Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 436 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! What’s going on out there?
Have you ever felt yourself spiraling into an ocean of anxiety or anger or fear or whatever strong stubborn go-to emotion gets you worked up the most? And now you’re lost in it and everything in your world is now seen through the lens of that emotion. So your husband talks to you and everything he says is having to filter through that emotion whether it’s anger or anxiety? In our most emotional states, we still do have the power to control how we react to them. And a lot of times, it doesn’t happen by avoiding or ignoring. Quite the opposite in fact. Instead of avoiding or ignoring, it actually helps to get really really curious.
I have several big design projects going on right now and in design every little decision matters and usually involves lots of money. So I take each decision very seriously. Right now I have two big kitchen renovations that Im working on. When someone involves me it’s usually not going to be your standard kitchen, it’s going to be fancy. You can imagine. So I spend a lot of time creating the space in my head and imagining what feel and look we want to create and how it’s going to look once we are done. There’s so much to it. We are coming down to making final decisions and then ordering. And when you are placing an order for say $100k worth of cabinets, you don’t want to hope they are going to come in looking good, you have to know up front exactly how they are going to look. The other morning I was having a good amount of anxiety and so as I always do every morning unless something dire happens, I meditate and journal. Don’t get me wrong because I was kind of worked up a bit my brain said “you don’t have time to meditate and it wont be good anyway, so let’s just get right to work” but I make the rules in this head and so we meditated anyway. And thank goodness. The meditation happened to be on big emotions. During the guided meditation, Jeff, the guide asked us to notice and single out any low level or big emotions we had going on at the moment. Mine was easy, it was a low level heading towards big level anxiety.
So once we identified the emotion, he had us get really curious about it, like you would a new guest at a party you’re throwing at your house. So my guest was anxiety. He asked us to notice how the emotion feels and also to allow it to be there without any resistance. Once I did this I noticed that me allowing it to be there, instead of fighting it or ignoring it, also allowed me to understand it a little bit more.
Why should I have anxiety when I know my projects always turn out beautifully and clients are always extremely happy? And then I realized, you know what I agonize over every single decision and when I feel a strong sense of anxiety over something, that usually means I’m not 100% certain about it and until I’m 100% certain I wont pull the trigger, not unless it’s something we could easily change or return. In this case the anxiety is coming from me not having used this product before and so I wasn’t sure exactly how it would look when it was complete. But it was also not returnable so therefore the anxiety. Having worked all of this out in my brain, I realized that the answer is I have to see it in person before I ever order it and so I talked to my contractor and he arranged for us to go see the product in person before we order it. You see my anxiety up front, will save us from a meltdown on the back end if something comes in and doesn’t look the way we want it. We fix those things up front, at least I do, thanks in part to my little friend, anxiety. I feel better already and I haven’t seen the product yet, you know why? Because I know we will pivot if I don’t like how it looks even if it’s uncomfortable to do so. I will take a bit of anxiety on the front end anytime if it keeps me from big mistakes on the back end. Anxiety in this case is helping me in the long run.
So how is your big emotion working in your favor? How can you allow it to be there without resisting it and what is it trying to tell you. Maybe you’re low level angry a lot. Can you get really curious about that anger? When you really allow the anger to be there and question why it’s there, maybe you realize you’re angry at yourself more than anything because there are some things you need to be doing or not doing and it’s there to wake you up to that. Maybe your big emotion is fear, when you get really curious about it, you realize that the reason it’s so big is you’re focusing on the all the bad things that could happen instead of the all the good things that could come from it. Remember 85% of our worries never happen. Most of our biggest fears never come true.
Our emotions are usually guiding us if we allow them. You’re not anxious for nothing right? There’s something it’s trying to tell you. Same thing with other emotions. Pushing them away never allows us to see what they’re trying to tell us. Getting lost in them doesn’t help either because at that point it’s hard to think straight. Allowing and being curious shows yourself that it’s ok to be feeling it and then also allows you to see what it’s trying to tell you about what you should or shouldn’t be doing.
My challenge to you this week is the next time you have a big emotion, be ok with feeling it, there’s nothing wrong with you for feeling it. But then also get curious as to what it’s trying to tell you. It may be guiding you towards a path that heads off bigger problems in the future….Get ok with feeling your emotions and get really curious as to what they are guiding you to do. So the next time your inner guidance system is throwing up red flags, when you’re Those flags aren’t there for design. They’re there for a reason. It’s your work to find out what that reason. Share this with 3 people who have big emotions. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
