Eccentricize Blog posts

“The Bad News Is Time Flies. The Good News Is You’re the Pilot” – Michael Altshuler

How Much Control Do We Really Have?

I discussed this quote during one of my lessons today: “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” My student initially interpreted it by saying that, although we cannot stop time from moving forward, we have control over our choices, actions and the direction of our lives. Then she paused and corrected herself. She added that there are certain things we do not control at all, such as the time and place of our birth, the circumstances of our death and, in her opinion, our emotions.

I understood exactly what she meant because, when I was younger, I believed the same thing. I thought emotions simply arrived, annexed a part of us and took control. If you were angry, you were angry. If you were devastated, you were devastated. If sadness appeared, you had no choice but to surrender to it and wait until it eventually loosened its grip. Emotions seemed like forces entering from the outside—powerful, unpredictable and largely beyond our influence.

Emotions Are Real, but They Are Not Permanent

Over time, however, something in my understanding began to shift. As I started observing myself more carefully, analysing my reactions, reading psychology books, meditating and practising yoga, I realised that emotions are more fluid than I had previously assumed. They are real, and they can be intense, but they are also transient. They rise, change shape and eventually pass. They are not permanent residents of the mind, even when they temporarily behave as though they own the entire building.

I also began to notice that emotions are closely connected to thoughts. A painful thought can trigger sadness, disappointment, anger or hopelessness, while repeatedly returning to that thought can make the emotion grow stronger. The more attention we give it, the more energy it receives. In this sense, we may not always control the first emotional reaction, but we often have some influence over what happens next. We can feed the emotion, rehearse it and allow it to expand, or we can observe it, question it and gradually reduce its power.

We Do Not Have to Feed Every Emotion

Just because we feel a particular emotion does not mean we have to keep supplying it with fuel. We do not have to feed it with endless attention, rehearse the same upsetting story or allow it to spread into every corner of our inner world. We can respond differently. We can make an unsettling emotion smaller, interrupt the cycle that sustains it and allow it to exist without treating it as an unquestionable truth.

This does not mean suppressing emotions or pretending that everything is fine when it is not. It means learning not to become completely fused with what we feel. There is a difference between saying, “I am hopeless,” and saying, “I am experiencing a feeling of hopelessness right now.” The first statement turns the emotion into an identity. The second creates a little distance between the observer and the experience. That distance may be small, but it gives us room to respond rather than simply react.

Learning to Navigate Our Emotional Topography

I have come to believe that we can learn to navigate our emotional topography with greater aptitude. At first, the inner landscape may feel confusing and difficult to read. We may stumble into the same valleys of sadness, frustration or fear without understanding how we arrived there. But with practice, we begin to recognise familiar routes. We notice the thoughts that lead towards certain emotional states, the situations that trigger us and the habits that keep us trapped.

Meditation has helped me observe thoughts without immediately following them. Yoga has taught me that emotional states are also physical states: they appear in the breath, jaw, shoulders, stomach and chest. Reading psychology has given me language for patterns I once experienced only as chaos. None of these methods has made me permanently calm or immune to difficult feelings. What they have given me is a greater ability to notice what is happening and to intervene before one heavy moment clouds or obscures entire vision.

The Black Balloon Method

One of the techniques I use when dealing with negative or emotionally heavy thoughts is what I call the popping black balloons method. When an upsetting thought appears—and it will often be accompanied by disappointment, sadness, fear or hopelessness—I imagine the thought and emotion taking the form of a black balloon.

I visualise the balloon floating in front of me, swollen with all the energy I have unconsciously given it. Then I imagine holding a small pin and deliberately popping it. The balloon bursts, the pressure disappears and the emotion loses some of its size and power. Of course, the real feeling may not vanish instantly, but the visualisation helps me stop treating it as something solid and permanent. It reminds me that the emotion can shrink, dissolve and move through me.

Sometimes one balloon is not enough. Several may appear, and I pop them one by one. The method is simple, almost childlike, but that is partly why it works for me. It replaces helplessness with action. Instead of sitting passively inside an emotional fog, I create a vivid inner gesture of release.

Give the Thought a Ridiculous Name

Another technique I use is to name a negative thought as though it were an unpleasant character in a film or cartoon. Rather than treating the thought as wise, powerful or prophetic, I give it a ridiculous identity. I imagine it as a pest, an ugly rat, a pompous villain or a badly behaved creature trying to sneak into my inner chambers.

This changes my relationship with the thought. It becomes something I can observe rather than something I must obey. Ridiculing it removes some of its grandeur. A thought such as “Everything will go wrong” sounds intimidating when it speaks in a serious inner voice. But if I imagine it being delivered by a ridiculous little creature called Mr Catastrophe, wearing an oversized hat and demanding entry, it becomes easier to challenge.

Humour can be a powerful form of emotional defusion. It does not erase the original problem, but it prevents the thought from dominating our headspace. The mind often presents fear as a fact. Giving fear an absurd face or shape exposes it as a mental creation rather than a guaranteed prediction.

Challenging the Worst-Case Scenario

We can also challenge the assumptions hidden inside the emotion. Anxious or negative thinking often asks, “What is the worst thing that could happen?” and then behaves as though that outcome is inevitable. A more optimistic response is to ask, “What is the best thing that could happen?” This does not mean ignoring risk or forcing ourselves into positivity. It means widening the field of possibility. If the worst outcome is only one possible future, then so are success, relief, support, recovery and unexpected opportunity. By deliberately imagining a favourable outcome, we loosen the mind’s automatic attachment to catastrophe and create space for hope, curiosity and more constructive action.

Being the Pilot Does Not Mean Controlling the Weather

The quote about being the pilot does not mean that we control everything. We do not choose where we are born, what happens around us or which emotions first arise in response to painful events. A pilot cannot control the weather, prevent every storm or remove turbulence from the sky.

But a skilled pilot learns how to respond to changing conditions. They read the instruments, adjust direction, reduce speed when necessary and avoid flying blindly into danger. In the same way, emotional responsibility does not mean commanding ourselves never to feel sadness, anger or fear. It means developing the awareness and tools to work with those emotions more skilfully.

Perhaps that is the real meaning of being the pilot. We do not control the entire sky, but we can become more conscious of how we travel through it. We can learn when to change direction, when to wait for the storm to pass and when to stop giving a dark cloud permission to become the whole horizon.