“Fealing, dealing, and healing isn’t weak. It’s the key to unlocking your greatest potential.”
Go-getter women tend to be focused on their external goals.
They want better jobs, to make more money, to have a greater impact, to create and maintain their ideal relationships, to have a healthy (if not rocking) body…the list goes on and on.
During a period in these women’s lives, their goals work. They break barriers, create success and stumble upon having a pretty good life.
But then there comes a time when they start to feel stuck.
Goals aren’t accomplished as easily anymore and they wonder what in the world could be going on to make them not as much of the rockstars as they once were.
They start to doubt themselves and their abilities. They wonder if this is just part of getting older. They think that maybe what they have now is enough and that’s as far as they can go.
I’m here to tell you…it’s not ANY of those things.
The stuckness is caused by unprocessed feelings that have finally hit their max limit.
These unprocessed feelings are so big in fact that if they don’t get processed they’ll CONTINUE to keep someone stuck for MUCH longer than they need to be AND it’ll feel like they’re wearing a heavy backpack with each step they take.
This is why when I work with my clients, they start accomplishing their goals with ease within MONTHS. I teach them how to FEEL their feelings.
Now, I know feeling the feelings isn’t always pleasant work to do.
It’s often labeled in our brain as something we don’t have time for, stuff from our past isn’t a big deal anymore or that it will be SO painful to feel, deal and heal with past pain, but here’s the thing….our brains are liars.
The truth is that we don’t have time NOT to feel our feelings.
It’s MUCH more painful to live a life where you are distracting yourself by doing things you don’t wanna do (like overeating, shopping, gossiping, watching or scrolling too much, etc) and not doing ALL (and more) you want with your life.
Feeling your feelings is BY FAR your greatest superpower to accomplishing your highest potential, and in this week’s “Become an Unstoppable Woman” episode, I’m going to teach you step-by-step how to do just that.
IN THIS EPISODE, I SPECIFICALLY TEACH:
- Why we fear feeling our feelings
- How to know if you have unprocessed feelings
- Step by step how to feel your feelings so you can make it your superpower
- The biggest belief you need to have about your feelings so you don’t get stuck again
- What the “tornado of emotions” is and how to escape it
…and so much more
Take the time to listen to this impactful episode today. It will change your life.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or on the link at the top of the page.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
→ Continue the conversation in my free online community
→ Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training
→ ”The Self-Coaching Model” Breakdown with examples
→ Blank Model worksheet for practice
Full Transcript
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 57,
Feeling Your Feelings.
[music]
Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fearfacing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife,
mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived
through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear
the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join
me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman
you were meant to be. Let’s do this.
[music]
Hey, hey there my friends. Today’s episode is an impactful one. I know I say that a lot,
because every content I put out there, I try and make it the best content ever. If that’s the
last thing that I ever produced in the world, or maybe it’s the first time you’re ever hearing
from me, I want it to be something that knocks your socks off. We never know when our
last day will be, right? Not to sound morbid, but I always want to make sure I’m ending on
a great note, and two, if you’re starting with me, you’re starting on a great note. Today’s
episode is no exception.
Today we’re going to talk about feeling your feelings, which is something our brains tend
to not want to do at all costs, even this life coach over here who helps people feel their
feelings all the time. I don’t really like feeling my own. [chuckles] It’s something I’ve really
had to train my brain around and open my mind to, because I grew up in an environment
too, and a family where you just didn’t do that.
I come from people who are Midwesterners and even Southerners, came from the Great
Depression and things of that sort, and it just was not a thing. In fact, it was made fun of
for people who felt their feelings. I remember there was a sketch, I think it was in the ’80s,
maybe the ’90s, on SNL where it was Stuart– I want to say his name was Stuart Smiley, but
he would look in the mirror and he would say, in essence, these affirmations to himself,
and talk about his feelings. I remember my family laughing at that, and I remember my
take-away was, okay, it’s really weak and you look like an idiot if you’re expressing your
feelings. So many other things than that, but that was one of the big take-aways was, this
is weak and this is stupid.
I encounter this a lot with women in my day-to-day life or women that I work with,
because a lot of people I surround myself with are go-getters. They value goals and they
value these external accomplishments like getting the job, making more money, making a
bigger impact, having and maintaining great relationships, being healthy, or having even a
rocking body. They want to really live life and accomplish great things, which is awesome,
right? We all want to do that, but there comes a point for most of these women, myself
included in there, where you just start to hit a wall sometimes and you start to feel really
stuck. You start to think, “Okay, why am I not accomplishing like I used to?”
A lot of people will say, “Maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, or maybe it’s my job and
I work with a bunch of a-holes, or it’s my kids and they take up all my time.” So many
external circumstances is what they blame it on, but the reality is what’s happening is that
there are some feelings that are unprocessed that’s holding them back. It’s likely stuff that
they didn’t even realize on a conscious level was still there. They may say, “That happened
so long ago,” or, “I don’t even think about that,” or, “Yes, I processed that in therapy once,”
or, “I’ve really processed it,” or, “This is my thought on it now, and so why would I need to
go and look at that deeper?” That’s what the culprit is every single time, is that there is
unprocessed feelings there.
This is in essence what I do with my clients. They come to me, they say, “Lindsay, here are
the goals that I want to accomplish, and for whatever reason I’m not getting these on my
own. I need your help.” I’m like, “Okay, great. Let’s do it.” What do we do right out of the
gate, the first two months? We are processing those feelings, baby. We are pulling up all
the crap that they had no idea was there. It’s not pleasant, but man, after you feel all that
stuff, you just feel amazing. You realize that you were carrying this backpack of weight for
so long, and because you’ve had it for so long, you don’t even realize that it’s there. Once
you get rid of that stuff it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, I just feel so much lighter.”
Then they just start accomplishing like crazy, and then when they’re not accomplishing
like crazy it’s like, “Woo, okay, I’ve hit another level.” Like I’ve said on the podcast many
times, new level, new devil, right? Then they’re like, “Okay, I’m feeling a little stuck again.
Now I know it’s just an unprocessed feeling,” and they’re back in it. They know the process
now, how to feel, deal, and heal that, and then they’re back in action again.
Many times our brain likes to tell us we don’t have time to process our feelings, or it’s just
going to be so heavy and hard, and what if we can’t pull ourselves out of that? What if we
just stay stuck there? The reality is we don’t have the time not to deal with it, because
what’s happening is it’s impacting us a lot now. We don’t even really see that, like I said.
We don’t realize the weight of what we’re carrying and how much it truly is impacting us
until we let go of it. Then it’s like, “Whoa,” this whole new world opens up for us.
Then, two, you can pull yourself out of that. Our human brain knows how to do it, it just
doesn’t like the discomfort of it. Now, of course, there are extreme circumstances and
people who are mentally ill. That’s not the audience I’m speaking to here, even though a
lot of people that I encounter sometimes question if they’re mentally ill. I promise you, if
you’re probably listening to this podcast, that’s not you, but yes, we know naturally how to
pull ourselves out of things, and especially when we know the process of how to pull
ourselves out of things. Oh, my goodness, then we don’t have to fear as much of, “Oh, I’m
going to stay stuck there.” Many times we’re just staying stuck because we don’t know how
to process it. That’s it.
This is why I always say so often, “Why the heck did they not teach us this in school?” This
is what we needed to learn. We didn’t need to learn about all the parts of a flower, or all
the planets we may or may not have in our solar system. Why aren’t we learning this stuff?
I’m so glad you’re here, and I’m so glad you’re opening your mind to feeling the feelings,
because, as I said it can be really uncomfortable, right? We want to avoid that stuff, but
when we avoid it what happens is that we just turn to distractions. Distractions are things
we do, but we don’t want to do them anyway. It’s things like gossiping or overworking,
overeating, shopping, oh, goodness, technology and scrolling our phones or watching
Netflix.
This is another reason too why, when my clients work with me in those first few months,
we’re processing those feelings, and we also get really clear what their distractions are. We
start to intentionally cut them, and then as they heal those feelings, it’s like they don’t
need the distractions anymore. They realize how much time they were spending on
distractions. They’re not spending their evenings having to zone out in front of the TV, or
they’re not having money problems anymore from shopping, or they’re not having to worry
about their weight because they’re overeating. It frees up a lot of brain space, it frees up a
lot of energy, and instead they can go out there and get whatever the heck they want. It’s
so cool.
Again, so glad you’re here. We’re going to dive into a couple different things today about
something called the tornado of emotions. We are going to talk step-by-step through how
to process your feelings. I want to give you some tools to take on your own and start doing
this on your own so you can start to see maybe what’s holding you back. I also want to talk
about how you know if you have unprocessed feelings. You may already know at this point
of like, “Oh, yes, Lindsay, I’m just feeling stuck,” but I want to dig into that a little bit
deeper. That’s pretty much it that I can think of of what I want to cover today.
Let’s first start with this thing called the tornado of emotions. This is just a term I’ve
totally made up. This is a process I’ve kind of just made up. There may be some thing
scientific out there, but this is what I’ve seen and what I’ve witnessed as a human being
and as a coach. It does go in alignment with a lot of psychological principles out there, but
again, this is really just coming from my stream of consciousness.
This emotion tornado in a sense is, you start with feeling like crap. You feel something.
Let’s take the example of something happens at work like a coworker makes you mad, your
boss makes you mad, maybe you don’t get a promotion, maybe you’re dealing with sexism
or racism at work, I don’t know. Something at work happens and it triggers this negative
emotion. Sometimes we’ll get triggered by something and then it will just come to us and
then it will pass. It’s like this little breeze that you feel like the wind blowing in your face.
You feel it and then it goes away. If it’s something that you feel and you just keep harping
on it, you just keep feeling it and it almost like intensifies or you feel like you have to
escape it because it starts getting too intense, again that’s where we turn to distractions,
then you know you have unprocessed feelings.
What I typically tell my clients and what has been told to me from my coaching school,
and I’m really referring to here Dr. Jane Gardner who spent decades researching and
spending hours upon hours, we’re talking hundreds, if not thousands, with clients, and she
was a psychologist before that. She really realized that after seven seconds, if you’re
having an emotional trigger, that means you have something unprocessed. That’s a big
sign that you need to do some deeper work here. Seven seconds? It goes by pretty fast and
yet it doesn’t. As I’ve started to realize this in my own life, if something hits me, I’ll start to
count and go, “One, two, three,” and count to seven. Sometimes things will go away.
I remember when I first started doing this, my daughter told me something about her stepmom, and her stepmom used to be super triggering to me. The whole story. She was the
other woman and blah, blah, blah. She does not like me. She still does not like me to this
day. There was a period of time where she really tried to pen my daughter against me and
just said nasty stuff. Anyways, I remember my daughter came in the car one day. I don’t
remember what she said, but something that her stepmom said, and I felt this emotion.
I think it was anger, and so I just start counting, “One, two, three, four, five,” and by six,
seven seconds, it started to go away. I just started to think, “Silly–” whatever her name
was. I won’t tell you, but, “Silly dah, dah, dah. This is your own healing work you need to
do. It’s okay. I got this. I’ll handle this with my daughter,” and so it went away that way.
Now, there was a time before that when my daughter would say something about her
stepmom and I would be livid for a long time. I would go in and then I would start
processing my feelings toward that. The more I started to do that, the less I was triggered
by it.
What I realized too is, being on the other side of just the stepmom equation, is how much
that was holding me back. You may realize this too, when you get triggered by something
and you hold onto it, it’s so draining. It takes up your head space for a long time, much
longer than it needs to. You’re distracted and then you’re not able to go after other things
and you just feel really heavy. It impacts us a lot. This is why, again, this work is so
important.
Going back to my emotional tornado here, we feel this feeling. What happens before we
know how to process our emotion is we use a distraction. We go and maybe we go get a
cupcake because that makes us feel a little bit better, or we go gossip and we go talk
about somebody else because that makes us feel better that we don’t have to focus in on
ourselves, or maybe we just go and caretake. That’s another distraction of like, “Oh, let me
go love on this animal or go love on this kid or something else to take away the pain that I
feel inside.” Or you may turn to sex or– Gosh, what are some of the other ones?
Technology I keep mentioning, or shopping. “Let me go swipe my credit card and get this
new outfit and get this little hit of endorphins for a little bit.” That’s what we’ll typically
do, and then we feel a little bit better.
It’s good enough for a little bit, but then it’s short-lived. It fades away within sometimes
even minutes. It just goes away and then we just repeat the cycle. Sometimes we just do
more and more and more distractions. For example, I’ll give you another personal example.
When I used to feel like crap, especially in college, or if something really big happened to
me in my adult life, I would go out and I would get plastered. I would get so super drunk. I
mentioned this in the last episode of cutting alcohol, but I would just go out and get so
crazy drunk. Maybe one night would be okay of that, but then sometimes it wasn’t.
Sometimes I needed to go get drunk for a whole weekend or weeks on end, and go out and
get drunk just so then I wouldn’t think about it.
Maybe I’d have to get drunk and maybe then I’d have to have sex, or maybe I’d get drunk
and then stay in front of the TV or all of these combinations. Get drunk, go shopping,
whatever. It was like I had to just keep feeding myself with these endorphins of this pain
that I had. To be honest with you, it wasn’t even really deep stuff that was happening to
me at the time. It was just feeling out of place, and that was eating away at me at that
period of time in my life to a point where it was just so uncomfortable to feel that that I
turned to distractions.
That’s typically the tornado is, we feel it, we distract ourselves, it feels a little bit better,
then we just repeat the cycle. It might be something else that happens. The initial thing
that starts the tornado is something happens at work, and then you may come home and
drink some wine and turn on some Netflix and you feel a little bit better. Then the next
day it’s your kids, and then dah dah dah. This is why, again, we fill this backpack. We’re just
carrying all this weight on our back of all these things that have happened time and time
and time again. It’s just, we don’t progress. We don’t get better. It’s just the same crap day
after day.
Then what happens when we learn to process our feelings is we break that tornado. The
cycle stops. What happens instead is that we feel the feeling, and it’s typically a crappy
one, and then we feel the depth of the feeling of crappiness, the true depth of it. If
something happened at work, you feel that feeling, you realize it’s lingered on for more
than seven seconds, then what you’re doing is you’re taking one of these tools that I’m
about to teach you, and you’re going and you’re digging in deeper. You’re going in and
saying, “I feel like crap because dah dah dah happened at work, and this makes you feel
like crap because dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah.” Really learning to process those
feelings and really take the time to sit there and explore it a little bit deeper. See why it’s
there, really explore the depth of it so that you can consciously put it in a place in your
brain where it can start to go away. I always say you pack it and then you release it. That’s
what you’re going to do.
Then, does it feel even worse for the few minutes you’re packing it more and going
deeper? Yes. It feels so uncomfortable, but it feels so much better in just a few minutes
after you start to do that and start to release it, in essence. Then you just start to feel
neutral about it of, “Okay, this thing happened at work, but I’ve processed my feeling and
now I may not be at a place where I’m okay with it, but I’m neutral about it. I don’t feel
triggered by it anymore.”
Then somebody starts to feel a lot better. Maybe that day they don’t feel better, or maybe
it takes a few days to feel better, but then they get this boost of, “Whoa, I feel so much
better.” Then what happens if that same or similar instance happens that triggered this
whole cycle, because they’ve processed it, they don’t repeat the cycle because now they
know why they’re triggered by it and they’ve processed it. That same thing just doesn’t
keep happening over and over again.
Like the example I gave earlier with the stepmom. For a while it was just like, “Ugh.” She
kept triggering me and triggering me. I thought, “Okay, I can’t change this woman. I’ve got
to change myself with this,” and luckily I knew the process to feel, deal and heal. I would
go in and I’d just keep doing the work and doing the work of, “Oh, I hate how this feels.” I’d
write out all my feelings of, “I hate how this woman is involved in my daughter’s life and I
didn’t have a choice in it. I hate how she’s impacting her. I hate that my daughter is having
to go through this,” and all of the things. Getting really open and honest with myself of the
depth of the emotion there, and the sadness and the anger, the frustration and all the
things.
Then it was like, “I’m just so glad I got that out.” It’s almost like when you get a tummy bug
and you know you have to throw up. You get that feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I got to throw
up.” For me, when I feel that way, I think, “Oh God, just go away, go away, go away. I don’t
want to throw up. I don’t want to throw up,” but then what happens is I eventually have to
go throw up. I do it and I’m like, “Oh, that feels so much better. I’m so glad I got that out of
me,” especially if it’s like a food poisoning. You’re like, “Oh, thank God I got that out of me.
That was horrible.” That’s kind of how it feels when you process your emotions. It feels
really uncomfortable for a few minutes, but then it’s like, “Whew, okay, that feels better.”
Then, like I said, you don’t repeat the cycle of it because you’ve processed it.
Again, with the stepmom, it’s like she can say pretty much anything now to my daughter. It
doesn’t trigger me. It’s not something that takes up brain space anymore. If that happens
I’m just like, “Boom. Here’s how we handle it.” Move on. Make sure my daughter feels okay
with it, and we’re onto the next thing. It’s not a big deal anymore. Are you seeing this
whole tornado of emotion thing? I hope so. I hope you’re seeing that.
Let’s talk next of how you can start to feel these feelings more. How can you really start to
go in the depth of it? I will say this. I forgot to mention this earlier, but I really got this
term of, “feel the feelings” from another episode that I did on this show. It was one of the
very early episodes, and I interviewed Tess Brigham. She’s a therapist and a life coach, and
she talks about feeling the feels. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I love that term.” I just want to
give her a quick shout-out that that’s really where I took this term from, and you can go
listen to that episode. I’ll put a link in the show notes, but it’s called “Master Your
Mindset”. Again, it’s one of the very early episodes. That’s a really great one to compliment
this episode we’re talking about today.
All right, so going back to, as I said, let’s go deeper into how you can process these
feelings. I’m going to give you two ways to do this. The first is just getting a pen and paper
or opening up a note doc on your phone if you’re on the go, or maybe opening up a word
doc on your computer, whatever, and just start writing “I feel” statements. Something I’m
going to give you in the show notes is a feelings chart. This is actually the feelings chart
that I give to my clients starting with my new course that’s coming out. Well, it’s kind of
new. It’s the Unstoppable course, but it’s the updated version. My clients get this when
they start working with me, and I encourage them to journal at least four days a week and
write these “I feel” statements.
Again, those first two months, we’re trying to pull all the stuff out that’s holding them
back. This feelings chart really helps because when you see all the feelings written down
on paper and something triggers you, you can say, “What is it that’s really triggering me
right now? What am I feeling?” When you see that list, 9 times out of 10 you’re going to
know right away. You’re going to be like, “Oh, it’s disgust,” or, “Oh, it’s sadness.” There’s so
many on there. I think there’s hundreds and hundreds of feelings on that list.
It’s a really great way to really tap into the depth of it and just feel it and feel the vibration
in our body of what it is, and then start to write about why it is you feel that way. “I feel
sad because,” and then just let it all out of, “I wish my wife wasn’t like this. I didn’t want
this to happen. He said this and it made me feel this. Da da da da da. It reminds me of a
time when my mom used to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Just let yourself pour it out on
paper.
When you feel like you’ve poured out everything you needed to at that one feeling, look at
that feelings chart again and say, “Okay, what’s the next feeling that I need to go with
here?” Then it may be, “Oh, I felt disgusted. I felt disgusted that dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.”
Again, pour it all out on paper and then say, “Is there anything else here that I need to
feel?” Look at the list. “Yes. I’m feeling blah, blah, blah,” whatever it is. Let all that out and
just keep writing and writing until you feel like you’re cleaned out. Again, it should feel
like you’ve been gutted a little bit, like you’ve gone and thrown up. I don’t know. It just
feels like you’re neutral at the end of it. A client told me recently– I think she said,
“cleaned out” was the term. It’s just this cleaned out feeling to go in and just keep
processing and processing and processing that.
Now, ideally you want to have a space to do this when you’re alone and when you can
book some time on the calendar where you’re not going to get interrupted. We’re in our
logical brains so often that it takes us a little time to get into the feeling brain. Kids can do
this really well because their feeling brain which is called the amygdala is just huge, and
their logical brain is growing slowly. It’s not until they’re 25 does everything even out. For
us, we’re older than 25, and so we are living in this logical brain all the time and it’s harder
to get in that feeling brain. We have to get warmed up to it. For me, it takes me some time
to get there, to be honest with you. To really get into my feelings and get it out on paper.
I’m also somebody who gets my feelings out better by talking about it versus writing, but I
don’t always have that opportunity to talk out my feelings with a coach or with my
husband or whoever. I have to force myself into writing my feelings. You may be that too,
but just be aware of it. It still will work for you. You just need some time to get yourself
into it. As I said, you don’t want to be interrupted because that’s going to bring you back to
your logical brain. If you have to answer, “What’s for dinner tonight, Mom?” while you’re
trying to feel your feelings, it’s going to take you out of that. You really just want to stay in
the feelings as long as you can. That’s the first way that you can start to feel the depth of
your feelings. Pretty simple, right? All you’re doing is taking that feelings chart from the
show notes, pulling it up, writing the feelings.
The second way is a tool called the self coaching model. If you’ve listened to recent
episodes you hear me talking about it a lot. It’s a tool that I am loving, I’m obsessed with.
It’s originated from Brooke Castillo of The Life Coach School. All the props to her for putting
this together. This tool in essence is showing you awareness of what’s going on in your
mind. The way it works is you take a circumstance. The circumstance can be, “John at work
told me I’m not qualified for the promotion.” You want to get as specific as possible about
that specific circumstance that triggered you in some way.
Then the next thing you’re going to do is you’re going to write, “What was the thought that
I had when that happened?” You may have had multiple thoughts, but you want to break
them down into, in essence, different models of different thoughts. You want to just focus
in on one thought at a time. If we go back to the circumstance of, John said you’re not
qualified for the job, the thought may be, “I’m never going to get what I want,” or, “I’m a
loser,” or, “I’m not enough.”
If we just look at the thought of like, “I’m not enough,” what was the feeling that you had
off of that. That would be the next thing you do in the model. The feeling would be
inadequate. Then you just start to gain this awareness of what you’re feeling again,
because sometimes we just don’t know. Sometimes you can pull it from the feelings chart,
and sometimes it helps to use the model and to pull what you’re feeling. Then, two, see,
“Wow, what was I thinking,” to pull that feeling.
That’s really interesting because if you’re saying, “Oh, I’m not enough,” many times what
we’re telling ourselves is unconscious. Then it puts this megaphone on what we tell
ourselves. It’s like, “Whoa, I’m not enough. Whew. Okay. Do I really want to believe that
about myself? Is that serving me to believe that about myself? Why am I believing that
about myself?” That gives you a ton of awareness to start to dig deeper into why that
belief is there and all that other stuff. That may be over your head if you’ve never done
coaching or any personal development work. For my clients, they’re just pros at it within a
few weeks of like, “Okay, let’s see why this is there, and let’s dig deeper,” and all that stuff.
The self coaching model is just a really great tool to start to break it down of again, the
circumstance, what was the thought, and then what was the feeling off of that thought?
Then if you had multiple thoughts, like I said, you can take the same circumstance, take
that next thought that you had, and talk about the next feeling you had. Then that will
help you, in essence, pair either that journaling exercise of taking that feeling and then
dumping everything out on paper.
If you feel inadequate, “I feel inadequate because growing up, I never got what I wanted,
and this happened in the sixth grade, and this boyfriend told me this,” and you get to let
all that out on paper. It’s like, “Whoa. Oh my gosh. Really this isn’t about John saying it’s
about the job. It’s about these deeper feelings of inadequacy that I’ve been holding on for
so, so long. Oh my goodness. I had no idea that was there. Now I know why.” In essence,
you can start to heal that by just starting to become aware of it.
Now, there are more steps to the healing process, I must admit, that I take my clients
through. It’s so much more than what I can talk about on this podcast because it’s a
process and it takes time. Where you’re at today is the first step, and it’s the very most
important step, because if you don’t have awareness and you don’t start to see how your
feelings are holding you back, in essence, by doing this exercise and maybe just taking the
time to realize when you’re triggered, or just opening your mind today and saying, “Whoa,
actually, it’s my feelings that’s holding me back. It’s nobody else. It’s really these feelings
that I have.” Then you’re going to start to just become so much more unstoppable and
you’re going to just open up so many doors.
I just wanted to give you that much today to start to open up the door enough, to start to
look at the world a different way. Just to give you a taste of what’s on the other side of this
is that when you start to release these feelings, as I keep saying, feel, deal and heal, and
you’re on the other side of this, you may still right now question, “Well, how is it that my
feelings are holding me back?”
If we go back and we look at this tool called the self coaching model that I was
mentioning, those first few lines as I said, there’s circumstance, then we’ve got our
thought, and then our feeling. What happens next in the model is what our actions are
from the way we’re feeling, and what results we get. If we have a feeling that we’re
inadequate because we have a thought that we’re not enough, we’re putting that energy
out around us. It’s like this energetic BO, in essence, that I’ve been talking about lately on
the podcast, and people feel that off of us. They don’t consciously know that sometimes,
but it’s like, “I don’t know if I really want to give X person that promotion because she just
doesn’t seem like she has it all together, ” or “I’m going to treat so and so this way because
she kind of accepts it.” Again, they don’t mean to do this unless they’re just manipulative
people. They just know how you’re treating yourself and what you’re thinking about
yourself, and so they’re just there to kind of reiterate the belief for you a lot of times.
That’s when you get to start to see, when you’re on the other side of where you are today,
how you change those thoughts and change those feelings, you end up changing your
actions and you start getting different results. That’s where you’re like, “Whoa. All I did was
realize what thoughts I was having, feel my feelings, and in essence I’m taking different
action. A lot of times it’s less action, a lot easier action, and yet I’m getting so much better
results.” It’s crazy. It’s so crazy. We have so much power that we just don’t even realize. We
give all of our power sometimes to circumstances. It’s just not true.
It’s so hard to wrap our brain around that because even my husband, he’s not fully on
board with that, but it’s just so flipping true. It’s so flipping true when you start to live this.
Please, I hope I just opened your mind enough to seeing this because this, my friend, is the
way to up-leveling your life and just getting what you want. I hate it when people think
that it’s these external things about them like their age or they’re in a crappy position or
their family, or whatever it is that’s holding them back. It’s just not true. It’s not true.
I even catch myself doing this all the time. When coronavirus hit I was like, “Well, there
goes my business. I’m going to be just taking care of kids all the time.” My business coach,
Stacey, actually came out with a podcast and was like, “You moms out there who think
your coaching business is going to go to crap right now, I’ve got some moms on the show
today and we’re going to prove you otherwise.”
Just listening to them talk about it, I was like, “Oh my gosh. Here I go, once again giving
my power to a circumstance.” I was like, “I’m going to make this corona experience the
best experience ever. I’m going to make more money, help more people than I’ve ever
helped, ever, and still show up and be a great mom.” I just went in with that belief and,
wow, it’s been incredible what I’ve created in a few months. I’ve realized how it was never
my circumstance of being a mom that held me back from the next level of my career. It
was never anything that happened in the world to hold me back from my career. It was
always, always my thoughts and my feelings about those thoughts that was holding me
back.
I hope I opened your eyes today. I hope I gave you some great tips. In the show notes I
also have a link to a self coaching model that has an example on it. I’ve included this on a
bunch of episodes recently so you may have already gotten it, but go check that out if you
haven’t yet. I also have a link in the show notes for a blank self coaching model so you can
start running models on yourself and you can start to see what your thoughts are. Maybe
you can pair it with that feelings chart and go deeper on your feelings and process all of
this. Seems really simple on the surface just to go and do this, but I promise you it works.
It’s really time, my friend, to make friends with your feelings. So many times we think that
something has gone wrong to feel a “negative emotion”. It’s like, “Oh my gosh. I feel this,”
or “Oh, I feel this,” and then we resist it and we start judging ourselves because we feel
that. That is just going to create so many more problems. A belief that I’ve started to put in
my own head recently is, “Nothing has gone wrong, ever. Everything is happening in my
best interest.” I always had that, “Everything is happening in my best interest,” belief in
there. I had that one I’ve been building for years, but that, “Nothing has gone wrong,” is
something I’ve added because I realized I will judge myself a lot if I start experiencing
something negative.
I see this with my clients, too, and I’ve really started to push this on them of, “Hey, maybe
you should start to think of the world this way, as nothing’s gone wrong.” It’s just opened
up so many doors to not have this added layer of judgement and resistance when we feel,
again, something “negative”. Instead it’s just like, “Oh, I feel something negative. Okay, this
doesn’t feel great. What am I going to do about it?” and then you start taking the steps to
do that versus, “Oh, I feel something negative. I hate this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t
have time for this. Oh, la la la la,” right? That just doesn’t serve us.
Our brain sometimes is so silly. It thinks it’s trying to figure out ways to serve us and it
thinks we don’t have time to feel our feelings and it thinks it’s a bunch of crap and we
shouldn’t do it. You know, our brain, it’s just silly sometimes. Every time I go in and feel my
feelings, I think, “Why did I resist that so much?” Every single time, even though I’ve been
doing this for years, even though I know on the other side of it it’s going to be better, I still
resist the hell out of it. So just know, that’s just normal. That’s just having a human brain,
but you will get through it my friends. You will get on the other side of this and you’re
going to be like, “Lindsay, I feel so much better. Thank you so much.”
The last thing I want to leave you with is this, is that if you’re willing to feel anything,
you’re going to be willing to do anything. So many times we resist doing things, especially
big things in our life, because we don’t want to feel the “negative” things or the
uncomfortable things. We don’t want to feel rejection, or we don’t want to feel
disappointment or sadness or anger. Especially people who want to step out in their
careers after they’ve been comfortable for a while. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be
rejected,” or “I’m likely going to have disappointment or sadness with this.”
That’s how I feel with my business sometimes. I get on consult calls sometimes and people
tell me, “No,” or– I had a consult, gosh, I guess two weeks ago now, who I was like, “Oh, my
gosh. I can totally help you. Here’s how we’re going to do it.” She was like, “Oh my gosh.
I’m totally in.” She got off the phone, went and talked to her husband. At this point I still
haven’t gotten a yea or nay from her, but at this point I’m like, “Okay, it’s a nay.” There’s a
lingering sadness with that of, “Oh man, I could have really helped her but yet here we are
and it didn’t happen.”
Now, of course there is amazing benefits of all the people who say yes who I know I can
help and I get great results and all that, but it’s just part of the game, right? I’m okay with
that because I’m willing to feel all of those things by putting myself out there. So if you,
again, are willing to feel all that stuff, you’re going to be willing to expand, because it’s
not really the action of something that we fear, it’s the feeling that we’re going to feel of
that action. This is where your power is at, my friend, is feeling those feelings and being
okay with that and knowing that you can get through anything. You can process anything
because you’re going to take the time to feel it instead of just stuffing your face or
scrolling social media or doing whatever. Okay?
So go rock those feelings. Go make this your superpower. It’s an amazing one to have. If
you need any support, I have that free online community where we can always talk about
the episode. I’m here for you. Of course, if you’re ready to start coaching with me, I’d love
to help you. All the links in the show notes of how to get in the community and on a
consult call, but also they’re here in the outro as well. I’ll end with that my friends, and I’ll
see you next time on the show. Bye.
[music]
Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed
it, share it with a friend. Send them a picture of this episode via text, via email, share it on
social media, I’m sure they would be so appreciative to know these strategies and tips on
how to accomplish your dreams. If you are ready to guarantee you’re going to accomplish
your goals and dreams, then it’s time to start coaching with me.
In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single
step of the way to ensure that you get the goals and dreams that you want. The first step is
to apply for a free 60-minute consult call. Just go to LindsayEpreston.com/apply to get
started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can
be, so believe in yourself. You got this.
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