When the world feels heavy, remember this.
Practical steps to move forward without suppressing or drowning in your thoughts and feelings.
We are not victims.
There is a lot of shit going on right now. I know it can all feel hopeless. You might feel helpless, too. But you aren’t. Not even close.
Read on for some practical steps for moving forward with compassionate confidence and remembering that you are NOT a helpless victim.
We can’t control which feelings come up.
Feelings are just chemical reactions in the body, responses to things we see and, more often than not, thoughts we have. Yeah, some feelings are uncomfortable, including probably most of the feelings we are experiencing lately. But they are part of being human. We have to feel. Without feelings, what do we have? Nothing.
So, when it comes to feelings, our job is not to tamp them down but it’s also not to just sit there and let them run the show. (They are just chemicals, after all.) The only way past feelings is through them.
But we can control how we interact with them.
Our job is to interact with feelings in healthy ways, using compassionate confidence.
We have to be discerning on how we balance the yin and the yang, the compassion and the confidence.
If you’ve got all compassion and no confidence in yourself, it’s likely that you will let your feelings take over.
You’ll succumb to them and that might look like spending days curled up on your couch and ignoring your responsibilities, stuffing your face with 75 cookies, drinking an umpteenth bottle of wine. There’s a time and place for some of that stuff, of course. But don’t let your feelings be a runaway train. Don’t treat yourself like shit for an indefinite amount of time just because you are experiencing feelings that you don’t like.
Be kind to yourself but don’t capitulate to your feelings either.
If you’ve got too much confidence, it’s likely that you will railroad your feelings.
In that case, you wouldn’t acknowledge them at all. You’d repress them. You’d force yourself into situations that you wouldn’t want to be in. So, that’s not the answer either.
We have to have both: compassion AND confidence.
Having compassionate confidence regarding our feelings means that we allow space for unlimited kindness to ourselves.
But we also know that we can do this, we can move forward in a way that is fulfilling for us. We have to allow ourselves to acknowledge what we’re feeling. We do that by staying with our feelings (not running from them) and naming what we are feeling.
Only then can we process our feelings in productive ways and regulate our nervous system, which we do by:
Breathing deeply into our bellies for a few minutes.
Giving our feelings physical characteristics like a colour, a shape, a size, a texture, etc. to remind ourselves that we are not our feelings. We are just having a feeling.
Moving our bodies by shaking our limbs, rocking side to side, jumping up and down, going for a vigorous walk, working out, dancing around. Whatever you do, imagine you are working the feeling out of your system, which you actually are doing. (When you do this, you also release some of those wonderful feel-good hormones!)
Can you be an observer?
I invite you to experiment with your feelings. Be an observer. Get curious. Notice when you want to succumb to your feelings and when you want to run from them. And then gently remind yourself that these little chemicals are not the boss of you. You’re in control.
Check out these prior blog posts for more tips on navigating your feelings.
It’s natural for us to focus on the negative stuff.
As humans, we are wired to focus on the negative stuff.
Humans have an innate negativity bias, which means we are naturally more likely to focus on negative thoughts, emotions, potential outcomes, than positive ones. Focusing on our inner negative voice is our default; it’s a carry-over from our caveperson ancestors, who had to be hyper-aware of all potential dangers just to survive.
That scared inner negative voice is there to protect us.
But it ONLY cares about protecting us. It doesn’t care about how fulfilled we are or how much we’re living our lives. It doesn’t care about whether what we are doing is in the best interest of our health or our happiness. It only cares about protecting us. So listen exclusively to your inner negative voice MIGHT keep you safe (not likely) but will almost definitely make you miserable.
Luckily, our inner negative voice isn’t the only voice we have.
But it will try to run the show.
Many times, it will succeed. That’s okay. When we catch ourselves in a situation where we’ve completely given in to our inner negative voice, we treat ourselves with compassion because it’s okay. It happens. We stop, take a deep breath, and come back to ourselves by focusing on our senses. This allows us to reset.
Then we choose to focus on something else.
Our inner negative voice will never go away. It’s part of being human and it’s here to stay. But we can choose how much attention we give it.
I know it might seem impossible at first, especially if you’ve been giving your inner negative voice free rein for a long time. But, as humans, we have the ability to choose where we put our focus, including which thoughts we focus on. How cool is that??
“You don’t have to win the argument with your inner [negative voice], you just have to walk away.”
I love this quote by Tara Mohr, author of Playing Big. It reminds me that it’s okay to have an inner negative voice but that I also don’t have to listen to it! I can focus on something else.
The best way to shift away from our negative thoughts is to stay in our body and DO SOMETHING.
Do any of the things I talked about above for processing your emotions. Those work with thoughts, too.
Do something “productive”: clean out a closet, do the dishes, vacuum. Getting these types of activities done stimulates dopamine, which is one of our four-feel good hormones!
Occupy your brain by reading (NOT the news), doing brain puzzles, etc.
It’s important that you select a range of these. Don’t just spend your entire day reading. Give your brain some variety because, otherwise, that inner negative voice will just pop back in when it gets bored.
Again, I invite you to get curious. Observe when your inner negative voice comes up, when you want to listen to it. Be with it. And then shift your focus to something else. You will have to do this again… and again.. and again and again and again. That’s okay. That’s normal. Just keep shifting your focus to your body, doing things that make you feel good, while honouring your physical, mental, and emotional health.
If you want to learn more about negative bias, check out these blog posts:
More to come
I have so much more to say right now. But let’s do this in doses. I’ll share more in a couple of days.
In the meantime, please, my loves, be kind to yourselves but also know that you don’t have to cower in the face of all of this uncertainty and fear. You’re amazing.
Love,
Stephanie
Work With Me!
I’m available for keynote presentations, including my signature talk Crush It Without Crushing Yourself, which is perfect for conferences or training events.
For those of you who might like a little more compassionate confidence in your lives, I am also available for private coaching.
Check out my “Work With Me” page for more details on my corporate offerings and private coaching.
Finally, I’m very passionate about helping new hires succeed. To do that, I offer consulting services like developing onboarding programs and plans, auditing existing onboarding programs, and developing resources for new hires and their managers. I also have a special workshop for new hires, where we cover key skills they will need in the workplace, like communication, resilience, problem-solving, time management, and stress management.