Episode 141: Your Most Useful Emotions

Episode Summary 

Has your brain figured out that this Thursday isn’t any different than a Thursday in 2021? As much as we want the calendar to change things for us, it never does. 

Our brains always behave the same no matter what we change. No matter where we live, who we’re married to, our job, our health, our routine, our plans...no matter what circumstances we change, our brains are there, trying to sabotage us.

I want to give you some help in managing your brain this year, some help to make sure that you get what you want instead of your brain getting what it wants. Certain emotions are what have allowed me to keep working towards my goals when my brain wants to quit.

Here are the emotions that have been the most useful to me:

• Courage - Courage means I don’t have to solve for fear. My brain is scared, and that’s okay. I can have courage and do it anyway.

• Curiosity - Being curious is the way to see your way forward instead of thinking it won’t work.

• Compassion - Self-compassion is a skill that you build and strengthen and it is so useful when you don’t create the results you wanted.

• Certainty - You want to use certainty to develop trust in you, that you will figure it out.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to episode 140 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I want to welcome you to the podcast. I just want to check in with you and ask if your brain has figured out that this year is just like any other year. Like, has your brain figured out that this Thursday isn't any different than any other Thursday last year? And that as much as we want the calendar to change things for us, we want a new year to, like, make our lives brand new, it never does, right? Like, we always think it's going to be different. Don't wait that somehow, if we could change the circumstances, if we can change from one year to a new year, that somehow our brain will behave differently and that we will show up differently in our lives. It's just so disappointing that it never works that way.

I think our brain is always behaving the same no matter what circumstances we change, no matter if we change years, or weeks, or months, no matter if we change where we lives. No matter if we change who were married to or what our job is, our health or our routine or plans like, no matter what circumstances we change, there we are with our same brain trying to sabotage us, trying so hard to get us to not do the things that we want to do right? Brains are always trying to get us to stop or quit, stop taking risks, take the easy way, stop spending energy no matter what. We are always coming up against our brain and no matter where we go, there is our brain. It is our constant companion in this year. Our brain is still our brain. This Thursday, our brain is still our brain, right? New Year, same brain, as I once heard a coach say, and this is why we all need a coach because our brains just keep doing what they do best. They keep finding problems. They keep telling us what's wrong with us. They keep telling us that we can't. They keep pointing out our mistakes, right?

Like, we always think somehow I'm going to figure this out and it's going to be different. And what we have to figure out is that it's my job to change my brain, it's my job to manage my brain, and coaching helps you do that better than anything else. It helps you manage your brain so that it can be your brain, it can do its thing, it can performance biologic function. But that function doesn't dictate and determine your life experience, the things you get, the things you get to create. We don't want our brain doing its job to keep us from the life we want to be living, okay?

So, I think you all should be in coaching, and I would love to be your coach. So until then, on today's podcast, I want to give you help in managing your brain this year like some help to make sure that like you are getting what you want, that it just doesn't. This year doesn't just turn over and like, we're still in the same place because our brain is the same. It doesn't matter if your brain is the same, your brain can be the same, but you can be different. You can make different choices with your brain. You can make different choices with your thoughts, and that will change everything.

And so, on today's podcast, I want to give you a tool that will help you to do that. So recently, I was working with my clients on some of their goals for 2022, and I was asking them like how they need to feel in order to achieve their goals. So like, as you know, our feelings are the thing that is fueling of all of our actions, and we often don't pay attention to our feelings when we go to set goals, right? We're more concerned about what specific actions we need to take to achieve that goal. And we need to recognize that every one of those actions is going to be fueled by feelings. And how we feel on our way to the goal is so critical in regards to whether or not we achieve it in regards to whether or not we get what we want in regards to whether or not we show up the way we want.

And so, I want to ask you the same question. Whatever it is you want to create in your life this year, like, what feelings do you think you need to feel in order to create those results? And instinctively, I think we think a lot about like a lot of positive high energy emotions that we are going to need to accomplish things, right? Like we often think that we need to feel excited, or motivated, or inspired, or confident, and in fact, when we go to set the goal, that's usually how we feel. We feel super excited, we feel super motivated when we're setting the goal, we sometimes even feel really confident. And it's like Jason Caldwell says, like all the glory disappears at the start line, right? Like, like, we have all these amazing emotions, and then we go to start, we going to do the thing, and all of those just disappear, right? Those are like those really high energy like happy emotions can be sort of fair weather friends when it comes down to like doing the work. Like you got to do the work, and like excitement has left the building, right?

6:06
So, when the going gets tough and when you face obstacles, and challenges on your way to the goal, these really like high energy, lovely emotions tend to take off and abandon us. And there we are, just sitting with the work, right? And so, I think that one tool that could be so useful to you is to really think about choosing emotions ahead of time. Choosing what you want to feel and the emotions that you're going to purposefully create, and cultivate so that you can keep going towards your goals, and you need to make those decisions about what emotions you're going to choose based upon their usefulness, right?

If your emotions are fueling your actions, you want useful fuel, you want useful emotions that will keep you going, even when your brain is offering you all kinds of discouragement, and exhaustion, and despair, and disappointment. Like all fear, all the feelings that the brain offers you to get you to stop. You want to have some useful emotions in your tool belt to be able to answer that, okay? To be able to like to be able to reach, and grab, and access when those negative emotions are bombarding you, okay?

So, I want you to think about kind of like a tool belt of emotions like you have all these resources of emotions inside of you that you can use to get what you want. Think about your tool belt or your toolbox of feelings that you can access, and use when your brain inevitably telling you it's inevitable offers you the negative emotions to get you to stop, to get you to quit, to get you to, like, not go after the things that you want, okay? So, you know, you just have to remember always that your brain's objective is to get you to stop. This is such a surprise to us, we're just like why, when it's a thing I want, why does my brain stop me? But it truly doesn't care about your goals. It cares about its goals, which is just about keeping you alive. So, it's just like, does this save energy? Is this, you know, pleasurable? And does this avoid discomfort, or pain if it doesn't fall into those categories, your brain's like, no thank you.

And so, then it produces a ton of negative emotion, as I said, to get you to stop and quit. And so, today I want to talk about the emotions that you can use in the face of those negative emotions that you can use them and activate them to keep working towards your goals because you are going to have the negative emotion. Remember, it's not because you're doing it wrong. It's not because like, you're not strong, you're not motivated, you're not like, you know, the people who achieve none of that just because you have a brain, okay?

So, I went back and I just kind of looked at the big goals that I have accomplished in my life and even ones that I sat and I'm still working towards, and I've thought about like what are the emotions that allowed me to keep going? What emotions like have allowed me to continue even when my brain is like screaming at me to stop? What emotions have been most useful to me? So, and it just so happens that they all start with C, so I feel like it's like kind of meant to be. So, here we go. So, the first emotion I think is so useful to have is courage. I personally use courage on a daily basis, okay? So a lot of you want to feel confident, right? And maybe you look at me or you listen to me and you think she is confident, right? And she does lots of things in her life that make her confident. But I promise you, confidence is not my primary emotion. My brain is always offering me fear.

10:07
My brain doesn't like, I don't wake up in my brain like, feels so confident about what's ahead of me that day, instead, my brain offers me anxiety, and fear, and insecurity. And so, I have found that way more useful than confidence is courage. If you are waiting to feel confident, you will wait forever. If I was waiting, confidence rarely comes, but I can access courage any time I want. And so, when I feel scared, when my brain says I can't or it's like what it always says is like, you're definitely going to fail at this thing, then I choose courage. The truth is, I require a lot of scary things of myself, and at least my brain thinks are scary, like if I told you them, you'd be like, that's not that scary, okay? That doesn't sound that scary. But my brain is like, like, my brain thinks the things I ask it to do are scary.

When I started my podcast, my brain was terrified. I can't even describe to you how scared it was when I did a webinar. I teach a class online about coaching or about the things that, like, are so important to me that have changed my life, my brain produces so much fear about that, even though I love it. And even though there are things that are so important to me, and even though I know they're going to bless people's lives, my brain is like, oh my gosh, this is terrifying, okay? And so, I just I just find that courage serves me so well. I use it all the time, and I have this little sticky note on my computer, and it just says this is the part where we are brave. And I just remind myself of that over and over, like, you're scared, that's okay. This is the part where we are brave. Your brain's producing fear, not a problem. This is the part where we are brave. This isn't the part where we aren't scared, okay? Like, it's never the part where we're not scared, it's always the part where we are brave.

And having courage means I don't have to solve for fear. Like my brain is scared. That's okay, right? I have courage so I can go and do these things anyway. And courage is just one of those emotions that really allows you to get things in your life that you've always wanted, but you've been too scared to try and to ask for, and to believe in courage can even be useful as you go to believe things like your brain will be scared even to believe in a goal, or to believe in a thing. And you say it's okay, brain, you can be scared. But here's some courage, we're going to be brave. We're going to believe this thing. So, I just can't say enough good things about courage. I feel like in so many ways, my life has been transformed by by accessing the feeling of courage.

Number two, curiosity. And just like my brain likes to default a lot to fear, like its other favorite emotion is shame. So, my brain, as you know, if you listen to this podcast, my brain just loves to tell me I'm wrong. It loves to offer me shame. It loves to just like, point out, like, Oh my gosh, you did terrible, bad, and terrible at that. And you know for sure you're going to do terrible the next thing, right? And it just like it just loves to offer shame. And it tells me like, because, you know, you did it wrong, it's never going to work, you can't possibly do this thing. And so, the answer to that for me so many times, especially when my brain is offering me shame, is curiosity. Like, really? Did I really do that wrong, and I just like answered back with curiosity because the truth is I'm never doing it wrong, and neither are you. We're always in the process of learning and whatever that learning looks like is always right. Even if we have to do it wrong, one billion times like we are right in the wrongness of that, that's how we're learning it, okay?

And so, I just answer back, like, are you sure? Like, how could I know unless, you know, I did it that way? And so, it just like to always turn it back to curiosity and like, ask the question back, not just take my brain's word for the fact that, like it, thinks I did it wrong. The other day, also another curious question is my brain will often tell me like, you can't do that thing as if, like, like, okay that's a goal in the world, and some people can do it, but definitely you can't, right? Because there's something wrong with you, right? Again, there's shame. And I just I saw this post by a coach the other day and he asked, why not you? And I've just started asking that back to my brain because my brain will be like, you can't do this, and I just ask back, like, why not me? Why not, why not me, right?

And so, it's just so good to be curious about the things that your brain acts like are facts, acts like are statements. Like it's just reporting the news, you can't do this thing. I just like to question that with curiosity. Why not me? Why couldn't I? What if I could write it just like a little act of rebellion between you and your brain? What if I could brain, right? Another thing that my brain will say like about any outcome, or result, or goal that I have, my brain will say, I don't know how you don't know how to do that thing, right? You don't know. You don't know how. And I just again use curiosity there and ask, what if I did, what would I try if I did? And then I go, try that thing. And it doesn't always work. But like, what if I did shows me that I know more than I think I do.

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And I know that I've told you this story a million times. But when I first started my group coaching program, I told my coach, like, I don't know how to do that. And she's like, What if you did? And I was like, I don't. I definitely don't. I don't know how to do that thing, I've never done. I definitely don't know how. And she was like, Well, what if you did like, what would be the first thing you would do if you did? And I was like, Well, I'd tell some people about it and I'd pick a day where it starts. She's like, perfect, you know how to do it, right? So, I just think like curiosity, then like answering back in a curious way can be really useful. Curiosity allows us to be open minded and to find solutions. Our brain is like, just shuts the door and says, no, we don't know how we can't do that thing, right? But, you want to like open the door and ask yourself, but what if I did. I'd be curious to see a way forward instead of just automatically assuming that it won't work there.

There are no solutions available when you think it won't work. But there are so many possible solutions, when you're curious. And there are always going to be problems, you guys, there are always going to be problems on the way to getting what you want, but curiosity, not knowledge, is the way to solve every one of those problems, like curiosity and not like surety and like, experience that's the solution, right?

So, it just reminds me of like last year I read Shoe Dog, which is about Phil Knight and the Nike start up. And I just remember, like so many times in that book, just being amazed that he didn't know what to do. Like, we look at Nike and we just think like it was just a straight path, and whoever did it knew exactly what to do. And you just do step one, step two, step three. And I just don't have access to those steps, so I can't create that. But you read that book and you're like, he never knew what to do. He never knew what to do. He was like, just curious. Like, we'll try this thing, okay, we'll try this thing. Like he problem solved, over, and over, and over, again. So, instead of telling yourself it won't work, you got to get curious, okay?

Number three, the third emotion in your toolkit, and this might be the most important one is compassion. And this is the emotion, actually, that I'm doing the most work on right now. I feel like up until this point, I've really been able to use courage and curiosity to like make things happen. But the bigger my goals get, the more challenging they become and the more I've had the need to use compassion because it's not easy and it doesn't come as automatically as some of the earlier steps. And so my coaches are always asking me to come back to compassion. This is the work she is always offering me and always pointing out to me. I feel like lately in every session we have, she's like, what about compassion here? Cause I'm always just like, Oh, I can't believe it's not working. I can't believe I can't, you know, I can't make this work. And she's like, we've got to start with compassion and like that just comes again from my brain's tendency to go to shame and to make me wrong. And compassion is just as critical as curiosity to be able to problem solve and get out of that.

So, I have to have compassion for where I'm at. There is something here that I need to learn, and if I don't have compassion, I can't look at it. Like shame gets in the way of looking at things. It, it hides the truth. It hides like what we've been thinking and what we've been feeling, which is producing our current results. And so, when we can have compassion for where we are and for our own limitations, then we can get back to curious. We can get curious about what it is, but we need compassion to access that information. It's like when we're mad at ourselves, our brain hides the information from us about what's creating, you know, the problems. But when we have compassion for ourselves, we get access to all of that.

And so compassion, you find compassion by understanding that we always have a good reason for where we are, whatever we are creating in our results currently like, there's a good reason for it. We're having a thought that's creating a feeling that's driving our action. And my brain is always telling me, like, you should be beyond this. You shouldn't be thinking thoughts like that. But this is hard work. We are asking ourselves to leave our comfort zone. Our brains like instincts, kick in and offer us thoughts. And sometimes we believe those thoughts and it's okay. We're asking ourselves to be vulnerable and set big goals and go after our dreams, and that is scary. And we have to have compassion for our humanness, compassion for, for the fact that like it is scary and it does require hard things of us. And there is no reason to beat yourself up for that. Self-compassion is a skill. My coach is always saying self-compassion is a muscle and you need to strengthen it, okay? So compassion is just like it sounds, I don't know, like flimsy or like woo woo, but compassion is like a power emotion. It's just like so strong.

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And when you have compassion for yourself, like you, stand up to your brain when it starts being rude, when it starts beating yourself up, when it starts making wrong, compassion can stand up and say, No, that's enough. Compassion needs to be strong in the face of all that self-criticism. It's just not useful to shame yourself, and condemn yourself, when things don't turn out the way you wanted them to or the way that you plan them to, making yourself wrong does never makes that better, okay? That it's just so necessary to love yourself and have compassion for where you're at. And that means allowing yourself to fail sometimes and to feel bad about it and not do it perfectly and then not beat yourself up about that. Compassion is never making yourself wrong for where you are. You are on your way to the goal and whatever place you are at, whatever experience you're having is the lesson you need and you do not have to make yourself wrong for that. Let me also just add that compassion is a deliberate choice. We aren't trained to earn our way to compassion. We need to provide it on purpose for ourselves. So just ask yourself, like, how can I have so much love and compassion for where I am right now?

All right, the last emotion that I think is so useful is certainty. And what's ironic is that your brain already thinks it's certain, okay? And it's using its certainty against you. Because your brain is certain that you can't do these things, your brain is certain that this is a long shot. Your brain is certain that you're not being realistic. Your brain is certain that this is going to be too hard. Your brain is certain that you are never going to figure this out. And I want you to flip this on its head and you start being more certain than your brain, okay? I want you to use certainty for you to believe that what you want is possible. No matter the doubts that your brain has, and want you to ask yourself, what am I certain of, what can I be certain of?

Okay, so I know I told you last week that my son and I set this goal, we're going to do this climbing event. And like so every day you want to get on the treadmill, you guys, I wish I had like a video inside my head or something that I could play for you, but my brain is literally just like anything it can offer me to get me off that treadmill. Like, it just hates it so much. And it's just like, you know, when stuff gets hard, your real mind gets revealed. Your brain gets revealed. And like, I can just see the very distinct, very distinctness between me and my brain. My brain is just like, let's get off this thing in offering any thought it can to get me to stop. But so lately, I've just been on there and I will just ask myself, like what I'm certain of because my brain is like certain that we can't do this thing. My brain keeps saying, like, there is no way you can do this thing. This is a waste of time is a waste of energy. There is no way you can do this thing, and it just feels very certain about that truth.

And so, I have like made a list of things that I am certain of to to answer my brain back. And what I tell it is like, I am certain that if I keep adding to my time, if I do three minutes more every single day, I am certain I will get there. I am certain that if I increase the incline and I increase the percentage of the incline every single day, I will get there. Like that's inevitable. If I increase it a tiny bit every day, I am certain that I will get there. I am certain that the event is not today, okay? I am certain that I will get closer if I get on that treadmill and keep going, then if I don't get on it today, I am certain that I am just as capable as other human beings and that other human beings have done this thing before. I am certain that it is possible for other human beings and I am a human being and therefore I am certain it's possible for me to. I am certain that the only real thing between me and that goal is my brain's protests?

So, this is just so powerful to ask yourself, whatever it is you're trying to do, what can you be certain of? What do you know for sure? Like, my brain thinks it's pretty certain that I'm not going to be able to do this thing, but it doesn't know. It does not know that. And so instead, I've decided to be certain about me. And I want you to use certainty to develop trust with yourself that you will figure it out, that your success is inevitable if you keep going and you keep problem solving, right?

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So, at the end of last year, I was working on a goal that I hadn't hit yet and I was crying with my coach and I was just like, you know, my brain was like, well, because I didn't hit my goal I can't have these certain things next year. And like, I was crying about it, brains are so dramatic, but anyway, so I was like crying to her about it that I was going to miss out on some experiences because I didn't hit this goal, right? And she asked me, What if you were certain that you would figure it out anyway? What if you were certain that you would find a way? And that's just it, right? Like, what if we could just decide to be certain about us, certain if I keep going, I will figure out a way certain that I am capable, but I am a child of God and that if I'm willing to keep believing, there's no way I won't get there. I also love to be certain that there are only so many ways to fail. And if I keep going, my success is inevitable. Okay so, think about what you want to be certain of in yourself and use that certainty to keep going.

Okay my friends, that's what I have for you today. Your brain is going to protest, that's what brains do. They whine and they protest and they try anything to get you to stop. Don't be surprised by it. Instead, recognize like, this is what brains do. Now, what emotion do I need in order to keep going and just stock your tool kit with all the useful emotions that you love, the useful emotions that can empower you to keep going? These are the ones I love, courage, curiosity, compassion, certainty. They are some of my favorite emotions. I think they're so useful, and I think they will allow you to create amazing things in your life. And the best part is they are available to you any time you want by the way, you think, and that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com. This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever as your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay. And that, my friends is 100% awesome!