Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today we’re going to talk about something I have been seeing as a pattern with my clients, and even some of my coaching colleagues and friends. And it’s a myth that I want to nip in the bud right now. We’re just gonna dive right in today. I am calling it the myth of feelings immunity. I like thought about it so much, I gave it a name. What is feelings immunity? It is the idea that once you have done enough self development work, or read enough books, or mastered your own self coaching, or worked with a coach or a therapist for a specific amount of time, that you will no longer experience negative emotion, and that somehow something has gone wrong if you are experiencing a negative emotion. It’s the idea of I should know this by now, or I should have mastered this by now or this shouldn’t be happening because I know how to meditate. And I do downward dog three times a week. So I shouldn’t feel awful ever, or disappointed or upset ever, ever, ever again. Have you ever met someone who said that? Or have you ever felt that way? I’m going to tell you I have felt that way. This is one of the reasons that I really have given it such deep thought and it’s like feelings immunity is a myth. It is not real, we will never have that. That’s kind of the good news. Because that means there are other things that are available to us when we realize that that is not the best goal to have. So Lately, I’ve been seeing it come up over and over again. when something comes up enough times, I know I need to do a podcast episode. So that’s why I’m like diving in and going straight for it today.
So here’s the deal. I know this is gonna shock you so hold on to something. Humans feel feelings. That’s it? Isn’t that a shocker? Humans feel feelings. Humans breathe air, humans need water and sleep and touch and each other in order to thrive. humans think thoughts and feel feelings and no amount of anything is ever going to change that. So here’s the deal. I’m a life coach, I literally help people feel their feelings for a living. And I am telling you, there are no bad emotions, there are no emotions that you should avoid and suppress and try to divorce yourself from and never see them again. So please, for the love of all things, Oprah, stop trying to do that. Let’s look at feelings this way. Feelings are data points. They’re like part of our organic GPS system telling us where to go, where not to go, where we can stay longer, where we should move through more quickly. But the thing about raw data is that we get very different results. Depending on how we interpret it, we need to be able to know what to do with the data once we have it. And what feelings do is feelings, most of the time reveal our thinking.
They reveal what thoughts are flying through our brains at any given moment. And sometimes we should pay close attention to these thoughts. And sometimes we really should just ignore them completely. And I recently did a workshop on the anger scale as part of my relationship reset live. And I’ll link to the rehearsal for the workshop in the show notes so you can see that that was really fun. I recorded the rehearsal for that. And one of the things that we talked about in the workshop was when you think about something like anger, my approach to it is I want to help you all my listeners, help my clients minimize it on the front end when we can. Sometimes we can’t. But when we can, and manage it better on the back end as often as possible. We never want to stop actually feeling angry. What we want to do is learn to use anger better. We want to have a healthy relationship with it, not a toxic relationship with it. We absolutely do not want it to become a crutch that we lean on every time we’re disappointed and they definitely had a chapter of my life. I very well remember, I worked in a great cubicle. But girl who sat next to me was on the phone all day. And anger was one of my default emotions. And I definitely used it as a crutch in that scenario. And what I want to say is that wasn’t useful that never helped me move forward. It wasn’t until I decided what kind of life I want to have. What are my desires? I stopped focusing on the thing that was annoying me and started focusing on what do I want instead. It was only when I did that, that I made progress.
So if you’re regularly upset or disappointed or have like a low grade permanent annoyance, about something, what we want to do is ask why we want to know what thoughts created that feeling. In my case with my coworker, I definitely had the thought she’s doing it wrong. We’re here to work out all kinds of thoughts about her telephone usage, right? All kinds of judgments about that. And we want to ask, you want to get curious and ask what the exact circumstances are, and whether your greatest growth is to do something about the situation, or to do something about your mindset with regards to the situation. So in that case, in that example, when I had that coworker, I really did a little bit of both, I decided I wanted to change my circumstances, I went back to school. Eventually, I was going back to school where I decided, did I want to go deeper into HR, which is what I worked in before? Or did I want to go to life coach training, which is what I ended up doing. I’m using that example because that anger propelled me to some of the greatest accomplishments of my life, when I was able to shift enough of it to have a healthier relationship to it. When I was able to use it as fuel to move me forward, instead of as almost like an anchor to hold me back, right. But in the meantime, I did something about the circumstance itself, the situation. And I also did something about my mindset with regards to the situation, I just decided this girl’s not going to decide my career, right?
This girl’s not going to decide my professional development, how am I giving her so much power over my happiness, decided enough of that right? No more. And then a really focused on the parts of my job that I enjoyed. And that was really good at and that people responded to. And I had a much better mindset while I was working towards changing the circumstances. So sometimes, we do need to quit a job or end a relationship or draw a strong line. And sometimes, we need to reimagine our relationship to the situation, and find a way to manage it differently. And in my case, in that example, I had to do a little bit of both. So sometimes it is a little bit of both, knowing which one to do, and when is what I would call absolutely part of emotional mastery. Emotional mastery does not mean you stop feeling challenging emotions, it means you know what to do with them so they don’t consume you. So they don’t stop you in your tracks for months or even years. Emotional literacy, is what I would call the ability to label an emotion describe it, see it, describe its effect on your body, the sensations that you feel, when that emotion is present. The ability to describe your reactions, basically, to add words to that sensational experience by sensational, I mean, your senses of your body. And to be able to describe the effect of that emotion in your life over an extended period of time, we have to have the literacy, right, we need to be able to sort of read and write and understand the emotion before we can have mastery over it right. So first, we want to have the basic literacy then an emotional mastery. We know what to do with the feeling when it arrives so that our break downs can lead to a breakthrough, right. So the thing to expect when you do self development work or work with a coach like me is not the avoidance of emotion, but the mastery of emotion.
There is an amazing artist named Amber Ray. And she created a graphic called How to sit with discomfort. I am going to link to her Instagram in the show notes. So you can see the graphic. The graphic is brilliant, I highly recommend that you print it out and put it somewhere where you can see it. One of my friends shared it with me and I sent it to all my clients the day that I saw it. And I’m going to tell you what the graphic says but it’s so beautiful. You definitely want to check out the show notes for this episode. Here’s what it says, so this is by Amber Ray. She said, I feel something. It’s uncomfy. I resist it. I noticed my resistance. I say oh hi feeling, you’re welcome here. My body relaxes. I witnessed the sensations, the feeling passes. That is one path that the feeling can go down right. The other path on the graphic is I feel something. It’s uncomfy. I numb. Which means the feeling, I suppress it or push it away or do something to actively avoid the feeling and then the outcome of that is the feeling persists. And I love Amber Ray’s simple and beautiful explanation of this. So much of what we do in coaching is accepting things, so we can let them go. We think if we push things away that they will get farther from our experience when the opposite is what is very often true. Whenever we try to push away a negative emotion, it just gets bigger and stronger and lasts longer. When we accept the negative emotion is when it starts to dissipate. So this is what I wrote to my private clients along with the graphics. I sent them the graphic and I sent them this note, and I’m gonna read it to you.
A friend of mine just posted this and I love seeing the visual, I find that no matter how much I study, or teach or practice this, I can always get better at it. I imagine having a discomfort muscle, and then I imagine The Rock, the actor, The Rock, and I think his muscles are already strong, but he still needs to work them out every day to keep them strong. This helps me remember that emotional muscles need workouts, too. Sometimes I want to skip right to feeling better. And sometimes I want to wallow in the feeling. This is human, we are all okay. The more awareness we cultivate around where we are in the process, the healthier our relationship to discomfort. Awareness brings us back to choice. And choice is where our power is always waiting for us, we always have it and when we connect with choice, we activate it. This week when discomfort comes up. Notice where you get stuck in processing, or sitting with it. Notice when it feels like it flows and when it doesn’t, with loving compassion for building your awareness muscle along with your discomfort muscle. Okay, so that’s what I wrote to them. And here’s what I invite you to do this week. Notice when discomfort comes up, where you get stuck and where you can go with the flow. Notice if there’s any part of you that wants to build up an immunity to the emotion instead of a relationship to it. I’m going to repeat that because I really think that’s so important. Notice if there’s any part of you that wants to build up an immunity to an emotion so you like never have to feel it again never have to deal with it. You’re done with it right? instead of building a relationship with it a relationship that’s healthy and useful and constructive. Build that emotional literacy so you can achieve emotional mastery. So that’s the plan. Feeling all our feelings one feeling at a time, all the way through. That’s it.
Okay, before we wrap up today, I want to remind you that a absolutely brilliant stocking stuffer for this holiday season is of course a book, I love books. I’m always talking about books, reading books, recommending books, and of course, I’m going to recommend two books to you today. One of them is The Questions For Couples Journal. I have gotten such amazing feedback on it. And I just love that if I can’t be there with you personally, helping you get closer with your honey, the questions in this book absolutely can. Today I’m going to read you a quick review from one of my dear friends, her name is C Rene Washington. She’s a brilliant coach for midlife women and here’s what she said about The Questions For Couples Journal. I just love this every time I read this just makes me happy. She was quoting and saying I know I know you like the back of my hand. I often say this to my hubby, so this is Rene talking. I know you like the back of my hand I often say this to my hubby and what I love about the questions for couples journal is that it proves me so wrong. Mr. Washington, her husband, would like to learn woodworking who knew these seemingly simple journal questions are expanding our perceptions of each other, reigniting curiosity and providing a welcome respite from COVID craziness. We are a couple in our 60s. So this isn’t just only for newlyweds, it is for all weds. Highly recommend and a lot of the questions could be used to strengthen friendship and family relationships to. Maggie nails connecting through enlightening and non judgmental communication.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rene. That review just warms my heart. It’s such a beautiful review and I am so so grateful and Rene is also an author in her own right. She wrote this lovely little book called take the trip for journeys, every midlife woman needs to live in purpose and freedom. And I mentioned that it’s a little Because I know some of you like the 400 page sagas and some of you want to be in and out like a ninja. So if that’s you, I highly recommend checking out Take The Trip, because it is a short but very powerful book. We will link to it in the show notes. I want to read you the quick description of it because it’s so good. So, again, the name of the book is called Take The Trip, four journeys every midlife woman needs to live in purpose, and freedom. What if it’s not too late to live your best life if you’re feeling exhausted and resentful, and obligated living, it’s time to stop ignoring those there must be more nudges and start creating a new life chapter that you will celebrate. C Rene Washington is a life coach and midlife maven and she’s your guide to living your personalized brand of freedom and purpose. She’s going to take you through a four life journeys and you will learn how to uncover your deepest desires and live them, connect to your inner self without role or title, continuously purge what no longer serves you, prioritize yourself while still honoring who you are and what you love. You know we love that on this podcast. And and the lie that it’s too late or you’re too old to live your best damn life. If you enjoyed Oprah’s book, What I Know For Sure, you will love Take The Trip. So there you have it. The Questions For Couples Journal, Take The Trip, two stocking stuffers that you can use to help you create the life and relationships you want to have in the new year and beyond. So definitely check those out. Our show notes are going to be hot this week. that is a wrap for today. Remember you can be successful at work and happy at home.