Episode Summary

Jenna shares a somatic tool that helps you move difficult emotions through and out of your body.

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Show Notes

In the upcoming weeks, many of us will be reuniting with family for the holidays. This can be a joyful experience or it can bring up old wounds and ongoing pain points. In the past year, some of us have lost loved ones, haven’t reached our business goals, or have been feeling deeply affected by the ongoing tragic world events. Either way, this episode is here to help you get through this month and the holidays a little easier.

I will be sharing a powerful somatic tool that will offer you the space to turn hurt or stress into wisdom. You will learn how to process and discharge heavy emotions and understand why the skill set of managing your emotions is key to your long-term business success and a fulfilling life.

Tune in to learn what to do with your heavy emotions and why they do so much more damage when you resist them. Let this tool be the gift you give yourself this holiday season.

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

• Why difficult emotions do major damage when you avoid them.

• A somatic tool for moving your difficult emotions through your body.

• How this tool can turn hurt or stress into wisdom.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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• Ep #14: The #1 Skill for Entrepreneurship

Full Episode Transcript:

What if I told you there's something you can do from the comfort of your sofa that takes just 60 seconds, but will unlock a vastly improved experience of your life? Where you'll feel like, okay, I can handle this. I got this. And as if that weren't enough, by doing so, you'll see all sorts of things change for you.

Such as, being able to get through the holidays without blowing a gasket at your uncle Ned. Get through your to-dos, without your head spinning for days on that thing that's upsetting you. Or be able to get to much better results in your business. You'd want to know more, right? Well then, stick around.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Everyone, welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I am very pleased to bring you this episode today, because this topic will be for many of you exactly what the doctor ordered. By trying out the methods I share, you will be able to create a very different experience for yourself this month.

But it does require courage, because it's something our brains naturally try to avoid. Plus, since we are not taught to do this, we don't tend to have a lot of lived experience of how worth it it is, and how much better it is on the other side. So, you'll just have to trust me and give it a go. Okay?

My aim here is pretty lofty, I am going to help you learn to process and discharge heavy emotions. Which is very timely because there are a lot of emotions going around. Many of us will be reuniting with family and bringing up old wounds or ongoing pain points.

Some of us have lost family or loved ones and so feel that loss acutely this time of year. Some of us haven't had the results we expected in business this year and are affected emotionally. And many of us are feeling pretty shattered by tragic world events and/or the ramification of those events on our communities or families. And to top it all off, I don't know about you, but it is cold, damp, gray and fugly here in Pennsylvania right now.

This episode was originally created many moons ago, it was our Episode #14. I created it to talk about why the skill set of managing your emotions is key to your long-term business success. But it all applies. Everything I said applies to downswings in your personal life, too. So, I'm resurrecting it.

Now, here's what I said in the original episode. I said, the number one skill for entrepreneurship and building your business has nothing to do with tactics or drive. It's definitely not sexy. But it's what will open you up to the keys that make the biggest difference and create the most dramatic results in your business.

But you've got to go through a little bit of fire to get there. It's what most of the world won't do, and yet, you can do it from the comfort of your sofa in just 60 seconds. So, here is what you're going to get from this episode.

I am going to share why emotions and sensations do so much more damage when you avoid them. I will talk about why we resist doing the work, and why it can be difficult at first. I'll walk you through an exercise that you can return to any time you want to help an emotion move through or discharge rather than getting stuck and festering.

Now, that said, there is no substitute for direct professional care. If it will be too triggering for you to bring up an emotion on your own, please seek the help of your therapist and engage with this work only when you have support.

Alright, something else I want to say before we get into it is to reiterate that if you are feeling negative emotions, it's okay. It means you have a human brain. There is such a propensity in our society to be happy all the time, which is absolutely impossible and unrealistic.

I know you know this, but just because everyone on Instagram looks happy doesn't mean they're all happy. It paints such a distorted picture of life, and can bring up a lot of shame when we're not in that coveted ideal emotional place. But there's nothing wrong with being honest about where you are.

I know sometimes my clients say they're afraid of wallowing in it. But as you'll hear in this episode, if you want the sensations to move through you, and often for these things to stop reoccurring to you, don't ignore them and try to slap happy stickers all over them. If you want to discharge them gracefully as soon as it's possible to do so, as soon as your body is willing to do so, then process them so you can move on.

There is such a difference between honestly acknowledging what's going on for you and taking the personal responsibility of moving through it effectively and wallowing.

When I ask someone how they're doing, and they say, “Wow, honestly, I've been going through some stuff. I know, it's not going to last forever, but it's here right now,” I don't think, “They're so negative.” I think, “Oh, here's someone who's probably going to move through a dark time more quickly and/or more effectively than most people.”

There's also this worry that we don't want to be a downer, and we don't want to bring others down. A fear that people won't like us or respect us or won't tune in if we're not happy and doing well.

Last week, I recorded an episode that talked about a difficult time in my life surrounding 9/11. I noticed the impulse of my team, as they were summarizing what that episode was about, to frame with a happy ending. But the truth is, that the happy ending, which was my return back to trust in the universe, trust in my intuition, opening myself again, that didn't happen for years.

Of course, I didn't have the tools, so I don't expect any of you who are in a dark place to have that same experience. But regardless of how long you're in it, when you're in it, you're in it. We don't need to sugarcoat that.

If this is you right now, if you are in it, if you are having some hard times, I want you to know that I feel for you. While it can be frustrating to be around someone who's always a “Debbie Downer,” moving through a tough time doesn't make you that. It, again, makes you human.

So much pain could be alleviated in our lives if we believed nothing has gone wrong when we're feeling down. That we're free to be honest with the people around us. And that if we, on the receiving end, weren't so afraid of negative emotions that we have to distance ourselves from them and from those who are experiencing them.

So, let's talk about what to do with those negative emotions, and how to transform hurt or stress into wisdom.

Whether those are the small micro stressors that eventually build up to the pot boiling over, or it's those big volcano emotions like a major disappointment, we think we can insulate ourselves, right? This is what the brain does. The brain says, “When I have the business,” for instance, “When I have this amount of money in the bank, then I'll feel financially secure.”

We think we can insulate ourselves from ever feeling disappointed, but we're always carrying around a human brain. The human brain is always creating meaning. And, the human brain has a natural negativity bias. So, this is something that we consciously have to counteract, if we want to live a life that is not as painful as would naturally be.

Our brains say, “If I do this or accomplish this thing, whatever it is, then I'll feel satisfied,” for instance, “And can be a calmer person,” right? Notice that sequence that our brain sees; do or accomplish, then feel, and then be.

Another variation is, have-do-be, right? “If I have an audience that loves me, I will do more Instagram lives, and I will be more confident.” But it's always the other way around. It's always, “When I'm feeling confident, I do more lives, and I create an audience that loves me.”

It's so amazing, because really, if you follow the trail of breadcrumbs for anything of what people most want, or what they most want to avoid, it always comes down to a feeling.

Sometimes I'll have a client who is really afraid, and I'll say, “What are you most afraid of?” And it's, “My business won't work and I'll be penniless.” “Okay, then what? What will happen, then?” “Well, maybe then I'll have to move back in with my parents, or ask them for a loan.”

“Okay, and what would happen then? What's the consequence of that?” “Oh my gosh, I would feel like such a failure. I would feel so ashamed having to ask them.” So, you see? It all comes down to a feeling. It is amazing what lengths we humans go to avoid a feeling, avoid an emotion.

I have a mentor, Brooke Castillo, who uses this example of Martians coming down to the planet, and being like, “Oh, wow, what are these feeling things? What are these emotions? Is it like you form boils on your skin and then it just peels off your face, as if you're on fire?” And you're like, “No, it just feels more like a pressure in your chest.” They’ll be like, “That's it?” “That's it.” “And yet, you go through all of these lengths to avoid that?”

Because what is an emotion, really? It’s a sensation, right? It's a vibration passing through your body. If you fully allow that sensation, they don't even last that long, which is the crazy part. They last so much longer, they do so much more damage, when you resist them or avoid them.

I still catch myself, right? There is not a single one of you listening that's like, “Oh, I don't do that. I'm above that. I've learned that.” No, no, no. Because you're human, right? And the brain, your brain, knows you better than anyone. Your brain can take you out of the consciousness of what it's doing behind the scenes.

I catch myself in this all the time. I'll go a whole day not thinking about something, like, “I don't want to think about it.” Or looking on the bright side. Or something that seems so helpful, until I realize this is not helpful. This is not helpful, at all.

And, how many actions do you take from that place? Do you take from that place of avoiding that emotion or not thinking about it, but it's still there, right? It's driving all of your actions.

So, maybe you're feeling devastated, but you're not really dealing with that emotion. And so, you're moving into inaction. Your body just shuts down. You have this collapsing energy, “I just can't do anything. I'm just too… I need to watch the news.”

Or you're feeling rejected, maybe by your audience, and so your language switches to this convincing energy or this kind of chastising energy. Like, “Why don't you wake up, and see what you need to do?” That doesn't create the results you want. That doesn't bring on any new clients.

Or maybe you're feeling ashamed because you think that the actions you're taking or need to take, or your coach is telling you to take, will make you be perceived as salesy. So, what do you do? You don't follow up with that client, or you avoid sales calls. Because the truth is, you don't want to have clients, or you don't want to have sales calls.

This is why improving this skill of dealing with things when they hurt, when they feel uncomfortable, is so necessary. In the Clarity Accelerator, during the modules where we first start interacting with people and we start selling something, that's when this comes up. That's when we have this training on emotional maturity.

I have my clients start to experience this kind of discomfort early on. Part of that is purposeful, it is the muscle they need to build to become resilient entrepreneurs and keep taking bigger and bigger risks. But also, it just makes sense.

Rather than spending years building an audience on social media, we prove that the offer has legs and is viable by actually selling it, or at least selling a part of it. You can tell me 50 of your friends said they think your offer’s so valuable. You can tell me it changed your life and other people need it; I don't care.

Is someone willing to pull out their credit card now? That is what proves viability. So, yes, this brings up some emotions early on, but that's what makes my clients so much more resilient and less self-sabotaging in the long run.

Now, I want to give you some body-based tools, or somatic tools, for transforming hurts and stressors into wisdom, to really processing these emotions. If you haven't processed the emotions from Thailand, yet, and you are sensitive to the topic, I recommend you do that now with me. Otherwise, practice with a personal issue or your strongest uncomfortable feeling in your business. Okay, you ready?

First, you need to establish safety. You need to tell your nervous system that you are safe right now. When you start to actually feel the emotion, it will feel activated, it may think you're being chased by a tiger. First, we're going to establish safety and let a part of your brain know that you are perfectly safe right here.

To do that, all you need to do is feel the seat beneath you, feel the floor beneath you, and then tell yourself, show your eyes, that you're in a room. That you are in a safe place with a roof over your head. The temperature is amenable. There is no immediate threat in your environment.

Take a breath, and then, slowly exhale that breath. Then, invite that emotion in, feel it, feel it in your body. Now, most people can't do this at first, when they're not used to it, and so they'll use their brains.

If I ask a client, “What are you feeling in your body?” They will use their brains to describe it, “I'm feeling shut down.” Then, I will ask, “What does shutdown feel like? What does constricted feel like? How can you describe that to me as if I needed to feel it?”

I have physician clients, as well, and they'll sometimes start telling me the musculature of what's going on with them. And I'm like, “No, no, no. Tell me. Let me feel it, too.” I want you to think in that way about the sensation of your emotion.

Does it tingle? Is there movement? Is there temperature? Is there pressure? Is it dense? Is it light? Is it large? Is it small? What does it actually feel like? This is something we rarely do, just sit and feel an emotion, because it's uncomfortable. Our brain wants to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions.

But you can do this, you can do hard things. Accept that emotion being there. You can literally tell it, “It's okay. It's okay for you to be in my body right now.” Just like we are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions. You can get curious about it. Most of all, have no judgement about it being there. This is the human experience in your human body right now, and you're just watching it all unfold.

Next, I'm going to ask you to dial it up. This is something we would never do. We always want less of the emotion, not more of the emotion. But I want you to imagine you had an old-fashioned radio with dials and you could just turn it up. I want you to increase the intensity of that emotion, just for a small bit of time.

When you do that, when you're calling the shots, you will instantly feel a shift of some sort, you will feel it lose its power. It's when we resist the emotion that it gathers more power.

I've had a coach say, “What do you tend to do if someone in your household is not listening to you and you really know that they're about to hurt themselves? Or that they really need to hear that thing? You keep following them around and speaking louder, right?”

That's exactly what's going on with these emotions when we're not paying attention to them, they're just trying to get heard. So, soften into the fact that they're there, invite more of it in. Invite more of that intensity in, and just sit with it and watch it.

If we were ever going to drink a potion of a certain emotion, we could do that for… even if we know it would last for 30 seconds, we'd be like, “Ooh, let me try sadness.” We'd feel that sadness for 30 seconds, and it would probably feel very cathartic afterwards, like a movie, tear-jerker movie, and then we would be in an altered state.

So, soften and invite this emotion in as if it's not such a terrible thing. It's a part of your experience and you can be with it. And then, just check in. In what ways does it feel different than it used to? Is there anything that it wants to say to you? Is there anything it wants you to do, shift your body, move in a certain way? Check back in with it in a week?

Then, you can turn the dials back down when you're ready, and you can move on with your day. That whole process can take 60 seconds or it can take five minutes. But what it leaves you with is that clarity, right? That neutrality.

Because I always say clarity is very, very simple, it's that sudden understanding. It's like the curtain opening or the fog lifting. It's like, oh, this; it’s that groundedness. And, you cannot get there from a reactive state.

Your higher Self or your neocortex speaks to you when you settle your nervous system. We can call this whatever we want, right? Whatever you call your most elevated consciousness; whether that's your higher Self, or your neocortex.

I am completely language agnostic here. I'm happy to speak to people about brain science if they're more attuned to that. Or spirituality, if they're more attuned to that. But think about your most elevated consciousness.

Either way, your repressed intense emotions and negativity only lead to an activated nervous system. Science shows us that the higher parts of our brains shut down under bad stress. Therefore, the longer you deny this work, the less access you have to the wisdom, the inspiration, the insights, that are the biggest drivers of your business success.

In fact, I had an early business mentor, who had made a million dollars her first year in business. What she credited to that success was spending hours upon hours doing mindset work on her biggest hang-ups and fears, and thinking back about unhelpful stories and beliefs that she had.

She would not stop the work for that day until she had made herself cry. She needed to get to that level of emotion in order to purge the past and move on with the future, and gain the insights to show up in a much bigger way. She said, with love, “Fuck consistency. Fuck willpower. Fuck the hustle, and fuck the latest tactics for Instagram.”

And your greatest business successes will come from a much different place, one that's a far more beautiful place to be in, too, if you're willing to do the mindset and emotional work that precedes it.

Okay, friends, that's it for today. Remember, on a certain level you know who you are, and each day you're stepping further into what you are here to create.

Hey, just hopping back on with an update. I've added something to this technique that I want to share; which is true for any toolkit that I have. Because mine is an ongoing journey to more deeply understand both the human brain and the human experience, and my role is to pass that along to you as soon as I've discovered something that works for me. Especially when I see it working for my clients, too.

Now, the technique that I talk about in this episode here is something that I myself still use weekly, if not more. It's something I will swear by, even if I just did exactly what I described in this episode. Because as I did it more and more, the timeframe for which I was negatively affected continued to shrink.

By the way, when I say “negatively affected” what I mean is that strong charge. Like the charge you feel when you're triggered or when emotions feel overwhelming. “Of course, I'm still horrified by world events. Of course, I still wish my uncle Ned were more considerate.” I don't really have an uncle Ned, but you know what I mean.

But through processing the emotion, I don't feel the same charge anymore. Not only does that feel much better and more resilient, and change my direct experience of pain, but since my nervous system gets into a better place different parts of my brain are able to fire, are able to come online, which help me have much better coping mechanisms. Therefore, I take better quality actions and create better results.

But I've found that if I add this thing to it, it's even better. That thing, is allowing movement. So, I let my body take over and move in a way that it knows it needs. I still scan my body for the sensation fingerprint. I'm still allowing those sensations to be there and watching them from a place of curiosity.

But I just also attune to whether that part of my body is asking for movement. Does my neck want to roll? Do I want to rock? And I trust that this is what my body needs to discharge the emotion.

I think in my old experience of it maybe I would tiptoe into that. But mostly, I expected I was just going to sit in a quiet room and do this work, right? Now, sometimes I do it right in the moment. My son, Dylan, will say something, I'll feel myself get ignited, and I'll just stop right there and shake my body, like you’ve seen dogs do, I'll just shape.

Or I'll flop over like a rag doll for a second and pretend to pick up something off the ground. Or sometimes it's just a roll of the shoulders and a little stretch. But what happens is, I find I'm able to stay in situations and work things out that before would have sent me straight out of the room because I just needed to get away.

So, while you may not choose to do this directly in front of people, do try it when you're alone and processing, as an add on to what I described. Then, of course, you should let me know how it works for you. I really want to know. You can either just quickly hit the review button right there, leave me a few words for other people to also see this episode, or just send me a DM.

Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.

Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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