiveness and help to get the heck out of this bad position. Now, one of the biggest challenges a lot of us have is forgiving ourselves. That's tough. That's tough. But I would like you to know there's hope. I would like you to know there is hope for tomorrow to be the best day of your life. There is hope for this tough time you're going through to pass, and it's not going to last forever. And you're gonna be able to learn the lessons that you've had to learn to get through not only this moment, but to get on to the next phase of your life that could be the most important phase of your life that you've been working towards for maybe your whole life, right? So please don't forget that. And unfortunately, too many times people start feeling bad, they start feeling down, they start feeling depressed or sad, they're struggling with internal motivations and understanding why this is happening to them and what they're gonna do to get out of it, and where am I gonna go next? And I need you to have that hope that there is something for you. And I and I'm just telling you because I know it's true. I know it's true. Um, we all got to start somewhere though. When it came time for me to leave the military, because I'll be honest, when I thought I thought I was gonna be in the Navy, so I was like in the Navy 35 years. I thought I was gonna be in the military until I was 55 years old. You know, when it was 24 years in the Navy, 23 years in the Navy, and I'm just like, you know what? I'm looking to do something else in my life. That was scary. That was freaking scary because this is all I knew as an adult. I remember uh talking to my dad before he passed away, and just like, I'd never been an adult civilian, like law-abiding citizen. I'd never been that. I was worried about that part. I was very comfortable in my Navy space, my military career being involved in this specific world, but how was I going to be just as a regular civilian person, which I now know is a facade and is delusional and is not reality because it's amazing to just be a normal person. You know, we don't all have to be anything that society says we're going to be. But I was struggling with it because I had spent my entire adult life institutionalized in an organization that gave me comfort. And there was going to be processes of grieving and of pity and emotions as I transitioned out of the active duty place into where I am now. That's the journey of life. And it's exciting and it's fun. And I I tell my students nobody would ever want to ride a roller coaster that never goes up and never goes down. Right? You should want a life of highs and lows, ups and downs, smiles and frowns. And just remember that you don't have to have it all figured out tomorrow. There are going to be opportunities to improve. There are going to be opportunities to hopefully correct areas that you weren't your best. There are going to be chances for you to improve things in this world. And as long as you've got air in your lungs and you woke up today, you've got the opportunity to make the world a better place. And get out there and get some. Get out there and try and be involved and be an example and be a player and be somebody who wants to go out there and support the team. You know, another thing for me is I don't believe any of us are meant to do this life journey alone. And so as you learn how to work through this framework I just talked to you about, which is, you know, naming the emotions you're working through, uh recognizing what happened, identifying, so what? You know, how much does it matter? Now, what am I going to do about it? Being in this space of pity and then figuring out how I'm going to get out of it and leveraging internal motivators and faith and hope. I want you to then also share this news with other people, give them advice as they're coming through hard times. I believe the ability to listen to someone who's going through hard times and share your experience will help them to be stronger and to be better and to remind them that none of us are perfect. If all you do is watch social media, then you're just going to think that everybody out here is freaking amazing and we're all just doing amazing things. And that's not real. But just remember, before you go telling them how you fixed everything for yourself, listen to them and allow them to understand that you've been there and that you can relate, right? And if they would like to hear your experience, I mean, I like to always ask, would you like to hear my opinion? Before I just offer my opinion. Because sometimes people don't want to hear your opinion. But if if they're sharing, that's huge. If they're sharing, that's huge. If they get to the space where they're done sharing and you have an opinion, you could number one, thank them for sharing. Right? Thank you so much for trusting in me to share the challenges you're working through because it sounds like a lot. Right. Number two is I've been in similar places and I know how hard it is to come out of that, and that's tough. Would you like to hear how I did it? Or would you be interested to hear my opinion on some things or my perspective? And if they say no, it's not freaking personal, man. Don't take it personal. They already trusted in you enough to share. Not everybody wants an extra lecture. Sometimes they just want to get it out. But if they say yes, leverage empathy. Do not always just become sympathetic and cry with them and hang on them and throw them around. If that's what they need, be that person. Right? I'm not very good at sympathy. Honest, I'm not gonna lie to you. Uh empathy was a game changer for me because it taught me that I don't always connect with people emotionally because my emotions are just for whatever reason dialed differently. So when they're crying, I might not be connecting with crying. I may not be connecting with upset or angry or whatever it is. I'm a little more calculating, a little more uh focused on the factual things. I don't get too involved in the emotions of the moment. That being said, I can recognize an emotion they're going through. You can ask them, are you sad? Are you angry or upset? They confirm that you can remember a time you were one of those emotions, and you can relate with that. And that's what matters because we've all been there. Right? And especially, you know, for you know, moms, dads, teens are going through stuff. And I I it was a super emotional time as a young person. And just remembering what it was like for us to be young people and to give grace as they're going through things, provided they didn't do anything completely out of the box that is inappropriate. Because that's for my young ones, don't be doing crazy stuff, don't do too much. Trust your parents, do good things. And this is for me a big part of my life is managing my kids' cell phones and having them understand that intrusive leadership, intrusive love means I care enough about you to push your boundaries a little bit, to push your boundaries to the point of I want to know what's really going on. So if you got people in your life that are willing to push you out of your comfort zone or ask you some tough questions, I really want you to be thankful for those people. You know, be thankful for them. And if if your mom or dad is the one paying the bills, especially on that cell phone, it's not your phone. It's not your phone, bro. Give it up. If they want, I expect them to want to be looking at your cell phone. I expect them to want to know how you're talking with people. Are you talking with people appropriately on this piece of technology, on this tool? If you're talking inappropriately, it's probably not gonna be the thing that we want you to be doing. Right? And someday you may grow up and you're gonna be a parent. And I hope you intrusively love your kids. Right? And then what we need to do is make sure that we're all communicating cards face up from the beginning of the whole deal. Part of you, I mean, I gave my younger son a phone this last Christmas. Part of the phone was just so you understand, I will have the password for everything on that phone, and I will look at that whenever I want, because that's my phone. It's on loan to you. Right? And phones are just an example that I'm using, but it's a big one because unfortunately, way too many people are out there doing crazy things with cell phones. But it comes back to boundaries, and ladies and gentlemen, it is no one's job to memorize your boundary all the time because your boundaries freaking change. Your boundary is your boundary, and you must be able to communicate your boundary. Now, if you're in a committed relationship with like a wife or a husband or a boyfriend or a girlfriend, mom, dad, brother, sister, then yeah, I would like to think we're gonna learn each other's boundaries, or we're gonna know each other's boundaries, or we're gonna respect each other's boundaries. But at some point, you have got to communicate if there's a boundary for you. People are not mind readers. And I need you to respect one another's boundaries because all that does is makes people even more emotional when their boundaries are not being respected. But understand that if people are love, people you trust are loving you enough to try to push past your boundaries, maybe be appreciative of that. Now, if you don't trust them, that's a different conversation. It's a different conversation. But I would like to think you can always trust your parents. I would like to think we can always trust our kids. I would like to think you can always trust your brothers, your sisters, your best friends, your boyfriends, your girlfriends, whatever it is. But if trust has been compromised, then I understand not wanting to budge on your boundaries. But then you need to find somebody that you can talk to about this and figure it out. And if you can't find anybody in person, hit your niece, talk to God, let Him help you because you're gonna need somebody because it sounds like you're gonna be in a tough spot. It's it's a very, very lonely world if you do not have people you trust around. You and I'm not telling you you need a lot of people. I can count on one hand the number of people that I really, no kidding, trust all the way that will tell me the truth, tell me what I need to hear, and that love me no matter what. But you don't need more than that. You know, that's it's a facade that you need to have 5,000 followers and likes, and everyone's gonna always be appreciative of everything that you're doing. No, that's not real. You are not for everybody, and everybody's not for you. Just don't forget that part, right? Uh another thing is we've got to ask better questions of one another. This is my final piece on this one right here. Is when we do get the opportunity to communicate with one another and we're trying to help people out, ask better questions. Don't just stay surface, try to find out what's going on. When I was a recruiter, they taught me to get to the need behind the need, right? Don't just ask them why they want to go to college. Figure out what it is about college, what it is about going to higher level education, what is it about, you know, changing your life or your family circumstance? It's usually just more than I want to go to college. There's usually way more to that conversation. And that's just an example. Ask better questions and listen for quality answers. And people, do your best to give quality answers. It's tough. As a dad with a teenager, he don't want to tell me all the things that he's got going on. And for a piece of it, I understand, I can I can appreciate it. But if he's emotional, man, I got I want to know, bro. I want to help. And at a minimum, I just want to be here for you and support you and let me know. And there we go. And no one's gonna overreact. We're just going to process what's going on and figure out, you know what, so what? Now what? We're gonna figure out the reasons why we were even doing this thing together as a team and where we're going as a family and how we can work our way through this process, through this challenge. And then that's what we do. All right, that's what we do. And we do our best to work forward on these things. You know, uh, ladies and gentlemen, life is so much fun when you get out there and you live it. But the challenge with living life, you're going to have bad days, you're going to have things you didn't see coming your way, you're going to have people unfortunately break your trust, hurt your feelings, say something that you took the wrong way, the right way, the the way that you just did not want to take it. And you've got to figure out the best ways to handle it. Because if you overreact, you may change your whole life. You know, I I asked the cadets, I said, what are the ways people typically overreact or overreact emotionally? And they said things like they get into a fight, they maybe commit a crime, they maybe jeopardize a relationship, they maybe stop trying to do something new. Those are all things that are unfortunately typically not good. Right? And so I just when you're going through an emotional moment, just remember you do not always have control over everything that happens to you or around you, but you almost always have control over what you're going to do going forward. Um, I'm praying for y'all. Best of luck to y'all out there. I hope this video comes to you and that it gives you something. There's something good to it that helps you out. I really appreciate you listening to the sound of my voice and paying attention and following me on YouTube and Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all the above. We'll continue to put these out there. I'm still Gary Wise. This is still Words from the Wise, the podcast. And we are still continuing to try to become your mentors' favorite podcast. If you have any questions or ideas of things you would like us to talk about, please let me know. And thank you all very much. And have a great, great day, night, morning, whatever. Whatever.