There are a number of terms that mean something very similar to emotional embuffination. “Emotional intelligence” is really close. Some like the phrase “emotional agility.” Still others describe “emotional fitness.”

But, while each of these is very similar and has a ton of overlap, I’d offer emotional embuffination is a little broader. It’s an umbrella that encapsulates how to emotionally manage the problems in front of you. In contrast to some of the other variants, however, it also delves into preemptively dealing with problems before they even become problems. And, it incorporates principles of the law of attraction.

At its core, emotional embuffination is about shaping your life. It’s a sequence of tools designed to help you not only overcome the bad stuff in life, to make sure less bad stuff is even taking place, and to start shaping your world to be something you want it to be.

Emotional Embuffination is the product of me at my worst. After hitting that low point in my life, I either had to come out of it or die. The realization my fate was primarily a function of my mindset suddenly became clear. In my work as a divorce attorney I saw people making many of the same mistakes I had. So, I combined what I’d learned getting a degree in psychology with what I was seeing as an attorney. The result was a passion for how to become emotionally stronger (emotionally buff). This process of becoming emotionally stronger is called, “emotional embuffination.”

Yes, I made that term up. So, you won’t find it in the dictionary…yet. Emotional embuffination is pronounced:

• Emotional-
• Ehm (like “M and M”)-
• Buff (like what happens when you’re muscular)-
• I (like the i in “if”)-
• Nation (like the country you live in).
• Emotional Embuffination.

The concept draws on a parallel to working out at a gym. When you go to the gym, you get stronger the more you go. Emotional embuffination is similar. If you’re constantly working on your emotional fitness, you’re going to become more able to deal with the upsetting things in life.

But the analogy goes even deeper than that. At the gym, you only get stronger if you’re doing things correctly. For decades I went to the gym with no results. Though I improved, I always hit a plateau. The problem was I wasn’t infusing new concepts or new training ideas. It’s more than just going, it’s eating right, learning to target different muscles groups, figuring out how to combine exercise routines that maximize results, etc. There was a ton out there I didn’t know and using a trainer to point some of those things out made a big difference. Today, I’m in better physical shape than I’ve ever been, but only because I’ve made perpetual changes to my understanding of how to exercise and how to work out.

Emotional embuffination is the same. First you have to actually go to the gym. In the context of emotional embuffination that means spend time and energy working on your mindset and changing habits around to make your life better. But you can’t stop there. It has to be continual growth and change. In other words, you have to keep refining your understanding and perpetually find ways to move yourself forward. That is the process of emotional embuffination. One effective way to do that is to find a trainer. I’d love to be your emotional embuffination trainer.

In contrast to some other models of emotional intelligence, emotional embuffination INCLUDES physical fitness. For various reasons, the emotional embuffination model doesn’t entirely distinguish between mind and body. There’s a ton of research showing how taking care of your body, eating right, and getting exercise can have profound impacts on your cognition and emotional fitness. Thus, if you want to feel better emotionally, it’s important to keep your body in good shape.

One of the, perhaps, most unique elements of emotional embuffination is the application of Law of Attraction Principles. The Law of Attraction is, in the simplest of explanations, the concept that alignment of your thoughts and emotions will cause the manifestation of what you think about. In other words, if you think about something and associate emotion, it will show up in your life.

Personal Experience.

In many ways this aspect seems contradictory to emotional embuffination premises. For example, emotional embuffination relies heavily on psychology. Psychology is dependent on scientific principles. The Law of Attraction is not, per se. It inherently defies empirical validation (and refutation). However, I began focus on the Law of Attraction after years of me strictly adhering to logic and science and what made sense to me on paper. And I felt consistently awful. It was applying Law of Attraction ideas that first turned me around out of the worst time in my life. Because utilization of the Law of Attraction has played such a massive role in my feeling better and changing my own direction and because the more I experiment with it, the more true it seems to ring, it’s become a part of emotional embuffination.

Reminder Science is Not All There Is.

It also serves as a reminder that science as a paradigm doesn’t always have all the answers. While science is incredibly important (and I both rely on and have the utmost respect for science) it also frequently leads us to false or incomplete conclusions. I have, for example, spoken with people who became completely dysfunctional after being labeled with some psychiatric disorder and then proceeded to take medications for years that did nothing but cause more problems. On the surface, these pathways seemed to be the product of scientific thinking, but left people in terrible situations. As such, the incorporation of Law of Attraction principles serves as a reminder that sometimes what makes logical sense on paper, might not ultimately leave you feeling better. Emotional embuffination is the study of emotional management, so it’s important to keep in mind that how you feel tells you something about what’s working or not.

Absolute Responsibility.

Further, the Law of Attraction lends itself to the idea that if something happens to you, no matter what it is, you play or played a role in how it’s unfolding and why it unfolded in the first place. Emotional embuffination is heavily reliant on the idea that you should own absolute responsibility for what happens in your life. This is about mindset. If I walk around thinking that most of the things that happen to me are out of my control, I become resigned to whatever happens to me being the final outcome. In contrast, if I walk around with the mindset that if something happened, I had a role in its having happened, I’m much more likely to start altering my approach to life to make sure I don’t repeat situations I don’t like. Thus, even if the Law of Attraction model is utter nonsense, believing in it and acting accordingly makes it far more likely you’ll walk a path that takes you where you want to go. Accordingly, believing in the Law of Attraction leaves you feeling better and accomplishing more.

For each of these reasons, the Law of Attraction is a part of emotional embuffination.

Lastly, I’d be remiss in not mentioning the parallel between a phrase that was recently popularized and emotional embuffination. For a while I heard a lot of people saying, “bruh, do you even work out?” It’s typically said to someone that’s struggling to pick up or move a heavy object. The theory is that if that person had been working out, picking up the aforementioned object would be really easy.

In emotional embuffination parlance, I’ve turned this concept into, “What struggle?” The concept derives from the expression, “the struggle is real.” Just like with the “do you even work out” people, my first thought is, “that thing you’re dealing with doesn’t have to actually be a struggle.” Accordingly, I want you to be so emotionally embuffed that you’ll stop thinking “the struggle is real” and instead be thinking, “ha, I don’t even know what struggle you’re talking about. My life is a breeze!”

Being emotionally embuffed will help you to overcome any conflict in your life. It’s helped me to live a happier and more fulfilling life. This site, and the emotional embuffination project collectively, are offered in the hope that some of the concepts here can help you live a happier and more fulfilling life too.