Latest / Forged In The Dark / Feeling vs "Feelings"
Transcript
- Forged In The Dark: There's a difference between feeling and feelings. feeling, the physical sensation in your body is vastly different than the story your brain is telling you about it. One is information. The other is simply a story. And creating a gap between what you feel and the feeling or the emotion might just make... the difference in how you react or respond to pretty much any situation in your life. Welcome to Forged in the Dark. I'm your host, Jamie. Let's dig in. Now last week was an incredibly interesting and weird week for me. And I am certain that there is more than one podcast episode from the experiences. But for today, I want to share with you a story about my run on Friday. Now, last week was interesting. It was weird. And it was. I have certain days of the week. do certain activities. I opened up the door to run in the rain, but ⁓ didn't happen. ⁓ was torrential downpour, thunder and lightning, which left me in a place where I didn't run for six ⁓ ⁓ by Friday morning, I was running, whether it was raining, torrential downpour, it didn't matter. My mood was affected. My energy was affected. I needed to run. And getting out the door wasn't easy. After having all of those days off, I kept thinking, I wonder how this is going to go today. I wonder how it's going to go. I wonder how it's going to go. And then I set out and it was a... bit of a rough start and it was an even more rough middle and getting all the way to the end took just sheer will and determination. But the real story is when my legs started to hurt, my legs were hurt or my legs hurt. They were heavy. My, my breathing started to get a little shallow. And where I was running, there are a lot of Hills. was allowing myself to run up half the Hill and walk the other half. was doing all of the things, but there was also a story running in my head and forgive my mouth. It was more like this run sucks. This is hard. This hurts. This run sucks. You suck, Jamie. This run sucks. This is hard. This run sucks. This is hard. And I finally made it all the way to the end of the run. And I felt, I mean, I felt better because I had ran and moved and I was all covered in sweat and things were better, but they weren't because I kept thinking, dang girl, this is what you get for skipping runs. Even though it wasn't my fault, it was the weather. And then something crazy happened. I came in the house and. Plugged in all of the run data into a system that I use to analyze all of my workouts. And the craziest thing came up. Like I even gave it the prompt, this was a bad run. It felt horrible. My legs were heavy. Breathing was hard. And what the data showed. I didn't have a bad run at all. I consistently ran ⁓ three of the four miles at a faster than usual pace. Hold on, hold on, hold on. So the story I was telling myself the entire time is that it was a terrible run. My body was telling me this hurts. This is hard. And my brain stepped in and said this sucks. So what does that tell you about the difference between the physical sensation in your body and the feeling? So let's bring it back to that. Feelings. When we are talking about what we feel in our physical body, a lot of people like to refer to this as like somatic, like anything is like movement and in the body. So anything that is of the body, any physical sensation in the body is information only. The heaviness in your legs, the tightness in your chest, the pitter patter, the tingling, all of that is literally just data. Information. It does not get meaning until your brain steps in and tells you what that feeling means. Now there, there's more to this and it just poof right out of my head. So hopefully it will come back, but there is a way to increase the gap between the information and the story. And this just might make the difference between you deeming something successful or ⁓ I mean, seriously, and this doesn't have to be about running. I am using running because this literally happened. This is my realization. As soon as I read the data, like as soon as I looked at all of the numbers, all of the analytics, I knew that this podcast episode had to be recorded because your body... Is like, okay, so your body, your central nervous system is the first responder in any and all situations. Unfortunately, we have been trained and conditioned by life to not listen, to stop listening to our bodies. And what happens is your central nervous system sends a signal to your brain that there is a physical sensation present. And then your brain. interprets what that physical sensation means based on experiences that you have had the most. If you get a little pitter patter in your heart and your brain is like, ooh, this is excitement, then you're gonna get all excited. If you get that little pitter patter in your heart and your brain tells you it's anxiety, what do you think is going to happen? You are going to fall prey to anxiety. Now, there are a couple of things that you can do to increase the gap. Name the sensation instead of the story. postpone the verdict and get curious instead of conclusive. So I realized I jumped around a little bit there, but what happens is your body sends a signal to your brain. Your brain determines the story and that is your amygdala and your prefrontal cortex working together. And all of this happens in seconds or milliseconds. So your ability to. Feel the physical sensation in your body without naming it, without judging it, or naming it, no judgment, no storytelling. So here I sit, I can feel my butt in the seat. I can feel my toes tingling. That's it. That's where the, there's no story. There is no meaning attached to it. I was running. and my legs were heavy and I was telling myself that I was doing terrible. When in hindsight, my body was feeling exactly what it should feel when, because I was pushing harder. Now, postponing the verdict. This one is important because, and this is one that I get to remember too. The next time I run, tomorrow morning, when I, run out the door before I run, I am going to set a standard with myself that I am not allowed to judge my run until it's done, until I am home, until the numbers are in the system, until I'm reading the analytics. Because my legs... are going to hurt or feel heavy when running sometimes. My breath might catch sometimes. Now I know now that when these physical sensations arise in my body, it doesn't mean it's a bad run. It means I'm pushing myself harder. But stopping the story during the run is delaying the verdict. Choose before you head out. I'm not going to judge this until it's over. And then you finish and then you have the data to look at and then you can determine how well you did. And you can also have the proof that there is a difference between what you're feeling and what you're feeling. The physical sensation in your body and the story you're telling yourself about it. And here's probably the most important thing in all of the personal growth work, whether you are talking about feeling what's in your body. and, and, okay, feeling the sensation and feelings. Feelings sometimes lie too. So you need to stay curious, like incredibly, incredibly curious. What am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? How intense is it? Without going to what does this mean? And... The difficulty is not the warning sign, it's the data point. Heavy means you're carrying real weight and still moving. Hard to breathe means you're fully in it. Your body is doing the work. Your body was doing the work. Your body was feeling the weight of the work. It's your brain that's telling you the story about how good or bad you're doing. So sometimes we get hijacked. Sometimes we get stopped because I can tell you that on that run, the thought crossed my mind. Ooh. If I make a right here, I'm home in like half a mile. If I keep going straight, I've got another two miles. Now I went straight and I'm so grateful that I did. And this is powerful information for any area of your life. It does not have to apply to to physical exertion as far as like physical activity. But if you are not pushing yourself physically in any way, well, there's a whole nother challenge for you. So today, whatever a task is that you have labeled hard, stressful, anxiety creating, stop. before you go into the task and choose to feel what you feel in your body without assigning it meaning. Choose to delay the verdict. I am not going to determine how that meaning went while the meeting is going. I'm going to wait for the feedback. And in knowing the difference between feeling and feelings, or anything else on this journey, stay curious. Okay. That's where I'm going to leave you. yeah, spend some time with this. Spend some time with this. It's fascinating when you, when you start to, ⁓ create that gap and, make that gap bigger from the, difference between catching Attaching what you're feeling and what you're saying about what you're feeling, it happens in seconds. So the more you practice, the delay of the verdict, the staying curious, and, ⁓ I already, there I am right at the end, just missing the last one. The story, like just stop telling yourself the stories. Anyway, okay, well I did make it just to the end, but I wish you luck today in acknowledging that you can create a gap there. Okay, until next time, bye.