Your Badass Life is awaiting you.
What to do when hard things happen, or you want to make some scary changes:
Practice emotional courage.
The worst thing that can happen in life is a feeling.
Take a moment and REALLY think about that. Oh and that 10 years relationship you had, the worse thing about it was a feeling. Isn't that crazy. We think it's all the circumstances, but it's actually the feelings.
When you practice emotional courage, you can and do get through anything in your life because you are willing to feel any emotion.
How powerful is that? I know you don’t go around thinking I want to get really good at feeling any emotion, especially negative ones. But I want you to reconsider. Practicing getting really good at feeling negative emotion is one of the secrets to the universe. When you are willing to feel any emotion, you will be unstoppable. You'll be so courageous you will blow your own mind.
EMOTIONAL COURAGE IS THE ONE SKILL THAT CAN CHANGE EVERYTHING.
Most of us busyaholics are also perfectionists. We tend to try and play it safe, make all the right decisions, avoid mistakes so that we don’t have to feel negative emotion. But is that the way you're going to get a life you love? If it is, great, but if not, let’s get you more comfortable with emotions, especially the negative ones. I know it’s a hard sell.
Just imagine, what you'd do if you were willing to feel any emotion.
I’m talking about the ones that feel like when we experience them we actually might die. No wonder we avoid them, right? It’s human nature to avoid negative emotion, but it’s not gonna get you that life that you feel completely irresistible about.
Let's say you fear doing something you really want, maybe it's a big dream of yours, and so you don’t do it. Essentially, you fail ahead of time.
Ok, so that feels crappy. You're already experiencing negative emotion, so why not feel the negative emotion that will get you the badass life you've dreamed of? Why shouldn't it be your dream that comes true?
Understand that it’s human nature to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and exert the least amount of effort. It's just the way are brains are wired.
So this isn't necessarily something that comes easy. But what if you just decided that you could handle any emotion, because you can. Lightbulb!
That's something you can just decide. You can decide that you will be fine even if you experience failure, heart-break, disappointment, fear, vulnerability, sadness, embarrassment, discomfort or whatever other emotion that terrifies you.
Nothing's gone terribly wrong...
What if you could feel these emotions and know that nothing's gone terribly wrong? Half of life's gonna feel like garbage and the other half's gonna feel good. What if that's just a given? Would you be willing to experience negative emotions have the time for a life you love? I bet you already are, even if you aren't living the life of your dreams.
I have a friend who's so emotionally courageous, she’s a great example of this.
She grew up in a strict family with high expectations and ideas about how she SHOULD live her life that impacted her OWN thinking drastically. She did everything that she was “supposed to do.” She got a degree in finance. She married a man who fit her mother’s bill for who she should be with.
Like many of us who make decisions and live our lives according to what we “should do,” either because of self-societal-familial-or-otherwise-imposed demands, end up feeling a lot of negative emotion.
Which is what happened to her. Even though from the outside she seemed highly successful, inside she felt miserable and by the age of 30 began to experience panic attacks.
She could no longer hide from what it was she truly wanted.
She dreaded her work. She was also unhappy in her conventional marriage, not because she didn’t love her husband, but because it wasn’t really what she was seeking, what would make her grow.
Can you relate to living a life that’s not truly what you desire?
I tell you this story because I know that many of you have had similar experiences. So if this is you too, you’ve got some options, some decisions to make. You can stay the same and feel miserable, or you can get good at practicing negative emotion that gets you closer to your ultimate goals. If you picked the latter (YES!!!) the only difference is that you experience negative emotion that is new to you, because remember you're already experiencing negative emotion it's just super familiar. —-By the way, FAMILIARITY IS NOT THE SAME AS COMFORT! —The latter requires emotional courage. You always have the choice to make changes in your thinking and see if this will help you love a job you hate, or stay in a relationship that feels unsatisfying. AND sometimes this works, and that's awesome.
If you're familiar with what I teach you'll know that in most cases I think it’s a good idea to get happy in a job or relationship you are currently in before you leave it.
Of course unless there is abuse going on. If you feel confused by this concept and how it might apply to your specific situation I encourage you to jump on a call with me immediately to help you get clear. If you have questions, I'll explain what and why I teach this, and how it may or may not be appropriate for your life.
My friend, the heroine of her story...
So this is what my friend did. She got professional help. She sorted out what was going on for her, and in the process she had the courage to feel a lot of negative emotion. This was the key, her willingness to feel negative emotion. She defined how she wanted to feel in her work, her relationships and in life in general.
She actually got to a place where she was pretty happy in her work and marriage. And still she decided that neither one was for her.
She left both of these situations, which required her to have some serious emotional courage. The kind that comes with changing careers, getting divorced, and finding a love more suited for her.
She got clear about what she wanted. She always wanted to make films, write and produce. She’s now a successful production manger. She wanted to have a relationship that would allow her to think thoughts that made her feel electric, and wildly creative, and now she has a live-wire man in her life. Of course she is electric too, but the expression is different, and she is having a blast.
If you are feeling negative emotion you ARE doing it right, you are challenging yourself to grow into the best version of yourself.
Of course she is still experiencing negative emotion and having the courage to do so, because that’s what life is all about.
You can think of it as badass, that you have the courage to feel the kind of negative emotion that will get you closer to your dreams.
So you don’t always have to see negative emotion as a bad thing. Its never perfect, it’s never rainbows and daisies but it's a well-lived life because despite the fear-- you went for it anyway!
We can never fully protect ourselves from negative emotion like heart-break, misfortune, pain, loss, suffering, failure, disappointment, sadness, fear, embarrassment, anger and any other negative emotion as humans you experience.
You too can get good at practicing negative emotion and believing that you will be ok no matter what.
This will take learning some skills, namely mind-management, which means truly understanding that circumstances, even the ones that seem really bad are neutral, and that the thoughts that you choose to think about the circumstances you experience are totally optional, and those thoughts are what trigger your feelings. Feelings drive all of your actions, and from your actions are created all the results that you get in your life.
No one pulls you aside in school and says, “hey, let me teach you how to manage your mind.”
They don’t tell you that managing your mind is the secrete to a life well-lived, however that is defined by you. Instead they tell you, you must learn geometry, algebra, trig & calculus. Ok, so that serves some of you, but not most. We would all be better served if we learned the skills of Emotional Courage and mind management.
If you don’t yet know this stuff, I promise you, you can learn it.
Feel empowered by that truth. Everyone needs a coach, to learn these skills in order to live life so much better. Having this information at your figure tips relieves so much unnecessary suffering and allows you to generate the Emotional Courage to feel the negative emotions that are not in vain, but a part of the process of your creating on purpose your best loved-life. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Get yourself some emotional courage and a doctorate degree in how your mind works. Get coached.
You will never regret it and it will be the best use of your precious time that money can buy. I’m a coach myself and I even get coached— and it’s priceless. We can't always see all the nooks and crannies in our own minds. I can say that I'm emotionally courageous and its not easy, but knowing how makes all of my dreams possible. I want you to experience that along with me.
I’ve got 3 spots left for 1:1 coaching. What are you waiting for? Let’s do this. Show yourself what a badass you really are.
Here's a fun picture of me living out my emotional courage to move to France fears and all, celebrating my journey with some friends at my first Cannes Film Festival 2018.
Your turn for emotional courage...
ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS:
What will you be doing, where will you be, who will you be with, and how amazing could you feel when you generate emotional courage for yourself?
What are you NOT doing right now because you are afraid of experiencing negative emotion?
What would you do right now if you were not afraid of experiencing negative emotion?
Write down your answers. Don’t beat yourself up, but know that being willing to feel the emotion and do it anyway is the currency to your dreams.
Rock on. You got this. And you got me as your coach if you want it.
