Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 287 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! What’s UP??? Super cool to be hanging with you guys…while you drive or work out or put your makeup on, whatever you’re doing, thank you for continuing to listen and share and if you haven’t already consider giving me a 5 star rating if you’re loving the episodes.
Ok, so noone REALLY wants to be in a bad mood, I mean I know when you’re feeling justified to be mad or sad or anxious or grumpy whatever, you sometimes think you want to stay there, but it’s more fun to feel positive emotions, is that something we can agree on? When Im feeling good and healthy, fit, happy, excited I want to keep feeling that way. When Im feeling sad, grumpy or anxious I don’t want to live in those emotions but sometimes because we are human we will do things subconsciously and consciously that encourage those feelings to stay around. We do this by feeding them. Moods want to be fed. Feelings want to be fed. And what we feed tends to linger.
We used to have neighbors that had a cat named Fred. Fred was the coolest cat ever. One day Fred sashayed (because that’s how he walked like he owned the cove, which he kind of did) so he sashays up to my doorstep one day and me being the animal lover I am I gave him some treats. It wasn’t long before he was coming up so much, he actually would come in and hang out with me, I’m sure he loved me but it was mainly because I was feeding him. The same goes for our feelings….they will hang around as long as you feed them and just like Fred they want to be fed.
Think about it..
when you feel really good and healthy and fit it makes you want to do more that makes you feel that way. Or if your in a fun frisky mood you want to do something fun and frisky? How about when you’re grumpy? You kind of push away anything good and happy. Or what about anxious? How often when you’re anxious does your brain just keep giving you other reasons for why you should be anxious?
First of all, it’s perfectly normal to have a different range of feelings and moods. This isn’t telling us we should always feel good and happy because that’s not realistic. We are human after all. Sometimes, We think we aren’t supposed to ever be in a bad mood. But that is part of the human experience. Nobody feels amazing 100% of the time. It’s what you do with these moods that makes a difference. I used to think something was wrong with me if I woke up feeling grumpy or down or anxious, and I would worry that it was going to be permanent. but now I just know it’s part of a normal human existence and I get to decide what I do with them. I get to decide if I’m going to feed it and encourage it to stay or if Im going to override my desire to feed it and therefor give myself a chance to get on the other side of it.
The other morning. I seemingly woke up on the wrong side of the bed…meaning I was a little was grumpy but, I had an appointment to be at the gym that I did not want to keep. When I woke up a little grumpy My primitive brain does what it will always do and gave me 15 reasons why its better if we just stayed home and didn’t go work out. It was giving me thoughts like, you don’t have to go this morning, you never miss go ahead and cancel, You aren’t going to get a good workout feeling this way. But, Ive talked about this in previous episodes, I know the primitive brain and how it works and I know better than to give in, because when I make decisions from my primitive brain they are not usually good for me long term. So I took control and I made myself go to the gym anyway. Driving there, I wasn’t feeling it, walking in I wasn’t feeling it, Im literally fighting my primitive brain the whole way….but then you know what happened….15 minutes into the workout, I felt literally like a new person. Had I fed my grumpiness by giving in and staying home, the grumpiness may have hung around all day, just like Fred the cat.
Our emotions are run by our primitive brain and if we are living on autopilot, a lot of our decisions are made from our primitive brain as well. You will know how often you hang out there by the habits in your life. Do you avoid going to the gym when you don’t feel like it? Do you reach for comfort food when you’re sad? Do you hide in your house when you’re feeling anxious? It’s ok if you notice you’re doing some of these things, in fact it’s great that you are aware of it. But here’s the thing. That mood wants to be fed and the more you feed it the hungrier it gets
So, my feeling that day was grumpiness. And if I had fed that feeling what it wanted, which was to stay home and feel sorry for myself, Well I may have been grump all morning because what you feed is probably gonna hang around, I know because I have done that before and I bet you have to. That’s why its really important that we are in touch with how we feel. Because how we feel drives all of our actions and that’s great when we are feeling fantastic but when we aren’t feeling so great, we have to get out of our head so to speak. We can’t just leave it to our primitive brain. When we make decisions from our primitive brain they often don’t serve us long term. My primitive brain wanted me to stay home and get back in bed. How would that have served me? when I overrode that feeling and made the decision to go to the gym anyway, my mood shifted within about 15 minutes of my workout and that feeling of grumpiness never returned because I hadn’t fed it.
Have you ever made plans with friends and the time comes to go and you’re not feeling it? Maybe you’re feel insecure or maybe even a little depressed so you cancel, stay in your pajamas, eat ice cream and watch Netflix, which kind of leads to you feeling more insecure, and maybe more depressed. But what if you took that feeling of being down and said, you know what, Im not giving that feeling what it wants, Im going to go out anyway, you get dressed, look beautiful, meet your friends, have an awesome time and come home feeling so glad you went. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know which one of these scenarios serves you long term and which one doesn’t.
And remember the good affects of overriding your primitive brain don’t stop at the workout or socializing with friends. That workout may have made you feel so much better that you ate healthy for lunch and dinner which encouraged you to keep that trend going and now you’re creating habits that benefit your mood and your life. Same thing for going out, keeping yourself isolated because you feel down only exasperates the feeling of sadness or loneliness. Whereas making yourself get dressed up automatically encourages a better feeling about yourself and then surrounding yourself with people that you enjoy encourages it even more so you make more plans to be social which studies have shown add to your overall happiness quite a bit.
So when you find yourself having thoughts of
Im just not feeling it today
I’m so anxious
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed
I feel irritated or sad or grumpy start to notice what those emotions want from you, they want to be fed so they stay around. You’re grumpy so you pick a fight with your husband, which simply encourages more grumpiness. There’s so many ways the primitive brain will encourage bad behavior, for all of us. Start to notice what that looks like for you and realize you’re in control here. I like to think of my primitive brain like a 3 year old. You don’t let a 3 year old make decisions for you, you’d be eating candy off the ground and running around naked in public. 3 year olds need guidance, of course they do. Well so does your primitive brain. We love that part of our brain because that’s where our emotions are created but we need to leave the main decisions up to the intelligent brain, and we have to do that consciously. The first step to doing that is being aware of your feelings and recognizing you get to decide if the actions you take are gonna to perpetuate those feelings or turn them around.
My challenge to you this week is to at least one time override that negative feeling and make a decision from your intelligent brain…go to the gym even though you don’t feel like it, decide that even though you’re grumpy, your gonna shake it off and not spread that around, get dressed up and meet your friends even though you’re not in the mood. Just because you have a negative thought which leads to you feeling bad, it doesn’t mean you are meant to live there. We all have a range of emotions, every single one of us. You get to choose the actions you take which could either keep you swimming in that emotion or get you on the other side of it, it depends on how you feed it.
Share this with 3 of your favorite people….
I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
