Embracing Your Emotions | Self-Acceptance Mindset

This episode of the Wild Free Well podcast talks about embracing your emotions with self-acceptance and shifting the stories you tell yourself about what your feelings mean. Learn how to release judgment, honor your emotions, and show up for yourself with compassion and openness.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Freewell podcast. I am here with a bit of a different story today. I actually woke up feeling really weird today and normally my first thought would not be okay let's record a podcast about it but I was you know kind of just sitting in the emotion and going through I don't know feeling what I was feeling and just kind of being present with it and I was kind of washing the dishes and I remembered having like I had this realization sorry this kind of remembering of something that I already know to be true but that I had maybe forgotten a little bit and it's this idea that the emotion never matters or never has as much weight as the story that we tell ourselves about the emotion that we're having. So I think there's a lot to be said about this kind of conversation but one thing I want to point out is that this realization came to me while I was washing dishes and I don't know about you guys but in general like these realizations tend to come to me honestly most of all when I'm in the bathroom I don't know why but when I'm in the bathroom when I'm having a shower like these kinds of things like these moments where you know where we're disconnected from technology and distractions and we're just doing one thing it's very difficult to be doing multiple things while you're in the washroom or in the shower or while you're washing dishes you know you're just doing these things and so while our subconscious is kind of while we're focusing on something else sorry our subconscious is kind of going through and kind of processing our experience it's processing what we're what we're going through what we're what we've been thinking about what we've been focusing on what we've been maybe stressed about or like the problem that we're trying to solve right and so oftentimes when we're in this sort of void when we're in this empty space where we're not actively thinking about the the situation that's kind of when the realizations the ahas and the solutions tend to come to us so I mean we could have a whole podcast episode about how we need to give ourselves space but what I really want to focus on today is the other side of the story which is you know I woke up this morning feeling a certain way I kind of was having these so-called negative emotions I was feeling kind of weird physically uncomfortable not really like in my body not really present quite distracted um and like if you're um like someone who experiences then obviously the the flow of your cycle as well plays a big role in this and if you are familiar with the way that your body works you can also kind of have different experiences of times where you're more focused less focused more you know where you're more distracted where you're more agitated whatever it might be right more irritable um so like that's also something to take into consideration like where you are at in your cycle and how that might be factoring into what you're feeling but in any case it's still less about the emotion itself especially when we're talking about a negative emotion it's less about the motion itself and more about the story that you're telling yourself about what it all means about you what the emotion means about you what the situation you're in means about you right it's still going back to that mindset work so there's two kind of steps in this I would say it's like really being honest and acknowledging what you're feeling and I've talked about this multiple times but when I'm able to name the emotion that I'm feeling all of a sudden it dissipates it just really becomes much lighter in in some cases perhaps not always like I would say um over the last couple of days I've been feeling kind of kind of strange in general just had like a really kind of weird energy about me um I've been stressed for things that are going on in my personal life and like I've been really much very much in problem solving mode like trying to find a solution to like what I'm going through and so that's probably contributed to this kind of malaise that I've been experiencing but in any case I was able to kind of say you know I'm just feeling kind of weird this morning and then like I had this like realization again to repeat myself that it's it's not really about the emotion itself like I took the time to name it that didn't help it go away but what really gave me you know peace and kind of granted me a sort of sense of freedom is recognizing that the fact that I feel weird doesn't actually have to mean anything it doesn't have to mean anything beyond what I've decided to make it mean or what I'm allowing it to mean in my life we are always in control of that aspect of our lives we're always able to have like the kind of final say on the story that we're telling ourselves and sometimes it doesn't feel that way and I can respect that but it really is important that if we take this idea on board all of a sudden we become so much more powerful in our lives because we're able to not just ride the waves of emotions and not just be present with what's happening but we're able to kind of self-direct ourselves right so if we're riding a negative wave we can recognize the negative the wave is negative we can recognize the emotion and we can flip the script and we can kind of take some of the power and the charge away from the story and put it back on ourselves right we can pull the focus more inward again if that makes sense so like it has nothing to do with whether or not I'm feeling grumpy or off or weird or whatever it's more about what I'm making that situation or that story or those emotions fine mean about me as a person in this moment so like I'm not saying I feel weird and so I am weird that's I mean it could be the story that you're telling yourself it wasn't the story that I was telling myself in particular but it's more about this idea of okay I'm feeling weird oh today is going to be such a long day it's going to be such a hard day you know like I have to do this and like it's that it's that kind of crescendo of building up the story around the emotion instead of just letting the emotion be and just kind of being like oh okay you know I feel weird period full stop and it ends there right like I feel weird and that doesn't have to mean anything about me it doesn't have to mean anything about my day it doesn't have to mean anything about what I'm going to create today or experience today like it doesn't have to mean anything now I'm here recording the podcast I'd like to preface this by saying that it was not my intention today to do any kind of work so there wasn't this pressure on me like I wasn't feeling weird and then telling myself a story like now I'm just not going to get any work done my intention for today was actually very different it was really to relax and rest and then this idea kind of showed up and presented itself to me and I decided to come here so there wasn't that kind of like pressure on me that I was trying to say okay well you know you feel bad but you have to do this or you should do this we always want to be mindful of those stories they are insidious they are insidious and long term if we hold on to the shoulds and have tos it really can become it can become heavy and a little bit I would say dangerous for us long term because we are ingraining a mentality and a mindset that really will never ever ever serve us like Louise Hay used to say like don't should all over yourself and it's really really important that we keep that in mind here so it's not about I feel bad and I should feel better or I feel bad and I should be doing xyz it's just about I feel this and it doesn't need to mean anything about anything at all it is just what it is right and I want to take a second to kind of take a you know a kind of detour here and talk about the fact that it's really interesting how the how we view the difference between like so-called positive and negative emotions okay because when we feel good you know we feel confident we feel like in momentum we feel in flow and it's like we use that to mean something good about ourselves but when we feel bad somehow we use that to like kind of manipulate ourselves and to punish ourselves because somehow the bad emotion makes us as humans bad and the good emotion makes us as humans good but none of this is objectively true like emotions just are and we can label them as good bad positive negative that's fine I think there's I think there can be a place where labeling things like that is useful but the point is is that none of this objectively means anything about us and I think that there is power in using the good emotions to make us feel better because we are like we we self-identify with those emotions like you know I'm in flow today like I'm I rock I'm awesome and we use it to build ourselves up and I think that that can be really powerful but we have to unlearn the opposite habit which is we feel a bad emotion and we use that emotion then to punish ourselves and to drag ourselves down because it's hard when we do it for one side to not do it for the other like if you're self-identifying with your positive emotions and that's fine it's difficult then though to not self-identify with your negative emotions and that can have a very very very different impact on your day and your life right so it's not that it's good or bad I think that there's a huge amount of like usefulness and purposefulness in identifying with positive emotions you could use that in a really really powerful way it then becomes unlearning the negative side flipping the script and then building momentum again off the positive emotions what do I mean by that okay I woke up today feeling weird and I have you know maybe at first I was kind of letting it get me down subconsciously I don't think I was really like aware of what I was doing necessarily but I was kind of in this space this kind of it's kind of I would say like a lost space I was kind of like distracted and I wasn't really clear on what I wanted or how I felt or what I wanted to do and then when I took a step away from that energy and I put myself in a position where I wasn't able to actively focus on it because again I was washing dishes then I was able to kind of take a step back and it was like I got a mic macro look at my life so I you know it was like a bird's eye view I zoomed out and I was able to see myself washing dishes and me having this emotion of being weird or being weird of feeling weird I am weird but I mean feeling weird in this case is what I meant and it didn't have to be this like long drawn out story that was kind of what I realized so if you can identify the emotion zoom out and take a macro look at the situation and realize that this is only a moment in which you feel this way and that the moment will pass and that this moment and this emotion doesn't have to mean anything about you you can already actively choose to feel differently so like now that I'm sitting here recording the podcast you could ask me like well do you still feel weird maybe a little bit I think but also I've shifted the energy like now all of a sudden I feel more powerful because I've taken what kind of started off as a lump of coal I would say and I have polished that into a shiny little diamond that I'm going to like now share with the world right like I've taken my experience I have transformed it into something that I hope is useful for the people listening and I am now offering it to the world so I have kind of taken that energy and transmuted it into something more powerful more creative and again you don't have to do that there is no obligation for you to you know take something that doesn't feel good and turn it into something that feels good it is an option though like you have the choice to do that if you want to you have a choice to do that if it's the right choice for you because sometimes getting from feeling off or feeling like you know some a so-called negative emotion to feeling a positive emotion is too much of a leap sometimes we need to go through the steps of going from you know negative neutral and then allowing ourselves to move forward to positive and just again allowing ourselves to be where we are it's not like this morning I was punishing myself for feeling weird I was lost in the emotion of feeling weird I wasn't necessarily saying well you know you shouldn't feel weird I was just like I feel weird I don't really understand why I'm not particularly enjoying the experience of feeling weird I don't really know what to do with myself right now I don't know what would make me feel better and so I decided to do a menial task because it needed to be done in any case and then that kind of brought me clarity so I took myself out of the situation without necessarily being super mindful about it I wasn't using washing the dishes as a tactic to move through my emotions it just happened to work out that way in all honesty so I think there's a lot of power though in this idea like there's a lot that we could take away from here from this experience even though I would say it's something that happened it's something that unfolded and not something that I went actively searching for you could turn every aspect of what I've explained into an actual step identify the emotion you know what I mean take a second to get a little bit clear on that if you can't get clear on it let it go and take a step back and do something to clear your mind whether that be read a book you know you're actively distracting yourself let's say do menial tasks like cleaning the house or do something like to take care of yourself like having a shower having a bath like taking yourself out of that experience and then allowing your mind to just kind of be and it will kind of unfold on its own if that makes sense and then from there it's about rewriting the story rewriting the story or perhaps not buying into the story we could do this in one of two ways you can actively change the story because you always have that power you can reframe the limiting story the limiting belief and tell a new one so here it could be like you know I'm not weird I'm in the process of understanding what's going on that could get me to a more neutral space or you know I'm choosing to feel better could get me to a more positive space or you can choose to just kind of let that situation be and just be like oh okay well this is what it is and I'm just gonna be okay with that and it's you know we're letting go of the have-tos we're letting go of the shoulds there isn't this whole story that we're building up around it about how it needs to be different it just is and we're allowing it to be that so I hope that this episode serves you and I hope that it gives you permission permission to let go of the need to be I guess hyper vigilant with yourself and to to to be mean to yourself right like I wish that we could all let that go forever more amen because we just it serves no purpose like shooting on ourselves and saying that we have to do things and all of these kind of you know they seem innocuous but they're actually really really punishing phrases when used over time and so instead of saying you know well I have to feel better or I have to write a new story or I have to do mindset work or I have to focus on this or whatever it is that you're telling yourself just kind of giving yourself permission to exist as the beautiful and fully formed whole human being that you are without there being an asterisk on your existence right just allowing yourself to be be all of who you are to show up the way that you choose to show up to feel the way you feel and just kind of seeing how that permission and that kind of self-acceptance which is really I guess at the end of the day what we're talking about here how that really allows you to move forward just sitting there and being okay with what is is actually going to be the thing that opens the door into something better even if it doesn't feel like it and even if being in that emotion feels scary and and sometimes it does and sometimes it does so this is where I leave you I hope that this episode served you if you loved it if you didn't leave a comment or a review or stars or all of that jazz if you have any ideas for the podcast like topics that you'd like me to cover I would love for you to reach out to me I'd be so happy to connect with you and to hear more and to be able to create content that really really resonates with what you're looking for and what you need support on so please don't hesitate to get out to get out to get out to get in contact with me I'd be so happy to hear from you and yeah just keep doing what you're doing and keep showing up as the beautiful light that you are in the world and keep loving yourself and accepting yourself a little bit more every day because you deserve it and I will see you on the next episode of the Wild Free Well podcast. Ciao!