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Understanding Emotional Simplicity: Acceptance, Resilience, and Transformation · #BeMoreLobster

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Dialing up awareness of body, breath, thoughts, and emotions without having to immediately respond is one of the best ways to restore psychophysiological coherence to the body.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Call this the physiology of resilience.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even if your typical day doesn't require you to find the courage to face down life-threatening danger, courage has a place in your life.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: For the moments where your life calls you to do something new but scary, a move across the country, a career change, a second marriage, a first date.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Courage can be invoked at any level of fear, and the process is the same.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your body responds with a neuroceptive assessment of safety and danger.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if there is some visceral detection of potential threat, your stress systems will wisely gear up the challenge.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if stress is a physiological response, so too is resilience.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so then is courage.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to this third and final episode in the podcast series on emotional simplicity.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you are ready, let's dive right in.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome back to this final episode where we're talking about emotional challenge and decisions.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've kind of covered a lot in the last couple of episodes, and like I say, it's kind of a very simplistic, almost crude, um simple description, but I like to keep my episode short and then we've got lots of time together to kind of go into these at a deeper level.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So in the first episode, we talked about what emotional simplicity was and how I defined it and how I created it in my life and why it was important for me to turn down the volume and the intensity on the emotions that they were more manageable.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in the second one, we talked about how we it's so important for us to have acceptance around the full palette of emotions and understanding that some things in our life are better because we've had all of these emotional experiences.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: The movies and the music and the plays that we go see that take us on an emotional journey are only that good because we know what these feelings are like.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that when we get into acceptance, we can expand and extend our self-compassion and then ask ourselves: is there something else that I need that I need to give myself?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I need to get external support from.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to go into taking that to kind of like shifting gears and going into when are we ready for more of an emotional challenge.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to share a personal story to help give context to this particular episode.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I will keep it short.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: When my after my dad passed away, um, I after some months, I was like, okay, this I don't think this is grief anymore.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was still grief, but there was something else that I was missing.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And after speaking to some friends who are also coaches that have known me a long time, they were like, I think you've probably got a form of PTSD.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And whilst dad had had cancer for many, many years, the last six months were nothing short of horrific.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you in full transparency that I remember very vividly being sort of four or five and sitting on my dad's lap.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: My dad used to be a smoker.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I would listen to my dad's heartbeat, and I was petrified of my dad dying at that age.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when he passed, I now recognize as a part of me, there was my four-year-old, my five-year-old, my six-year-old, my seven-year-old grieving for my dad.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and I held, and as I'm talking to you now, I can feel the pain in my chest, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is a somatic response.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so when he passed away, I had all of that stuff coming up, plus all the things that I'd seen, all the things I'd experienced.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was a huge amount of worry for like, how am I gonna, how am I gonna help my mum through this?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't help her through her grief.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: How am I gonna help my sister through that?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't help her through her grief.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this PTSD.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what I didn't realize as well was I was completely and utterly dysregulated.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: My nervous system was basically shot to shit, for want of a better phrase.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And emotionally, I was completely dysregulated.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I've been in the healing and the coaching and the and the health industries for 30 years, I really knew absolutely nothing about dysregulation.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'd heard a little bit from my daughter who we suspected of ADHD.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in again, in full transparency, I was like, oh my god, here we go.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another thing that people are going to start jumping on the bandwagon.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was my initial thought.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's very different now.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Having been through it, having had amazing conversations with my daughter, um, the dysregulation is a completely real and often terrifying experience.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: My dad passed away now just shy of three and a half years ago.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you that it took me probably until last summer to get to the state of regulation where I felt ready to make decisions that were challenging.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because just like I explained in that introduction, or not I explained, I was already out there, you know, it there was such a sense of unsafety in my body because I felt I was so unconsciously dysregulated.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that felt outside, everything that was outside of my home, everything that was outside of what I already knew, my the this little cocoon that I'd created of, you know, I needed my husband around me all the time, which is really unlike me.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I kept my circle very, very small, I kept my conversations very, very minimal.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go do anything new, I didn't go anywhere new, I just didn't put myself out there.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you're talking to somebody who I've always been a quick decision maker, I've always been a why not kind of person.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just give it a go.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really bothered if it works or not.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna just learn.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I became the polar opposite of that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everything made my body go into a state of fear and unsafety, and and then I would just retreat.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was only just before last summer when I was like, oh, things are starting to shift.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to feel like I'm ready to put my foot on the gas a little bit.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why I said in the first couple of episodes that I want you to be able to self-identify.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not in one camp or the other, maybe you're not in dysregulation mode, maybe you're not in full decision go, go, go, go, go mode.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're somewhere in between.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't even know where you're at at the moment.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what we're gonna say?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna accept it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna just be on the journey and be curious about where we might be because there's a continuum, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't always have to be one end or the other.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be black or white.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're on a continuum.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I can see looking back where I have been very much dysregulated with no capacity for challenge, and where now I'm like, okay, I'm ready for the challenge, but I'm also noticing that I have to prepare myself a little more.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have to, or I give myself the space to think a little bit more, I give myself the chance to be in my body with it more.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't just leave in my head, which is what I've always done.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So emotional challenge is about recognizing when you're in the season, when you have the capacity to say, okay, I am ready now to feel emotional discomfort.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have said to my clients for years, we we throw around the word fear like it means, you know, like it's just it's just a you know, it means everything.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm scared that it won't work, or I'm scared that I'm gonna get judged, or I'm scared of this, and I'm scared of that, or I fear this, I fear that.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, if we break it down, we're not, we don't fear the thing, we fear the emotion around it.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: If we feel rejected, oh my God, I don't want to feel the shame.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to feel the crucifying heat across my body, I don't want to feel like I'm gonna I want to like melt away through the floor.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: If we think about something failing, we don't want to feel the embarrassment, we don't want to fear, we don't want to feel uh the, you know, again, the embarrassment or the shame of people going, oh, well, that didn't work for her.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's the emotional voider, it's the emotions that we want to avoid versus a fear.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's my perspective anyway.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when we get into that, when we recognize we're in a season now where we have a greater capacity, we have more availability emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally to challenge ourselves.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now we come into the emotional challenge.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now we say, okay, I'm ready.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: I am ready to feel this level of difficulty.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I am ready to deal with a potential emotional palette that might be coming up for me if I make this decision.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And like she said in the book, it could be everything from moving county, moving country, getting dating online, selling something in your business, telling your partner you want to leave them, starting a new job, quitting a job.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many decisions that we make every day, and so many decisions that we don't make because we don't want to feel the emotions.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So if we can reflect back on last week's, uh not last week's, on the last episode, where we talked about emotional acceptance.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the big part of that is two things.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, we talked about if we didn't judge ourselves for the emotions we were having, and if we knew that we could manage any emotion that was coming, we'd be absolutely good to go.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we need for the emotional challenge.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I'm gonna say as somebody who really knows how it feels to feel so dysregulated and have this.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: When I say I felt unsafe, I remember vividly having this experience when I was in California.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was December 23.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was at a business thing with a friend, and we were driving to, I don't know what it was called, but the national park where all the redwoods are.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it was really high up.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember like looking down the side of the cliff, and I was not, I'm I was like crapping myself, I'm not gonna lie.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't just the height, there was just this palpable, almost itchy ness under my skin that was just like it was almost like a vibration of just I don't feel safe, I don't feel safe.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that did not help when we got down to the bottom either.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was something that just followed me around all the time.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I knew that I was dysregulated, my nervous system, you know, hormones are all crazy, crazy, cortisone and all that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what we want to do is we've already talked about how we create emotional acceptance.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: We want to generate the the the even if we can't generate the belief at the moment, we can start to work on the faith that I'll figure this out, I can manage all of the emotions.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about how we can go to people and say, look, I need some help.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where can we have a conversation?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: What resources can we use?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Where can we get support?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do we have to talk about ourselves?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: How do we create this sense of safety in our body?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the biggie.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: When we start to look at emotional challenge, the the first thing is we want to make sure that we can say to ourselves, whatever happens, whatever emotions that might come from me making this decision, I will manage it.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have to find for yourself what are the things that you can do to support yourself.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that can be everything from how you sleep, how you eat, how you move, how you communicate, how you get supported, like all the things, the whole spectrum.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you want to know how we can manage them no more and what happens.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: The other part of that is we have to create some safety around uncertainty.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth of the matter is there is so little certainty in life.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing really that we have certainty over is the actions that we take and the outlook that we have.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what you do whether you think about, I don't know, going on a diet or launching a business or dating online or getting married or starting a new job.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: We can only determine how we show up for that every day.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: We can only determine the emotional palette that we bring to that and the character that we bring to it.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have no idea how that thing is going to work out.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to create, particularly if, like me, you've been in a space where there's been a lot of dysregulation.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: We want to learn how to start creating safety in our body.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: We want to learn how to regulate ourselves, we want to learn how to dial down, turn down the volume, turn down the intensity, and create this frequency of safety in our body so that we are ready for the emotional challenge.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the beauty of seeing this whole thing as a journey.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: When you stop seeing yourself as broken, somebody that needs fixing, somebody that's going to get to this endpoint, and hey, I'm going to be happy all the time.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you can come from realizing that you are this full-on, full-body, sensory organ out there in a complex and turbulent world, dealing with other people's emotions, bombarded by social media, bombarded by messages, left and right and center.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is why you have to be careful with the diet that comes in through your eyes and your ears as well, and through your through through your peoples.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we you we're we're kind of bombarded with these energies all of the time.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're a sensory organ.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we've already said that we are creating these shapes.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to be the person that decides the shape that you want to take.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have to place, then you have to be informing yourself how that means you go out into the world.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the emotional challenge comes from when you start to make different decisions.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: When you start to say, look, like that, like the saying that I said last week, was it wasn't that that um most of the time change isn't painful, it's resistance to change.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you can go back to anchoring into the belief that you'll manage any emotion somehow, some way, you'll figure it out, and then you recognize the fact that this is a journey, and there is going to be a whole palette of emotions on this journey, and there isn't actually a set end point, it's just constant growth, it's constant awareness, it's constantly bringing yourself back closer to your body, back to your wisdom.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can make so much many more powerful decisions for yourself.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can walk away from situations in your life now that are making you really miserable, unfulfilled, unhappy, that make you feel constricted, restricted, suppressed.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And even though it's so hard for you and you might hate it where you are right now, there is a great deal of safety and comfort in that level of certainty.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Another reason why it's so hard for human beings to change, because we're driven by certainty, we're driven by safety.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So even though you know there is something in your life that you want to change, your body's going, you know, it goes on high alert, like we said at the beginning of the chapter.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: It goes on high alert.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: There is danger here, we don't want to be doing this.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to develop the ability to create safety and regulation in your body in the face of uncertainty so that you can make the decisions that best benefit your life, your expansion, your expression, so you can live the most full and authentic version of you forever and ever our man.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's wrap it up.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've done a whistle stop tour of emotional simplicity, we've done a super quick tour of how we are these incredible beings that create models of the world through our felt sense.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: How we have been conditioned to favor some emotions over others completely outside of our choice.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And how we've developed ways of being, ways of feeling, ways of thinking that served us because they got us love, they got us safety, they got us seen, they helped us survive.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: But now they're outdated and they might be keeping us in areas that we don't want.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, like me, you've had a life experience that completely rocked your world and brought you to your knees, and you think like I can't get back.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: But when we come from a place of self-compassion, we can accept emotions, we can build resilience, we can create safety in uncertainty, then we can challenge ourselves to make decisions that we know they're going to create emotional challenge for us.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what, we're ready for it.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: We can manage it, we can build our support network, we can get help, we can get resources, we can use anchoring, we can regulate our nervous system.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really hope you've enjoyed listening to these episodes as much as I've loved recording them.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Please do do me a favor.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Please do subscribe to the podcast on Apple.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: It really does help me.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you could leave me, leave me a review, that would be so awesome.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being here.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll speak to you again in the next episode of the Seeking Simplicity Podcast.